Governor Jerry Brown signed a piece of legislation in California to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in early September.

Senate Bill 32 (SB 23) would require the state to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by the year 2030. A second measure, Assembly Bill 197, has been signed.  This bill would increase legislative oversight of the Californian Air Resources Board with the creation of a new committee. This will direct the board to make emissions cuts at refineries and other local polluters a priority, as stated by the LA Times.

“What we’re doing here is farsighted, as well as far-reaching. California is doing something that no other state has done,” said Governor Brown at a signing event in Los Angeles about the new legislation.

By 2030, estimates from the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy show the state could populate 44 million people and have an economy of nearly $3.5 trillion, but carbon emissions would need to be dramatically reduced, as reported by the LA Times.

California has already started to cut harmful emissions by introducing the ideas of electric cars and the use of alternative transportation. SB 23 will affect Californians in many aspects of life, including how they get to work, how their food is produced and where their electricity is coming from.

“We’re going to have to make the change about three times as fast as we’ve done so far,” said James Sweeney, director of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University according to the LA Times.

A legislation proposed in 2006 is similar to SB 23. It stated that California was to adopt a statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit equivalent to the levels in 1990. The goal is for the initiative to be achieved by 2020.

“Whatever it’s going to take, it’s going to take battle, it’s going to take wisdom and it will take some balance that we don’t overdo it,” Brown said. “But I’m not afraid that we’re going to get to that point.”