Santa Cruz is not alone. Berkeley and San Francisco, too, have each added environmental experts to their staffs to focus specifically on climate change threats.
Local officials have defended their moves by explaining that they are required by state law to address global warming when updating their general plans. They have taken note of a lawsuit filed in April by the state attorney general against San Bernardino County, which charged that local officials failed to address air quality and global warming issues in developing a new general plan.
These new career opportunities will likely be repeated elsewhere across California as officials implement Gov. Schwarzenegger's new greenhouse gas legislation passed in 2006 that calls for stiff curbs on heat-trapping emissions.That will mean government jobs of all kinds - scientists, researchers, technicians, transportation and land-use specialists, engineers, and teams of regulators and attorneys to enforce the new law.
In the private sector, people are already cashing in on climate change with jobs in the booming renewable energy industry. The state's four ethanol plants will be joined by more than a dozen others that are currently being actively developed not to mention new opportunities in biofuels, solar, wind and geothermal energy.
As the state moves forward on its market-based cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, it will spur additional investment on environmental technology and innovation. Undoubtedly a lot of "green" will change hands in the process between sectors that are carbon soakers with those that are emitters.
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