At least a half-dozen federal agencies have moved to undermine the state’s environmental efforts.
When my editors asked me to write about President Trump and California’s climate policies, I was initially hesitant. Hadn’t I already written that story during Trump’s first term?
It turns out that since returning to office, Trump has gone much further to attack California’s position as a leader in environmental protection, with big implications for other states that follow its lead, as I reported today.
By my count, at least a half-dozen federal agencies have tried to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels and protect its natural resources. In one of the most striking examples, the Interior Department has paid energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars not to build wind farms off the California coast.
There are almost too many examples to list. But here are some other notable actions:
The Energy Department announced $75 million for a new coal export terminal in Oakland that city officials have tried to stop for nearly a decade.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signaled that it could curb the power of the California Coastal Commission, which has been entrusted with protecting the state’s 840-mile shoreline for more than a half-century.
Trump and his Republican allies in Congress blocked California’s effort to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
Trump ordered an oil company to restart a pipeline off Santa Barbara that caused one of the state’s largest oil spills in 2015.
To understand the effects of these moves, I called Jerry Brown, the Democratic former four-term governor of California who made climate change a signature cause. He warned that Trump’s attack on California’s electric vehicle efforts could delay the national transition to cleaner cars because of the state’s market muscle as the world’s fourth-largest economy.
“The automobile companies, of course, are going to have to compete in a world that will be predominantly electric over the next few years, and America will be way behind,” Brown said.
I spoke to another California Democrat, Senator Adam Schiff, while he was at the Lake Tahoe Summit, a conference in Nevada where lawmakers and officials from both parties discussed threats to the lake, which is on the border with California, including climate change, wildfires and invasive species.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
