California
What do Trump’s environmental rollbacks mean for California?
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he will pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, streamline permitting for oil and gas drilling and revoke electric vehicle rules.
The claims, which came in his inaugural address and in statements from the White House, are a replay of actions Trump took to roll back environmental rules during his first term from 2017 to 2021.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said Monday. “America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it… we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers.”
But many of Trump’s efforts to rewrite environmental laws during his first term were overturned by courts or reversed by President Biden after he took office four years ago. As with Trump’s first term, experts are expecting California and other Democratic states to continue now to push to meet the Paris Agreement’s voluntary targets — which aimed to keep the planet from warming more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels — and take other steps to maintain their state environmental laws.
“I think there is going to be more rhetoric about California than impact on California,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University. “California has very strong decarbonization policies and state environmental policies. The concern is all the other states. California can’t tackle climate change alone. But California will use the resources we have to move its targets forward.”
In 2017, former Gov. Jerry Brown helped launch the U.S. Climate Alliance, an organization of states that agreed to work toward the Paris targets by expanding renewable energy, electric vehicles and other areas. Today there are 24 states in the group representing 55% of the U.S. population, including California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and most of the New England states.
“We’ve filled the void left by the federal government before and Americans can be sure, we’ll do it again,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, on Friday.
Trump is likely to clash with California on the environment in five main areas: Vehicle emissions, offshore oil drilling, offshore wind energy, water policy and federal aid for wildfires and other natural disasters.
When he was president the first time, Trump denied California permission under the federal Clean Air Act to set pollution standards for cars and trucks that are tougher than national standards, something it has done since the 1960s. Trump also attempted to revoke the state’s ability to set tougher standards at all for cars, trains, trucks or any vehicles.
But he failed to achieve long-lasting change. California sued, and the lawsuit was still pending when Biden took office and restored the state’s powers. A month ago, Biden granted a key waiver to allow California to move forward with state rules to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, minivans and pickup trucks starting in 2035. Already, 24% of new vehicle sales in California are electric, with higher percentages in the Bay Area.
After the first clash, California also signed voluntary agreements with five large automakers — Ford, VW, Honda, BMW and Volvo — to adhere to the state’s tailpipe emissions standards through 2026 as a way to ensure consistency when they design and build vehicles.
On offshore oil, Biden signed a sweeping memorandum earlier this month withdrawing all federal waters off California, Oregon and Washington from new offshore oil drilling. Trump said he would overturn it. But Biden used a 1953 law that a federal judge in 2019 ruled cannot be reversed without a vote of Congress. Some Republicans in California, Florida and other coastal states do not support expanding offshore drilling.
On offshore wind, the Trump White House announced Monday that “President Trump’s energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.”
Trump has opposed wind energy for years, ever since the government in Scotland allowed turbines near a golf course he owned. He has claimed without evidence that wind turbines cause cancer and kill whales.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Biden pushed hard to build floating offshore wind turbines 20 miles or more off California’s coast to expand renewable energy. Trump could block new leases. But Biden already approved leases with five companies who have paid the federal treasury $757 million for the rights off Morro Bay and Humboldt County. Proposition 4, approved by voters in November, includes $475 million in state funding to expand ports to help build and deploy wind turbines. But the stock prices of some large wind companies fell after Trump’s win in November.
On disaster aid, Trump threatened to deny it to California during a rally in October over disagreements with the state over forest management and water policy.
“We’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,” Trump said. “It’s not hard to do.”
Newsom and Democratic leaders, along with a few Republicans, like Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim, have said they do not support any conditions being placed on disaster assistance. Trump is scheduled to visit Los Angeles on Friday to tour areas that burned.
“In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership, a shared commitment to facts, and mutual respect,” Newsom said Monday.
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