Plachta, Ari. (2023, January 31). California could force large corporations to disclose carbon emissions under new bill. Retrieved February 8, 2023, from https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article271831502.html
State Senator Scott Weiner introduced a bill (SB 253) that would mandate companies with annual revenues of over a billion dollars to publicly report their carbon emissions. California is the fifth largest economy in the world, and this bill would impact almost 6,000 companies that operate within the state. The data about our current emissions patterns will be incredibly useful to know the extent of the emissions problems in California, so that legislators can use this information to pass future regulations.
This article relates to environmental science because this bill would give experts information about the ways that California is impacting the environment. With this information, qualified individuals and groups will be able to apply environmental science in order to shift these behaviors and set goals for the changes that we need to make. I think that this bill could be very constructive to limiting greenhouse gas emissions. If we know which industries are producing greenhouse gases and how much they are producing, then it will become much easier to legislate those emissions; without information about the problem, it is very hard to solve it efficiently. Although I don’t think that this bill will cause change, it is a stepping stone to causing change, and that is important. I hope that it passes the legislature.
Interesting article. I am in favor based on what I know but we can imagine there may be some “book cooking”. If we want any kind of accountability for carbon emissions it seems like the emission levels should be public information. Can you imagine how they would begin to measure the carbon output. Is it just with the energy bill they use? We can also imagine companies trying to use carbon credits (like planting trees somewhere) to offset their numbers. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
I hope your topic kept you engaged, Amala. Thanks for all your contributions to Edublogs.
Thanks for the comment!! I think that they could measure carbon output by measuring the output in a certain amount of production and then multiplying that to reach their total amount of production/output. That is, however, a guess. Using the energy bill would make a lot of sense.