If the people President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to lead federal agencies are to be believed, it could be a tough four years for states fighting to transition away from fossil fuels. Some of the nominees have questioned human-caused climate change, while others see the notion as a sinister plot by left-wing ideologues.
Either way, the solution put forward in policy blueprints for the incoming administration is a purge of federal officials on the front lines of the climate battle.
As it did during Trump’s first term, California is positioning itself as a legal bulwark against any efforts to slow the state’s gameplan for reining in the fossil fuel industry and charting a path to a green future.
Already, the state is suing the oil and gas industry for allegedly covering up evidence of fossil fuels’ role in heating the atmosphere, and next year it is positioned to implement laws forcing large companies to disclose their emissions and exposure to climate disasters. At the same time, it’s pursuing a decades-long plan to stop emitting climate-warming pollution.
But if California intends to be a national leader in “Trump-proofing” states, it will have to prove that such actions are politically feasible, say advocates and state lawmakers.
One glaring challenge continues to be the high cost of energy for millions of residents. The state’s climate plan depends on expanding its grid while simultaneously increasing renewable energy sources. Another issue is how much California will be able to cut emissions as the federal government likely strips away its ability to promote electric vehicles with clean air rules, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed to offer state tax credits.
Yet over the last two years, the governor has chipped away billions of dollars from his own climate agenda budget — partly on the assumption that those cuts would be backfilled by federal dollars, money that the new Trump administration will likely be unwilling to spend. Newsom’s staff did not respond to a request for an interview.
Science Skeptics Ran Trump’s First EPA
This year has been the Earth’s hottest on record, the result of greenhouse gas emissions trapping heat in the atmosphere. The vast majority of those emissions come from burning coal, oil and natural gas.
Scientists using computer models to determine how global weather behaves at different temperature baselines found at least 554 extreme events, including heat waves, storms and flooding, were more severe or frequent because of climate change, according to an analysis of 612 studies by Carbon Brief. In California, scientists have found links between climate change and extreme heat, more intense wildfires and flooding from atmospheric rivers.
U.S. emissions have fallen since 2007 due to recessions, the pandemic and, more significantly, the shuttering of coal power plants. Those emissions fell during Trump’s term as well, despite his decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord (an agreement endorsed by the majority of the world’s nations to limit global warming) and to revoke emissions rules for power plants and oil and gas.
But that decline has now slowed, and the president-elect has nominated climate doubters and skeptics of environmental science to leadership roles in his administration. During his first term, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency removed a website dedicated to climate change and even references to the term “climate change” disappeared from other agency websites. The agency also challenged long-standing scientific principles.
In EPA documents released in 2019 assessing scientific studies on the effects of PM2.5, an air pollutant found in wildfire smoke and car exhaust, a panel headed by a longtime consultant for tobacco and various polluting industries wrote that EPA scientists provided “inadequate evidence” that the pollutant harmed human health.
The federal government has regulated PM2.5 as a hazardous pollutant since the Nixon administration. Air basins in the San Joaquin Valley, San Francisco and Los Angeles are among the most polluted by the toxin.
Uncertainty is a normal aspect of scientific inquiry, but it was overemphasized at Trump’s EPA, said Dan Costa, who led the agency’s Office of Research and Development for nine years.
“It was unprecedented and an attempt to bring down the science process,” said Costa, who started his EPA career under President Reagan. By way of example, he cited the tobacco industry’s playbook of manufacturing uncertainty by “dissecting every method and disputing every conclusion.”
Under Newsom, California Has Held Industries Accountable for Climate Effects
Like Trump, oil and gas companies have sowed uncertainty about climate change, as outlined in California’s lawsuit against major companies for allegedly covering up evidence that their products are heating the atmosphere.
“[E]mphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusion regarding the potential enhanced Greenhouse effect,” wrote an Exxon public affairs manager in an internal memo from 1988, as cited in the state’s legal complaint.
The suit, which seeks monetary damages and a jury trial, is one way the state has tried to shape the agenda on climate beyond its borders.
Other measures include a pair of new laws, currently in litigation, that would force billion-dollar companies in the state to disclose their annual emissions, and their businesses’ vulnerabilities to climate change-charged catastrophe, respectively. Similar requirements were announced at the federal level by the Securities and Exchange Commission in March, requirements the new Trump administration is expected to shelve.
The federal government could also try to scrap California’s emissions reporting rules, said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who wrote the bill that became law. “We will certainly fight them every step of the way,” Wiener told Capital & Main.
Such defiance could serve as a model for other states that have a history of following California’s lead. Washington state implemented a low carbon vehicle fuels program emulating the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, while five others — Maryland, North Carolina, Minnesota, Utah and Arizona — partnered with California to form a citizens corps to increase urban green spaces and undertake other climate actions.
State climate action could be popular. A 2023 Pew Research Center national survey of 10,329 people found that most respondents supported prioritizing renewable energy over fossil fuels and international efforts to reduce the effects of climate change.
California Climate Agenda Threatened by Trump, High Costs
But California faces challenges in meeting its own climate ambitions. The state must cut emissions at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. It is far off track, and will need to reduce pollution at a “much higher” rate to succeed, according to an analysis of state data by the California Green Innovation Index.
One bright spot is that emissions from passenger cars and trucks, the largest source of the state’s emissions, fell by 22% from 2006 to 2022. Yet this progress is most at risk under the Trump administration, the report noted.
The president-elect is all but certain to once again bar California from setting its own clean air rules for cars, a key plank of the state’s goal to stop emitting greenhouse gases by 2045 in part by ending sales of new gasoline-powered cars. Newsom is pressing the EPA to re-approve waivers that have allowed the state to set stricter-than-federal vehicle pollution standards before Jan. 20, the date when Trump is sworn into office.
“On vehicles, I think [the Trump] administration will be quite active in what California wants to do,” said Alexandra Klass, an environmental law professor at the University of Michigan. In late November, Newsom said California would be “restarting” its tax credit for electric vehicles if the federal one goes away, pulling from the state’s cap and trade funds.
That leaves California’s power sector as the largest in which the state exerts control of emissions. State law says retail electricity sales must come from a rising percentage of non-global warming sources, like solar and wind, until the grid is 100% renewable power by midcentury. At the same time, the state’s energy transition depends on switching buildings and appliances such as stoves and water heaters from natural gas to electricity.
The hardest grid problem to navigate has little to do with the federal government.
Electricity rates charged by utilities have soared over the last 10 years. In an effort to bring down rates, the governor in October ordered the Public Utilities Commission to trim funding for clean air programs and transmission line repairs for wildfire mitigation.
Conservatives have seized on energy costs as a liability for Newsom and the Democrats. The pro-Trump America First Policy Institute pinned high electricity costs on California’s “allegiance to costly and unreliable green energy mandates,” not the utility companies themselves, whose habit of raising rates wasn’t targeted by Newsom’s order.
And a lobbying group representing oil companies seized on high energy bills and gasoline costs earlier this year. The Western States Petroleum Association, which has so far spent $14.37 million on lobbying in 2024, failed to stop new laws to plug oil wells but beat back a bill to make oil companies pay for climate damage.
As political pressures mount from energy costs, the climate crisis and the return of Trump, some climate advocates want the governor to take a stronger stand.
They point to his shepherding of a $54 billion package of climate actions in 2022, including a ban on oil wells near homes. But subsequent budget cuts and industry pushback have weakened some of its strongest aspects. Ryan Schleeter, communications director at the California Climate Center, said the governor has been “missing” from important climate fights the last two years.
“We just need [Newsom] back in the game, putting skin in the game to move forward on climate policy and wielding his power to do that,” he said.
