(Image Source: Treehugger)

BY PAUL ROLFE

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

You're watching multisource environment video news analysis from Newsy.

California’s global warming law is in trouble again. A San Francisco judge says the Air Resources Board -- the rule-making body -- didn’t look at other options closely enough before deciding on a cap and trade program.

KGO reports the legal challenge is coming from unusual suspects -- environmental justice groups.

“A San Fransisco judge has blocked enactment of the law because of a controversy over cap and trade. That key part of the measure allows some businesses to pollute if they can buy credits from other non-polluting businesses. The judge agreed with environmental groups saying the state appeared to rush into cap and trade without considering other things like a tax on pollution. The state plans to appeal.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano says on Fox Business -- this decision is just environmentalists attacking the free market.

“These folks persuaded this judge that the most heavy-handed, leftist-oriented, centrally-planning, cap and trade legislation in the country had one little skosh of the free market in it, and that’s the part they attacked! And that’s the part he restrained! And that’s the part the government has to go back and do over all again.”

Not all enviro groups are attacking the cap and trade program -- mainstream groups like the Environmental Defense Fund still support it. EDF tells KQED, there’s no bad blood between the two sides -- they both want the global warming law -- called AB32 -- to succeed.

“[We expect] that the parties will work to narrow the remedy so that [the California Air Resource Board] can proceed with some or most of the work to implement AB32 while a new analysis is finalized and approved by the Court.”

The voter-approved initiative was signed into law by then-Governor Schwarzenegger in 2006. It has survived industry challenges and a ballot initiative in 2010, and is supposed to go into effect in 2012 -- but with this latest delay, that goal is up in the air -- according to a Stanford professor quoted in Mercury News.

"My view is that it is clearly a setback... But it is not an immovable obstacle. It means that California has to look more carefully at the decision it made on cap and trade, and if it wants to make the same decision, justify it in more detail."

AB32 seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The judge’s decision does not explicitly stop the cap and trade program, but the Air Resources Board plans to appeal anyway.
 

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Transcript by Newsy.