by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Working Californians blogs]

It know it's not a thrilling story, but the plans the California Air Resource Board is putting together is one of the biggest environmental stories in the country. California has huge ambitious goals to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and the CARB is tasked with figuring out how we get there and issuing regulations to ensure it happens. SacBee:

The state Air Resources Board will launch into a yearlong planning effort today that it hopes will yield a workable plan for slashing California's annual greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million metric tons in just 12 years.

That goal – the equivalent of cutting the state's gasoline use almost 70 percent – represents most of the reductions mandated under Assembly Bill 32, passed last year. The specific regulations enacted to meet it likely will affect virtually every sector of the California economy, from how electricity is generated to how new communities are planned.

Many of the emissions reductions will be straightforward expansions of energy-efficiency programs that the state already has pursued for years. But others – like rules that could affect land use – will put the agency in unfamiliar regulatory territory.

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