VentureBeat

Turns out, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, and other business folks helped tipped the balance on the landmark global warming bill passed last week.

The bill, AB 32, mandates that California reduce global warming emissions by 25 percent — to 1990 levels — by the year 2020. Major carbon-emitting industries will be forced to report emissions to the state Air Resources Board.

California Assembly Member Pavley, co-author of AB 32, apparently told the group, which also included Amy Christensen, of Google and Felix Kramer of CalCars (see his VentureBeat “contributor” column today), that their press conference a few weeks ago had helped tipped the scales. By arguing the legislation will help California’s economy, the group (pictured above) produced media coverage depicting California’s business community as divided on the legislation’s economic benefits — and thus, making it more than simply a battle between business and environmentalists. The Environmental Entrepreneurs group, based here in San Francisco, held a total of 124 individual meetings with members of the legislature, plus multiple other meetings — not to mention organizing letter and phone campaigns.

Why do we care? We’ve mentioned before California’s significant role in influencing global policy on the environment. Don’t want to overstate the point, nor do we want to overstate the role of this one group, but this latest example suggests how a few business leaders here in Silicon Valley can potentially have a very large impact on world policy by driving up to Sacramento and trying to move the needle a little bit.

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Tags: Andy-Jagoe, co:calcars, Environmental+Entrepreneurs, global-warming, inv:kleiner-perkins, people:felix-kramer, people:john-doerr