LOS ANGELES, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The majorities of Californians favor state policies to battle against global warming, even though the measures would hike gasoline prices, a poll released here Wednesday showed.
According to the poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) between July 9 and 18, 72 percent of California adults and 66 percent of likely voters favor the state law passed last year that requires the state to reduce CO2 emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2030.
Almost half of Californians, 49 percent, believe that the state's actions to alleviate global warming will result in more jobs in the future, which is the highest proportion since the PPIC first conducted the poll in 2010.
At the same time, 54 percent adults and 52 percent likely voters agreed that the state's actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will cause gasoline prices to rise.
More than half of residents said they found it very important for California to act as a leader on climate change around the world, and two-thirds supported the state making its own climate change policies beyond those implemented by the federal government.
Altogether 1,708 Californians in English and Spanish joined the poll. The margin of error was 3.4 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
The poll was released just one day after Governor Jerry Brown of California signed a bill to extend the Golden State's cap-and-trade program, a market-based emissions trading program to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in pollutants emissions.
The system was put in place when former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a legislation in 2006, making California the first and so far the only across the United States to adopt the approach. The legislation signed Tuesday keeps the program operational until 2030.
The Californian government kept its independent climate policy from the federal government since Donald Trump took the White House in presidential election last year.
Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in early June, which was reached in late 2015 and signed by more than 190 UN members so far around the world.
The Paris Agreement calls on all nations to respond to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees.
Brown showed a clear confrontational posture against Trump in July. On July 6, he announced to host the Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in September 2018, then jointly with former Mayor of New York city Michael Bloomberg launched a new initiative one week later, known as "America's Pledge," to continue the cause set by the Paris Agreement on climate change.
"President Trump is trying to get out of the Paris Agreement, but he doesn't speak for the rest of America," Brown said on the eve of G20 Summit held in Hamburg of Germany early this month.
"We in California and in states all across America believe it's time to act, it's time to join together and that's why at this Climate Action Summit we're going to get it done."
