New York Times
California has long prided itself as an environmental trailblazer. It was the first state to set its own vehicle emission rules and the first to outlaw plastic shopping bags.
In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, went so far as to seek a ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Standing in front of several electric cars, he warned automakers against being on “the wrong side of history.”
So it surprised environmentalists this year when Mr. Newsom and Democratic lawmakers began backtracking on signature green initiatives. They rebuked the state’s coastal preservation commission for regulatory overreach and rolled back the landmark California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA, to address the state’s severe housing shortage.
Then, to environmentalists, came the unthinkable: pushing legislation to keep oil refineries open and make oil drilling easier in California.
“It’s a complete 180,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a lawyer at the Climate Law Institute, part of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity that focuses on protecting endangered species. “It’s become more urgent than ever to rid ourselves of fossil fuels, so it’s really inexplicable why our policymakers in Sacramento are moving the exact opposite way we should be going.”
Even in liberal California, Democrats say they have been stung by their party’s tailspin after last year’s losses in national elections. They understand that voters are frustrated with the high cost of living in California, and they are trying to show that they are doing something about it.
If they gain traction by tilting toward pocketbook issues, even at the expense of long-held environmental orthodoxy, it could provide lessons to Democrats nationally even if it angers activists locally.
Gas prices have long been higher in California than elsewhere — they’re about 45 percent higher than the national average at the moment — but lawmakers are worried that costs could skyrocket if they don’t help the oil industry immediately. And the transition to electric vehicles has not advanced to a point where drivers — or politicians — can ignore prices at the pump.
“Climate leadership is not $10-a-gallon gas — we need California to be an inspiration and not a cautionary tale,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Orange County who chairs the energy committee in the State Assembly. “For decades, there were policymakers and advocates who somehow thought we could set really high goals and wave a magic wand and deliver on them.”
“We are all out of magic wands,” she said.
The modern environmental movement was born in California when an oil spill in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara captured the attention of Americans who were increasingly concerned about how development was harming the natural world around them. The disaster led to the first Earth Day in 1970, when coast-to-coast demonstrations drew a stunning 20 million Americans — one-tenth of the country’s population at the time — and precipitated action at the state and federal levels to safeguard the environment.
Soon after, California enacted the California Environmental Quality Act, which required reviews of new development to address potential environmental impacts. In 1972, voters approved the creation of the California Coastal Commission, a state agency in charge of protecting the seashore and ensuring public beach access. In the years since, California has approved a number of standards for water and air quality, and the state instituted the nation’s first cap-and-trade-programs.
Democrats have long asserted that they can help American consumers and improve the environment all at once. They have promoted the idea that workers in fossil fuel industries can transition to jobs in clean energy. That drivers will ultimately save money by charging their vehicles instead of pumping gas. That homes will become more efficient and need less energy for heating and cooling.
Mr. Newsom, in a State of the State letter he sent to lawmakers last week, still made that case. “In California,” he wrote, “economic growth and environmental protection go hand in hand.”
But for many Democratic state legislators, Mr. Trump’s presidential victory last year was something of a reckoning. After that loss — in which Republicans made gains in California — lawmakers said they had begun to consider whether their priorities were truly in line with voters’ daily concerns, like paying for rent or groceries.
At the end of the legislative session on Saturday, state lawmakers passed a proposal to allow more oil drilling in Kern County, a petroleum-rich region in the Central Valley. The legislation could allow up to 2,000 new oil and gas wells to be drilled in the county per year for 10 years.
Mr. Newsom had previously pledged to end oil drilling in the state by 2045. But after two refineries announced closures, he now says that he must be realistic about ensuring there’s enough fuel to supply California’s needs.
“We are all the beneficiaries of oil and gas. No one is naive about that,” Mr. Newsom said at a recent news conference, noting that he personally flies around the state. “It’s always been about finding a just transition, a pragmatism.”
To environmentalists, however, pragmatism sounds a lot like selling out. Mary Creasman, the chief executive of California Environmental Voters, repeatedly used an expletive to describe how things had gone at the State Capitol this year. More than a dozen pro-environment bills, such as efforts to keep PFAS chemicals out of drinking water and to create a 3,000-acre conservancy near Fresno, stalled in the Legislature this year, she said.
Environmentalists also believed that the catastrophic Los Angeles fires in January, the most expensive climate disaster in United States history, should have been a catalyst to pass climate change bills, not roll back regulations.
“I fear that the things that Newsom is doing and the legislators are doing are rolling us back,” said Kathryn Phillips, a former director of Sierra Club California who worked on many of the state environmental initiatives in place today. “They aren’t pressing to move harder and faster on shifting us out of a dependence on fossil fuels for vehicles and so on, and instead are clearing the way for some things to go back to the way they were.”
Polls show that voters still see environmental issues as a priority. But as their personal budgets are stretched ever more thin, Californians want help reducing the costs of housing, gas and electricity.
Dan Schnur, a political science lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, said that in tough economic times, it’s difficult for voters to think about more abstract priorities that require collective action ahead of their pocketbooks. “A lot of voters care about environmental protection and climate change, but care about their daily cost of living even more,” he said.
The oil legislation was part of a larger package of bills that lawmakers sent to Mr. Newsom last week. One proposal would extend the state’s cap-and-trade program, which sets limits on emissions and requires companies to buy credits if they exceed them. Another bill would allow California to participate in a regional energy grid, which could increase reliability but also increase the share of electricity produced by fossil fuels.
The tonal shift among Democrats seems partly to reflect a growing acceptance that the state’s transition to clean energy hasn’t come as fast as they had once hoped. A vast majority of drivers still rely on gas-powered vehicles and live in sprawling metropolitan areas where they do not regularly take mass transit.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington have made it even harder for Americans to adopt clean technologies. President Trump and House Republicans this year blocked the state from carrying out Mr. Newsom’s prohibition on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in 2035. They also revoked the state’s authority to set its own tailpipe emissions standards. And incentives for purchasing electric vehicles will end this month as a result of Republican legislation.
Republican state lawmakers said they felt some sense of redemption from the Democrats’ approach in California this year. “I have long warned about the dangers of eliminating reliable energy in favor of costly green agendas,” said Shannon Grove, a Republican state senator from Bakersfield whose district includes many of the oil wells that would benefit from the package on the governor’s desk.
Henry Stern, a Democratic state senator from the Los Angeles area who has long been considered an environmental leader, said that the green movement may need to become more pragmatic to ensure its longevity. He marveled at the fact that he was once wrote anti-fracking laws and was now working on legislation to allow more drilling in Kern County.
He believes California has a responsibility to show the nation that climate policies can be smart and cost-saving, in a moment when the Trump administration has attacked clean energy initiatives.
“In California, we can sort of project this perfectionism,” Mr. Stern said. “But we drive more than anyone. So, yeah, we’re complicit, too. We’re a leader in electric vehicles and petroleum consumption, we’re both.”
He recognized that many voters don’t want to be told “that driving a pickup and eating a hamburger is evil.” But he said that many of them would support environmental policies that also resulted in cost savings.
“This whole environmental movement — has it failed? ” he asked. “Or is it evolving into something that can actually be more durable, regardless of politics? The optimist in me likes to think we can actually do more in this moment.”
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.