  The climate emergency increasingly threatens our communities, ecosystems,
food production, health, and economy. It disproportionately impacts lower
income communities, communities of color, and the elderly. Assessments since
the 2018 IPCC 1.5 Celsius report show that current national and sub-national
commitments and actions are insufficient. Fortunately, a suite of solutions
exists now to mitigate the climate crisis if we initiate and sustain actions
today. California, which has a strong set of current targets in place and is
home to clean energy and high technology innovation, has fallen behind in its
climate ambition compared to a number of major governments. California, a
catalyst for climate action globally, can and should ramp up its leadership by
aligning its climate goals with the most recent science, coordinating actions
to make 2030 a point of significant accomplishment. This entails dramatically
accelerating its carbon neutrality and net-negative emissions goal from 2045 to
2030, including advancing clean energy and clean transportation standards, and
accelerating nature-based solutions on natural and working lands. It also means
changing its current greenhouse gas reduction goals both in the percentage and
the timing: cutting emissions by 80 percent (instead of 40 percent) below 1990
levels much closer to 2030 than 2050. These actions will enable California to
save lives, benefit underserved and frontline communities, and save trillions
of dollars. This rededication takes heed of the latest science, accelerating
equitable, job-creating climate policies. While there are significant
challenges to achieving these goals, California can establish policy now that
will unleash innovation and channel market forces, as has happened with solar,
and catalyze positive upward-scaling tipping points for accelerated global
climate action.
