The International Relations of California

If California were a country, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. Its population is greater than countries like Poland and Canada.

So what happens in California can very much impact the rest of the world. And one fairly direct manifestation of California’s global relevance is in the state’s approach to climate change. Earlier this summer, California revamped its Cap-and-Trade program. This is a policy innovation intended to curb emissions by creating a market around greenhouse gasses like carbon. Companies can buy and sell permits to each other to release set amounts of greenhouse gasses.

That’s one way California is having a global impact. There are others as well. On the line with me to discuss California’s global impact is California State Senator Ben Allen. Senator Allen represents about 1 million people in communities around Los Angeles and he has been in the State Senate since 2014. We discuss California’s approach to climate change, and also some strategies that Senator Allen and his colleagues are employing to blunt some of the effects of the federal government’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. We also discuss some other issues of transnational concern, like ensuring the eduction of immigrant children is not interrupted should they the get deported.

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