California's Climate Change Policy: The Case of a Sub-National State Actor Tackling a Global Challenge

Abstract:     
For all its economic capacity, population size, and resource base, California remains only one among 50 of the United States and, essentially, is a sub-national actor attempting to play a role in the climate change policy arena on par with the nation-states of the world. This raises a series of questions about the substance and breadth of the state’s new policy and what has motivated it. Moreover, as apparently as impressive as is the state’s policy declarations and initial flurry of activities, as with all so broad and sweeping initiatives it remains to be seen the extent to which policy goals can and will be translated into operational rules and regulations, incentives and sanctions, and actual accomplishments across all the sectors of the state’s economy over the course of not just months and years but across the decades to come.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 44

Keywords: California, climate policy, sub-national global actors, AB 32

working papers series