June 26, 2008 represents a significant step for California’s fight against global warming, as the state’s officials announced a large and ambitious plan for clean cars, pollution reduction and renewable energy solutions.

The efforts will aim a reduction of today’s pollutants levels by ten percent until the year 2020 and also massive investments in the research for new energy technologies.

"This is of tremendous importance, not only for California," Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to Reuters. He added that their actions could represent the motivation needed by other states to get involved in the restoration process.

CARB already has several proposals ready for analysis, and some of them will become laws as soon as 2010, while others a bit later in 2012. The initiatives refer to a series of improvements in the production processes of many of the state’s big polluters, which will include a requirement for appliances and buildings to use less energy, also extract at least a third of their energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar power and for oil companies to make cleaner fuels.

The benefits of such a plan include the reduction of the pollution-related illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis and the investments for finding new energy will also provide new jobs.

The ambitious and visionary initiative comes at about one year and a half away from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s law about the need to reduce the emissions to their 1990 level by the year 2020 and also, just days away from a report released by the on-line journal PLoS One, which signals the dangers that the state’s ecosystem faces because of global warming.