Climate change represents a substantial threat to human prosperity: warming has led to extreme weather and degraded ecosystems. Greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane, are the substantial cause of recent warming, which has been 10 times more rapid in the past century than any previous warming period.

As with other pressing issues we face, irresponsible environmental stewardship risks long-term disaster. One must only look to the dust bowl to understand how human impacts on our environment and ecosystems can undermine prosperity. Given California has a particularly varied and precarious climate, it faces acute consequences from climate change: extreme heat in the central valley, more frequent and severe wildfires, longer droughts punctuated by more extreme precipitation events, and a declining Sierra snowpack. Snowmelt typically comprises 30 percent of the state’s water supply.

While we face local consequences from climate change, collective action is needed. California can only make a negligible contribution to stopping global warming if we act alone: the production of greenhouse gases within our state is miniscule compared with the world’s production. Furthermore, there is a possible perverse effect whereby businesses that produce global warming gases will migrate out of California to jurisdictions that do not control them as strictly as we do. There is thus no alternative to binding international agreements, as the major economies were able to achieve for chlorofluorocarbons in the Montreal Protocol of 1987.

The best approach to climate change is a world-wide agreement restricting the production of global warming gases. The most efficient way to effectuate this approach is through a global carbon tax. If US states, along with all other countries adopted such a tax, there would be no benefit to shifting production from California to other states or countries. It was a mistake for the US to pull out of the Paris Accords, since that process is the only mechanism we have, at present, to move toward global rather than individual localized action.

California has adopted a cap-and-trade approach to global-warming gases, requiring utilities and businesses that produce such gases to purchase permits to do so, either from the state itself or from other producers who have been granted permits based on previous levels of output. This system is similar to a carbon tax, since the cost of a permit is equivalent to paying a tax. While not universal, California has engaged some other states and Canadian provinces in a pooled effort to trade the permits. A world-wide carbon tax is still a preferred approach, however, as it rewards improvements in technology that cap-and-trade does not.

As long as California requires companies to buy greenhouse gas certificates and competing states and countries do not, California’s employment will suffer. It is purely wishful thinking that “green jobs” will spring up in California to offset this effect. The environment in California is not made better than anywhere else on earth by our contribution to reducing greenhouse gases. So, this is not like saying we’ve created a better environment to live and work in California – as is the case, for instance, by our reducing smog. Green jobs will spring up wherever business conditions are most conducive for them to spring up and, for all the reasons detailed in the statement on California’s competitiveness, this is not going to be in our state.

What we can do, however, is to use the proceeds of cap-and-trade to make it easier to hire a worker in California. Instead of subsidies to the fast train, or to selected businesses, the proceeds of cap-and-trade should go to fund a greater earned-income tax credit under California state law. The result would be a boost in California employment, perhaps not enough to offset the brake on California employment from the cost of having to buy global-warming certificates, but at least something to offset that cost.