Standing on stage at USC recently, a fired-up Jerry Brown told his college-aged audience that “green jobs” are California’s future.

“We don’t need Saudi Arabian oil or Texas gas,” he said, speaking to a crowd hyped up in anticipation of President Obama’s appearance. “We have California sun.”

Throughout the campaign, Brown has emphasized green jobs as a key factor in jump-starting California’s sluggish economy. Whitman has voiced support for renewable energy jobs but has also cautioned the sector is a tiny fraction of California’s economy and must not be developed at the expense of other industries.

Brown has railed against Proposition 23, the oil-funded initiative that would effectively halt the state’s landmark global warming law, known as AB 32. The measure “would deal a crippling blow to California’s pioneering efforts to control greenhouse gases and build a clean energy economy,” Brown says in his environment plan.

Brown also proposes appointing a clean energy jobs czar and supports a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco "as a clean, fast, accessible alternative to air transportation and long in-state automobile trips."

While the environment issue occupies one page in Republican Meg Whitman’s 46-page policy agenda [PDF] and is mentioned only briefly in her jobs plan, it is a key part of Brown’s platform.

Whitman delayed taking a position on Prop. 23 for weeks, finally stating that while she opposes the initiative – which would stall implementation of AB 32 until unemployment steadies below 5.5 percent for a year – she wants to postpone the law for one year. This would give her an opportunity to “fix” the bill, she said, which she has labeled a “job killer.”

At a recent campaign stop at a Los Angeles diner, Whitman explained:

"So I want to freeze the law, the implementation of the law, and fix it. And here’s what I want to do: Can we change the implementation schedule? Can we change some of the way that we’re going to implement this law so it doesn’t hurt businesses so immediately, like trucking or packaging or manufacturing? But I believe that there is a way to protect the 3 percent of the jobs that are green jobs while we don’t hurt the other 97 percent of the economy."

In her policy agenda, Whitman says environmental protection and clean energy innovation must be balanced with “the need to support good-paying jobs in California.”

Like her opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown, Whitman advocates tapping clean energy sources, like solar and wind, to decrease dependence on fossil fuels. She and Brown also agree that new transmission lines must be a priority and have both said they are willing to consider nuclear energy options. Although Whitman has opposed offshore drilling since the BP oil spill, she does not rule it out completely, saying in her policy agenda that she is against it unless safer drilling technologies can be proven. Brown is opposed to offshore drilling.

Asked during a primary debate whether she believes global warming is manmade, Whitman said: “I do think the scientists say that the earth is getting warmer. Whether it is manmade or not, I don't know. I'm not a scientist."