Mostly, when Jerry Brown was Governor of California, his plan for going off coal was to switch to natural gas, not renewables. Environmentalists complained bitterly about this policy, and Brown complained bitterly about environmentalists. Gov. Newsom still needs to learn more about where we are now.
California Gov. Jerry Brown Was a Climate Leader, but His Vision Had a Fatal Flaw
Too much oil and gas, of which more below. But that time should be over, and now hundreds of local officials are calling on Gov. Newsom to move more aggressively on keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
With Australians reeling from apocalyptic fires and California’s increasingly deadly fire season stoked by the looming climate crisis, a bipartisan group of elected officials across the state will stand in solidarity with the people of Australia and urge Governor Newsom to take emergency action at a press conference on the south steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento tomorrow at 11 a.m., according to a press advisory from Elected Officials to Protect California:
“The bipartisan group of mayors, county supervisors, and local elected officials will ask Governor Gavin Newsom to “show love for California” and enact a comprehensive Climate Emergency Plan to phase out the production and burning of oil and gas in California. Fossil fuel production drives the climate crisis and kills 12,000 Californians each year.
Well, we don't know where this proposal is going to go yet. But we can review how we got here, and what other climate measures California under Newsom is implementing or proposing.
EOPCA Letter
On Valentine’s Day in Sacramento, the officials [delivered] their letter to Governor Newsom signed by more than 300 local elected officials from 49 counties, including 74 mayors, and highlight policies local governments are enacting to phase out fossil fuel production and burning. They will urge Governor Newsom to show his love for California by acting immediately to protect it from the climate crisis.
According to Jane Fonda, on February 5, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti agreed to three points that are also the EOPCA goals during a phone conversation with two witnesses. She made the announcement at her climate rally in Los Angeles February 7.
Here is the full text of the letter.
We, the undersigned elected officials, are deeply concerned about the immediate and long-term harms to the people we represent from climate change and pollution caused by the extraction, processing, and burning of fossil fuels.
California has made great progress by committing our electricity sector to be carbon-neutral by 2045 and supporting the Paris Agreement. We appreciate that you have made addressing climate change a priority of your administration. You have rightly said, “we must map out longer-term strategies…for California’s energy future, to ensure that the cost of climate change doesn’t fall on those least able to afford it.”
The science is clear that phasing out fossil fuel production is urgently needed to address climate change and protect public health. It is imperative that California issue no new permits and establish public health setbacks for existing oil and gas drilling. Production of oil and gas is a significant contributor to California’s greenhouse gas emissions.1,2 Yet California remains a top oil-producing state, and three-quarters of oil produced here is as climate-damaging as Canada’s tar sands crude oil.3 The disastrous consequences of fossil fuel production and burning from air pollution alone — not including escalating harms from droughts, fires, mudslides, storms, and sea level rise — already cost Californians more than 12,000 lives and $100 billion dollars annually.4
Unfortunately, the worst costs of fossil fuels are falling on Californians least able to afford them, exacerbating environmental injustices. Nearly 8,500 active California oil and gas wells are located within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, and hospitals,5 where, according to the California Council on Science and Technology, exposure to toxic air contaminants and other pollution caused by oil and gas wells is a significant threat to public health.6 These harms disproportionately impact people of color and economically disadvantaged communities.7 Between 2011 and 2018, of the more than 21,000 new oil and gas wells permitted by the state, 76 percent are located in communities with above-average poverty rates for California, and 67 percent are located in communities of color.8
These harms are a bad deal for Californians. The oil and gas industry contributes less than 0.9 percent of California’s GDP and 0.2 percent of jobs,9,10 whereas transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and expanding electrification is a net job creator.11,12
As governor of California, you have a historic opportunity to lead our nation and the world on a pivotal path away from fossil fuels. Recognizing that we are in a climate emergency, as you have acknowledged, and given the grave public health and environmental justice consequences of fossil fuel production in California, we respectfully urge you to make a new statewide commitment and lay out a plan to achieve the following:
- End the issuance of permits for new fossil fuel projects, including permits for new oil and gas wells, infrastructure for fossil fuels, and petrochemical projects in California.
- Design a swift, managed decline of all fossil fuel production, starting with a 2,500-foot human health and safety buffer zone around all homes, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, and farms to protect public health and address the severe environmental injustice of production in low-income communities and communities of color.
- Commit the state to 100% clean, renewable energy in all sectors, starting with significant investments in disadvantaged communities and areas that are already suffering the most from the worst impacts of fossil fuel extraction and climate change.
Phasing out fossil fuel production is paramount to addressing climate change, and will make California healthier and safer. It will also create hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the state as we increase investment in renewable energy, clean vehicles and buildings, energy efficiency, public transportation, and other innovative solutions.4,12 We must include a just transition for fossil fuel workers to help build the clean energy economy of tomorrow, reducing pollution and expanding opportunity for all.
We look to you to provide the leadership we need for a safe, healthy, and prosperous California.
Respectfully,
[signatures]
You can sign on to this petition at the EOPCA home page (link above).
Join us in urging Governor Newsom to protect our public health and climate by phasing out oil and gas drilling in California.
308 Signatories
From 49 Counties
Gov. Brown
Continuing from the first link above,
California — the world’s sixth-largest economy — has the country’s most ambitious climate policies by a mile, but it is also among the most prolific oil and gas producers in the U.S.
Brown signed two bills to block offshore drilling in federal waters off California’s coast. A few days later, he signed another bill mandating that the state’s electricity sector run 60 percent on renewables by 2030 and 100 percent on zero-carbon energy by 2045. He also issued an executive order directing California’s whole economy to go carbon neutral by 2045, and greenhouse gas negative after that, removing pollutants from industrial activities. The state has had a cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions in place since 2012, and it’s fighting the White House in the courts to hold onto its ambitious low-carbon fuel standards. In July, California met its target of getting emissions below 1990 levels — four years early.
Emissions reductions measures generally fall into two broad buckets: supply-side policies, which deal with the production of energy, and demand-side policies dealing with its consumption. In the climate context, those words mean something slightly different than in introductory economics textbooks. Supply refers quite literally to the supply of fossil fuels, and so-called restrictive supply-side, or RSS, policies limit emissions at their source in wells, mines, and refineries through regulatory measures such as fracking bans. RSS policies also phase out policies that encourage coal, oil, and gas development, like fossil fuel subsidies. Supply-side policies support the development of clean energy with government investments in green infrastructure projects, subsidies for renewable energy, and research and development into new technology.
Demand-side policies, meanwhile, help to make and shape markets for things like solar and wind power and electric cars, discouraging consumers from buying dirty fuels while encouraging them to buy cleaner ones. That includes anything from carbon pricing to renewable portfolio standards to government procurement policies.
In the U.S. and abroad, RSS action has — bizarrely — been something of a taboo for most everyone except climate and environmental justice groups, who have been calling for years to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Here are DK Diaries on earlier efforts to get Brown on board.
50+ Bay Area Officials Call on Gov. Brown to Phase Out Oil and Gas Production in California
Gov. Newsom
Sept 24, 2019
“Protesters on both coasts have an idea: calling on Newsom to halt fracking and new drilling, a demand that former Gov. Jerry Brown fended off throughout his environmentally groundbreaking tenure. The dream for environmentalists and scores of elected officials is that Newsom flexes his executive muscle to cut back fossil fuel production — if not an outright extraction ban, then perhaps more stringent requirements that wells be a certain distance from homes and schools (as would have been required by a bill whose death this year was a triumph for both the energy industry and labor).”
Gavin Newsom: California's Ambitious Climate Policies
Governor directs Department of Finance to create a Climate Investment Framework to leverage the state’s $700 billion CalPERS, CalSTRS and UC Retirement Program portfolio to drive investment toward carbon-neutral technologies
Governor Newsom also signs legislation strengthening the state’s emissions standards and establishing the nation’s first “smog check” for diesel trucks
Moving away from internal combustion engines is critical to reduce carbon emissions and to address major pollution issues across the state, especially in the Central Valley and Inland Empire. Through the executive order, the Governor directs CARB to push automakers to produce even more clean vehicles, and to find ways for more Californians to purchase these vehicles on the new and used markets. CARB is tasked with developing new grant criteria for clean vehicle programs to encourage manufacturers to produce clean, affordable cars and propose new strategies to increase demand in the primary and secondary markets for zero emission vehicles. Finally, CARB shall strengthen existing or adopt new regulations to achieve greenhouse gas reductions within the transportation sector.
Gov. Gavin Newsom blasts Trump at New York climate event: ‘I’m absolutely humiliated’
Sep 23, 2019 —Gov. Gavin Newsom sharply criticized President Trump in front of foreign leaders Monday, using his first appearance on the international environmental stage to highlight how California is addressing climate change, in contrast to the federal government.
“I don’t know what the hell happened to this country that we have a president that we do today on this issue,” Newsom said to applause at the opening ceremony for Climate Week in New York. “Because it’s a damn shame. It really is. I’m not a little embarrassed about it — I’m absolutely humiliated by what’s going on.”
But to some, Newsom needs to do much more than Brown when it comes to fossil fuels.
Nearly two dozen protesters stood outside the Monday morning event and demanded the governor ban fracking and oil drilling in the state. Newsom said his legal advisors believe he cannot ban fracking solely through executive order and that the California Legislature would have to approve such an action.
California pension, road funds tapped for climate change
Jan 17, 2019 — California’s new governor started his term with gusto this month, presenting a set of policy proposals that should improve the state’s chances of hitting its ambitious climate targets. Governor Gavin Newsom’s ideas for squelching out tailpipe emissions and absorbing carbon in farmlands has observers feeling a little more hopeful that California can zero out its greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 as ordered by the previous governor, Jerry Brown.
At one of his first press conferences as governor last week, Newsom seemed to revel in the wonky details as he laid out his proposed $209 billion budget. He strode back and forth in front of reporters, talking into a lapel mic and flicking up images of pie charts and bar graphs on a screen behind him for nearly two hours.
California Gov. Gavin Newson budget focuses on climate
Jan 10, 2020 —Contending that California needs to better encourage small players with ideas to address the climate crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to include a $1 billion revolving loan program in his new budget Friday to seed recycling, low-carbon transportation and climate-smart agriculture projects, according to a summary document obtained by CalMatters.
The Climate Catalyst Revolving Loan Fund, which would grow over four years, would offer low-interest lending to small businesses and organizations that have green ideas but may not be established or connected enough to compete for venture capital funding.
California analysts urge lawmakers: reject Gov. Newsom's $1 billion climate loan proposal
Dec 11, 2019 - California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Quebec Premier François Legault aren’t national leaders, and they’ll be meeting not in Washington or Ottawa but in Sacramento — the California capital that has championed states defiantly going their own way on climate change, the Trump administration’s opposition notwithstanding.
California’s leaders often fancy themselves a sovereign nation-within-a-nation, and they’ve spent the last decade-plus passing increasingly ambitious policies to curb emissions — including a workaround in the face of federal inaction: subnational climate pacts reached with other governments.
Meanwhile, the long-restive province of Quebec has worked for years to establish itself as a climate change-fighting leader within the Canadian federation. For Quebec, agreeing to link its cap-and-trade programs with California's in 2014 was a way for the province to meet its emissions targets and encourage other jurisdictions to join them.
But President Donald Trump has consistently chafed at — and sought to curtail — California's attempts to forge its own path. His administration sued to invalidate the climate pact in October, arguing that California was illegally seizing foreign policy powers that belong to the federal government.