California Senate passes first climate-restoration resolution: Safe climate an "obligation to future generations"

California Senate passed SR-34, the nation’s first resolution to explicitly recognize climate restoration as a policy priority.

LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA, USA, July 17, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- The California Senate passed SR-34, the nation’s first Resolution to formally recognize the obligation to future generations to restore a safe climate—one that allows for long-term human survival—July 3. The Resolution, which passed unanimously, also calls for the U.S. to propose an international climate treaty to restore and stabilize greenhouse gas levels as our common climate goal.

Introduced by Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), SR-34 declares climate restoration a precondition for climate justice, since low-income communities are the first and most impacted by climate change.

“Climate restoration” is defined as restoring atmospheric CO2 to a safe level, below 300 parts per million (ppm), which will require removing approximately one trillion tons of legacy CO2 from the air.

“While everyone wants our grandchildren to have a safe climate, this resolution is the first time that a government has made that commitment explicitly,” said Peter Fiekowsky, physicist, founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, and author of Climate Restoration—The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race.

“It wasn’t needed 30 years ago, but it is now. I hope that the U.S., other nations and the UN follow suit before this year’s UN climate conference in Dubai in November.”

The Resolution notes that climate restoration is possible by emulating natural processes. Nature has removed massive amounts of CO2 many times with two major methods: forming limestone, which is nearly half CO2 by weight, and boosting photosynthesis in the ocean, which cools the Earth into ice ages. Through “biomimicry,” scientists and technologists can now replicate and accelerate these natural processes. These extremely low-cost approaches have the potential to remove all legacy CO2 by 2050.

“Tackling the climate crisis demands a collective global effort, but that effort begins with individuals uniting in their communities and taking incremental steps for a cleaner environment. These local collaborations link together across regions and countries and grow into a powerful worldwide movement to mitigate climate change,” said Senator Cortese, who was the only elected official to address the first annual Climate Restoration Forum at the United Nations in 2019. “SR-34 calls on the world to recognize climate restoration as an essential tool in our pursuit of global environmental justice and climate change resilience.”

Carole Douglis
Foundation for Climate Restoration
+1 202-415-7441
Carole@F4CR.org