State’s climate plans get new life
Activists bet on more harmony with Biden
California’s war with Washington over the environment will soon come to an end.
The legal wrangling that sparked 57 environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration — for loosening policies on everything from automobile pollution to pesticide use and salmon conservation — should turn to consensus and cooperation.
Presidentelect Joe Biden has pledged to act quickly to restore and strengthen dozens of protections on public lands, water and wildlife. In addition, California’s efforts to fight climate change will no longer face hurdles put up by the White House, which has downplayed the global threat.
But just how far a Democratic president can push an environmental agenda, and how quickly, is limited in large part by Republicans, who are likely to control the Senate.
Some of the Trump administration’s actions can be undone simply by executive order, like halting the expansion of oil drilling on federal lands. Other changes also can be done without a nod from Congress but require public processes that can take months or even years, like reinstating strict environmental reviews of new projects, such as highways and logging proposals.
Meaningful progress on global warming may be the toughest task. While Biden can put the United States back into the Paris climate agreement, he can’t easily shrink the nation’s carbon footprint and hit the targets of the accord without sweeping initiatives that need Congressional approval. He has the ideas but not the support.
“A lot of Biden’s climate plan is predicated on the ability to spend money,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Working without the full cooperation of Congress limits the ability to get where we need to go on the problem. There’s just no way to pretend otherwise.
“That being said,” Wara added, “Biden can still do a lot during his first term without support from the Senate, if that’s where we end up.”
As it stands, Republicans control the Senate. For Democrats to take over they must win two runoffs for seats in Georgia — those races will occur in January.
California’s environmental offensives have partly blunted the impacts of Trump’s deregulatory moves.
Unlike some other states, California has its own environmental protections, which have provided a backstop to Trump’s biggest rollbacks. The weakening of the Clean Power Plan, which regulates power plant emissions, and the Endangered Species Act, for example, had little direct effect on the state.
Where gaps have existed in California law, state officials have moved aggressively to pass new legislation to offset Trump. California put in place new protections for wetlands when the federal government relaxed water standards, and it phased out chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to brain damage, when Washington announced it was rejecting a proposed ban.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, meanwhile, has challenged policy changes that have broken through California’s defenses as well as those that may be more pertinent to other states but could degrade the nation’s environment as a whole.
Of the more than 50 environmental lawsuits filed against the federal government, the tally suggests the attorney general has been successful in nearly half his cases. Most of the remaining litigation is pending.
Still, many of the federal government’s rollbacks continue to impact the state. The Biden administration, consistent with the presidentelect’s commitments, could pursue a number of strategies that would strengthen California’s environmental protections and hasten the state’s progress on climate change.
They include:
Allowing California to regulate auto emissions:
The Trump administration blocked stronger fueleconomy standards for cars and trucks nationally, reversing one of President Obama’s key policies for curbing planetwarming emissions.
The administration also told California it couldn’t go its own way on automobile emissions and revoked the state’s longstanding authority to establish stricter tailpipe standards, which were followed by the rest of the country.
California could reapply for a waiver to set its own emissions rules once Biden is in charge of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. The presidentelect has said he wants to strengthen the nation’s gasmileage standards, which could mean granting California’s request.
“The vehicle question is central to climate progress in the United States,” Wara said. “It won’t be overnight but there will be progress and milestones.”
Halting oil and gas drilling:
Under Trump, the federal government sought to increase fossil fuel development on both federal lands and waters in California, backtracking on the nation’s efforts to create a climatefriendly economy.
Last year, the U. S. Bureau of Land Management opened nearly 2 million additional acres in California to potential drilling, mostly in Kern and Monterey counties. The first lease sale on federal lands in seven years, near Bakersfield, is scheduled to go forward next month.
The Biden administration, following up on a promise to downsize the oil industry and rein in planetwarming fossil fuels, would likely halt new permits for extraction on federal lands. It could even try to get out of newly agreedupon leases.
Offshore, President Trump has sought to open up more of the nation’s waters to oil rigs, including the California coast, which hasn’t seen a new drilling lease since 1984. The plan, though still on the books, has faced legal challenges, and no new projects have commenced.
“Come inauguration day, there will never be a new lease on federal lands or waters off of California again,” said Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Reducing pumping from the delta:
Federal water managers, under Trump, were given greater leeway to pump water from the SacramentoSan Joaquin River Delta, fulfilling the president’s pledge to deliver more water to California farms. This compromised the amount of water for struggling fish populations, including delta smelt and chinook salmon.
The Biden administration could choose to return to the more protective pumping policies under President Obama. To make longterm changes, the federal government would have to go through the lengthy process of rewriting biological opinions, or rules, that dictate pumping operations, like the Trump administration did. Short term, it could use the discretion allowed under the biological opinions to steer a course more sustainable for wildlife.
“The changes came at tremendous cost to the salmon fishery,” said John McManus, executive director of the trade group Golden Gate Salmon Association. “We hope and are beginning to take steps to see that this is addressed.”
Tightening environmental reviews:
The Trump administration rolled back the National Environmental Policy Act, the landmark law that prevents ecological destruction, in an effort to accelerate approval of projects like highways, power plants and oil pipelines.
While California puts checks on new development, state law doesn’t cover federal lands. As a result, projects including logging and mining in the state’s Forest Service lands and national parks face less environmental review.
The Biden administration could undo the change, but not without initiating what’s likely to be a laborious rulemaking process, followed by lots of litigation.
Cracking down on climate change:
Biden has committed to rejoining the Paris climate agreement, which the United States left at Trump’s directive. And he has laid out an ambitious $ 2 trillion plan to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, which would help win compliance with the accord.
The plan calls for generating electricity without fossil fuels by 2035 and having a completely carbonfree economy by 2050.
While divisions in Congress are likely to stand in the way of Biden’s goals, many believe that progress can be made. Agreements on less partisan issues like infrastructure, stimulus spending and tax breaks could include climate benefits.
“It would be easier, of course, if Biden had the Senate,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at UC Berkeley. “But the Senate does have a way of sensing the mood of the nation. There’s going to be some serious reckoning. ... There’s going to be increasing amounts of senators on the Republican side that ultimately switch over.”
Any climate funding that Biden can secure could go a long way to helping California, whether it’s providing financing for research of green technologies, the state’s highspeed rail line or electric vehicle charging stations.
Additionally, even without Congress, the Biden administration could make sure federal agencies operate in environmentally responsible ways and procure climatefriendly products, like electric vehicle fleets.
“I would expect to see a lot of action there, and that’s not something to shake a stick at,” Wara said. “The U. S. government is so big.”