The governor steps on the gas
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to phase out gasolinepowered vehicles over the next 15 years epitomizes his talent for bold, forwardlooking gestures of debatable practical impact. With warmingaggravated wildfires darkening California’s skies and charring recordbreaking swaths of the state, Newsom’s electric car mandate would move the state in the right direction and could set the pace for much of the country. But his power and will to tackle that and other facets of fossil fuel dependence remain open to question, and climate change is just one of several factors exacerbating the state’s wildfires.
The sheer scope, relative earliness and natural origins of many of the fires burning across the state this year reflect the capacity of a warming climate to make such disasters worse. Newsom’s mandate that all new cars and light trucks be emissionfree by 2035 would push the state further into the lead in an area where it has long been ahead of the country. With transportation accounting for more than 40% of the state’s planetheating emissions, it’s the right goal and, as some major automakers’ embrace of such ambitions has shown, a project that is not just necessary but possible.
The order, however, leaves plenty of time and leeway for the governor and other officials to declare but not reach the zeroemissions goal. Even if officials are determined to follow through, they will likely need federal cooperation that is currently in short supply. The Trump administration reversed the mileage standards state regulators set in concert with the Obama administration and is challenging their longstanding license to set their own emissions rules under the Clean Air Act, underscoring the federal government’s power to make or break California’s efforts to control greenhouse gases.
Another subject of Newsom’s big climate statement this week was in keeping with his penchant for taking both sides of an issue simultaneously. He called on the Legislature to stop permitting hydraulic fracturing, a productive but controversial means of extracting the fossil fuels heating up the atmosphere, even though his administration ended a fracking moratorium and issued dozens of new permits this year.
Newsom’s focus on climate change, albeit wellplaced, has a way of directing the debate toward an area of global and not just state culpability. Along with the U.S. Forest Service, the state bears a greater share of the responsibility for addressing the role of forest mismanagement in making California’s wildfires so ferocious. A recent statefederal agreement made some progress on controlled burns and other mitigation measures, but there’s much more work to do.
The state’s greatest share of responsibility is for the housing policy — or lack thereof — that keeps pushing residents out of cities and suburbs in the Bay Area and Southern California and toward the areas where development and wildland meet and mingle. That puts more people and property in the way of fires, a natural part of the state’s ecosystems even before people began making them warmer and drier.
Housing, as it happens, was also a subject of one of thencandidate Newsom’s attentiongrabbing goals: producing 3.5 million more homes by 2025. Given his and the Legislature’s lack of progress on that score since he took office, it looks well out of reach. Here’s hoping the governor possesses the determination it will take to hit his latest difficult target.