SACRAMENTO -- California Attorney General Jerry Brown is trying to force the state's largest and fastest-growing county to make reducing global warming part of its growth plan.

Brown filed suit last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court contending that the county's growth blueprint, called the General Plan, did not sufficiently address global-warming counter-measures.

Similar suits were filed days earlier against the General Plan by the Sierra Club, the San Bernardino Valley Audobon Society and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The attorney general alleges that the General Plan's failure to address global warming violated a California law, Assembly Bill 32, passed last year. That law commits state entities to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

County spokesman David Wert told the San Bernardino Sun the plan's environmental review was conducted in 2005. "It's not fair to impose complex and undefined new requirements on a plan...in the works for years," he said.

San Bernardino County's current population of 2 million will rise to 2.5 million by 2030, according a recent Los Angeles Times report. The county is part of a rapidly-growing area east of Los Angeles called the Inland Empire that faces growth challenges in the near future.

Brown told the LA Times that curtailing GHGs was part of a statewide initiative and thus a shared reponsibility. "It's unfortunate it's going to take a lawsuit to get San Bernardino to do what is needed," he said.

But Wert said Assembly Bill 32 isn't much help to parts of California currently trying to plan for future growth. "There are no state guidelines on how to address global warming in the planning process," he told the Sun.

He also disputed to the Times that the county had ignored global warming in its proposals. Wert said the General Plan aimed to reduce traffic and GHG emissions by encouraging development of more public transport and homes near workplaces.

Brown's lawsuit, however, dismisses some of these as "blue sky" measures with no clear sense of means or method.

Other parts of the Inland Empire have also seen their growth plans hit with global-warming suits recently, the Sun reported. Most notable are Banning and Desert Hot Springs in Riverside County.