Callahan on panel discussing California's cap-and-trade program
It’s raining money! Or so Gov. Jerry Brown would have us believe. The new state budget assumes $2.2 billion in new revenue from California’s pioneering cap-and-trade program designed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But thousands of business and community leaders are concerned about the program’s economic impact on business and jobs, the state’s transparency, and regional distribution of that $2.2 billion and its demonstrable effect on helping boost local communities and critical sectors including affordable housing. Depending on whom you ask, many of those issues remain unresolved even as business has begun footing the bill.
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Recently, BizFed Institute, a nonprofit, educational arm of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, also known as BizFed, convened a public forum at Woodbury University in Burbank that drew more than 100 business, community, academic and opinion leaders to discuss the complex challenges and opportunities afforded by the cap-and-trade program in California.
The forum’s expert panelists – which included Colleen Callahan, Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA; Andrew Cheung, Southern California Gas Co.; Gary Gero, Climate Action Reserve; Dennis Luna, Luna & Glushon; Tiffany Roberts, Western States Petroleum Association; Ellah Ronen, LA n Sync, Annenberg Foundation; Richard Stapler, CA Natural Resources Agency; and Bob Wyman, Latham & Watkins (who was the moderator) – unanimously agreed that the future of cap and trade is largely uncertain given the Brown administration’s aggressive emission-reduction challenges and opportunities afforded by the program in California.