8/31/15
California officially secedes
"California alone cannot tackle the climate change problem," Brown tells U.S. News & World Report. "It requires all the major countries of the world."
Q&A: Golden State Governor Talks Global Warming
Jerry Brown, the man once known as 'Gov. Moonbeam,' has since become an unofficial ambassador on stopping climate change.
By Alan Neuhauser Aug. 31, 2015 | 4:45 p.m. EDT + More
Watch out, troglodytes.
California Gov. Jerry Brown – a Democrat who has twice likened those who question or deny the threat of global warming to cave menthis summer, including once during a summit at the Vatican – is bearing down on a pair of bills that would make the state a world leader in efforts to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
The measures aim for an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050 from levels in 1990 – both by requiring cars and trucks to double their fuel efficiency and by mandating the state generate half its electricity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar in the next 15 years.
Global warming is no mere abstraction for The Golden State, which ranks among the world's top economies and agricultural centers. A four-year drought – made worse by climate change, research shows – is strangling California's farms, rivers, water supplies and world-famous ski resorts, and two firefighters have been killed battling wildfires in dry forests that have been turned into tinder boxes.
Once dismissed by columnists and political opponents as "Gov. Moonbeam," Brown now is seen as a sort of ambassador on climate change, speaking at a July summit in Toronto as well as at that gathering at the Vatican. He's similarly turned his view outward beyond the state's borders.
"California alone cannot tackle the climate change problem," Brown tells U.S. News & World Report. "It requires all the major countries of the world. And to the extent nation-states are dilatory in meeting the necessary climate goals, sub-national jurisdictions – states and provinces – could be the catalysts to accelerate the policy changes that are desperately needed."
Brown spoke with U.S. News by phone in August, a few days after the first Republican presidential debate, about global warming, the GOP field and the role states can play in spurring global action on climate change???. Excerpts:
What was the moment that it was brought home for you, that the drought and wildfires in California are likely being caused by or at least made worse by climate change?
Anyone who is involved in the state government in California will inevitably come across and have to deal with serious environmental policies. This has been going on a long time. So from my point of view, there's not one moment – if there was a moment, it was before I even ran for governor, reading about and hearing about the new topic of environment and Earth Day and Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring." Those were the first occasions that I had the chance to think in any serious way about the environment and what human activity was doing to it.
I am very well aware that this is a complicated science and some are more alarmed than others. It's not about me being governor and showing up and saying, 'There's a lot of fires, it must be climate change.' I'm really looking to what scientists have written about it. And whatever those rather esoteric studies suggest, we know that a warmer planet will have these characteristics. If it isn't in this fire, it'll be next year or the year after, and it will get worse and worse as the buildup of greenhouse gases becomes a bigger part of the atmospheric chemistry in which we live.
You see these national-level politicians, especially figures now running for president, often questioning or denying these studies that you describe. As someone who is confronting and dealing with these issues every day – drought, wildfires – what goes through your mind when you see and hear the argument that climate change doesn't exist or that the human role is up for debate, especially when it's from people who might be in the Oval Office?
What goes through my mind? Well, I can't exactly tell you what went through my mind at the last debate, what I really think.
The whole matter of climate change, how it's being perceived at the national level, the world level, by the Republicans, by other politicians – that's really part of the national, political and perhaps cultural unfolding of our time. There isn't that much of a connection between the work of a governor dealing with disasters such as fires, and the more abstract debate of what policies should be adapted to get serious about climate change.
That doesn't make the national debate any less important. There are actions that can result in reducing dangerous air pollution – by reducing, for example, black soot. That's a greenhouse gas, and it's more powerful, although more short-lived, than CO2. And reducing it protects human health while at the same time [reducing] the greenhouse gas buildup, and therefore gives us more time to introduce all the different policies needed to actually decarbonize the economy.
When you spoke at the Vatican in July, you strongly argued for taking steps to stop climate change. How do you see your role in addressing global warming, whether within the state or on a broader level?
California is laying out a path that others can follow. We are certainly testing whether or not building energy efficiency, electric car mandates, renewable energy mandates, cap and trade, whether any of that retards economic growth. And the fact is California's economy is growing faster than the national average, both in terms of gross domestic product and in terms of job creation.
One role California can play is as a proving ground for the proposition that taking action to reduce greenhouse gases is good for the economy, good for jobs, good for people's health, and certainly good for the overall environment.
A lot of these measures you describe are leading other states in the nation – would you say California is similarly on the front lines of dealing with the effects of climate change in the United States?
Front lines – there will be differential impacts, on the Amazon or the polar regions or the Southwest of the United States.
Los Angeles had a very severe smog problem for decades. And in response to that, California developed initiatives to reduce ozone, carbon monoxide and other pollutants, and in doing so, developed within the state – among the people themselves and among government officials – a widespread sensitivity to the importance of air pollution and protecting the environment. That fed very naturally into the more difficult case of climate change, wherein the effects are not perceived in real time so much.
Climate change, most of the disruption is coming later, and the actions that have to be taken have to be taken without having experienced the direct negative impacts. That's not to say that the fire season isn't several months longer and more dangerous and more expensive. But the long-lived, very negative consequences of climate change are far more severe than conventional air pollution. The most serious impacts are delayed, and that's why it's completely unique.
It's also unique in that no one region – whether it be California or the United States or China – can by themselves stop global warming. A pound of greenhouse gas in Calcutta or Los Angeles has the same impact, whereas Los Angeles can clean up its pollution and leave Calcutta and Beijing very polluted. While we have to take local action, the measurement of our success is done on a global basis, and that's what makes it different than normal pollution-fighting.
But certainly, dealing with our smog set up California to be an early and effective leader when it comes to climate change
What confidence do you have that the candidates, and specifically the Republican candidates, will take action that will mitigate climate change?
There's such a large number of them, I wouldn't want to speculate on something as general as the Republican candidates. But we have to notice that almost no Republican of any note is discussing climate change in a manner that would lead people to want to do something about it. There will be changes in that. But those changes have not yet occurred.
What are your goals for addressing climate change? What do you see as your role going forward?
I have very specific goals – I've set them out for California: to reduce petroleum products for the transportation sector by 50 percent, to dramatically increase our building energy-efficiency – which is already the most efficient in the country – and, thirdly, to increase from the current 25 percent renewable energy in the electricity sector to 50 percent. That's all over a 15-year period.
Beyond that, I'm working to enlist other states and provinces and countries around the world to join our Under 2 Memorandum that commits states and provinces and nations that sign up to achieving a climate regime where the temperature doesn't go above 2 degrees centigrade from what it was at the beginning of the industrial age, or 2 tons of greenhouse gases per person. And those are very ambitious goals.
Because of California's long experience in this general area, we are joining with the states of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and dozens of others around the world. So that's also a part, because it's pretty clear, it's just plain true, that California alone cannot tackle the climate change problem.
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