Gov. Gavin Newsom this week responded to the latest efforts by the Trump administration that Californis says will “deny decades of scientific research and turn back the clock on life-saving policies that protect public health.”
The U.S. EPA announced it is rolling back decades-old emissions standards for cars and trucks and proposing new rules that reverse the “endangerment finding.”
This is the basis for federal actions to curb planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane. The EPA also announced plans to shut down a key scientific research office.
California is taking action to protect against harmful climate pollutants, including methane. Earlier this year, the state launched a satellite project to detect and reduce dangerous methane leaks.
In California, pollution is down and the economy is up, the governor’s office reported Greenhouse gas emissions in California are down 20% since 2000 – even as the state’s GDP increased 78% in that same time period.
The state also continues to set clean energy records. California was powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023, the latest year for which data is available – the largest economy in the world to achieve this level of clean energy. The state has run on 100% clean electricity for some part of the day almost every day this year.
Since the beginning of the Newsom Administration, battery storage is up to over 15,000 megawatts – a 1,900%+ increase, and over 25,000 megawatts of new resources have been added to the electric grid.
As co-chair of the U.S. Climate Alliance, Newsom issued the following statement with Wisconsin Gov.Tony Evers:
“Americans deserve the truth from their federal government about the climate crisis. No amount of burying research or firing scientists will change the facts: Greenhouse gas pollution causes climate change and endangers our health and welfare — period.
“From devastating floods to extreme heat to catastrophic wildfire, Americans are seeing the deadly impacts of climate change with their own eyes and we won’t be deceived by the Trump administration’s reckless abandonment of science and the law.”
This seems pretty much identical to the issue of transgendered individuals playing women’s and girl’s sports. The head of the civil rights division of the DOJ during the last year of the Obama Administration wrote a “Dear Colleague” letter suggesting that the word “sex” in Title IX (1972 federal law) should be interpreted to mean “gender”. Not every state’s education department agreed with that interpretation, but for those that did, that’s where the idea of biological men playing women’s sports came from.
Here, the EPA press release refers to the “2009 Endangerment Finding” (not “decades-old”, btw). Apparently the issue is whether the word “endanger” in the National Environmental Policy Act (1969 federal law) really meant driving an internal combustion vehicle to work, burping, farting, or respiring.
In both instances, the Obama Administration chose to interpret a single word in a decades-old law one way and the current Trump Administration chose another. Anyone who disagrees really ought to propose clarifying legislation and see how it goes.