SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today met with Jiangsu Party Secretary Luo Zhijun in Sacramento and announced that Jiangsu Province – California’s Chinese sister-state – has endorsed the Under 2 MOU climate agreement, a pact among cities, states and countries around the world to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius – the warming threshold at which scientists say there will likely be catastrophic climate disruptions.
Today’s meeting was held in conjunction with the third convening of the California-Jiangsu Joint Economic Committee, which was established through an agreement Governor Brown and Party Secretary Luo signed in Nanjing during the Trade and Investment Mission to China in April 2013.
With the addition of Jiangsu Province, a total of 42 jurisdictions representing 19 countries and five continents have signed or endorsed the Under 2 MOU, collectively representing more than $13.1 trillion in GDP and 463 million people. If the signatories represented a single country, it would be the second largest economy in the world behind only the United States.
This announcement follows ceremonies hosted by Governor Brown and California Secretary for Environmental Protection Matthew Rodriquez in New York City last month to welcome 17 new signatories to the Under 2 MOU, including New York City, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.
In recent weeks, Governor Brown also met with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China in Seattle, Washington and spoke at the U.S.-China Climate Leaders Summit in Los Angeles, where he announced the first Chinese province and city – Sichuan Province and Zhenjiang city – to sign on to the Under 2 MOU climate agreement.
In addition to action on the Under 2 MOU, the Governor traveled to the Vatican in Italy and the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto, Canada in July to call on the world’s cities, states and provinces to join California in the fight against climate change. These efforts build on other international climate change pacts with leaders from Mexico, China, North America, Japan, Israel, Peru and Chile. Governor Brown also helped convene hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists to issue a groundbreaking call to action – called the consensus statement – which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified document.
Earlier this year, Governor Brown issued an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – the most ambitious target in North America and consistent with California’s existing commitment to reduce emissions 80 percent under 1990 levels by 2050.
In his inaugural address this year, Governor Brown announced that within the next 15 years, California will increase from one-third to 50 percent the electricity derived from renewable sources; reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent; double the efficiency savings from existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner; reduce the release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon. The impacts of climate change are already being felt in California and will disproportionately impact the state’s most vulnerable populations.
Photo captions:
1.)Governor Brown and Jiangsu Party Secretary Luo Zhijun
2.)Governor Brown gives remarks before the California-Jiangsu Joint Economic Committee
Photo Credit: Joe McHugh, California Highway Patrol. For high resolution copies of these photos, please contact Danella Debel, Office of the Governor at Danella.Debel@gov.ca.gov.