“Gov. Moonbeam” says Calif. will launch climate satellite

SAN FRANCISCO» California Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday his state plans to launch its “own damn satellite” into orbit to battle climate change.

The man that the late Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko famously dubbed “Gov. Moonbeam” made the announcement at the conclusion of a twoday climate summit he organized in San Francisco.

Brown said state officials will work with the San Franciscobased company Planet Labs to develop a satellite to track climatechange causing pollutants. Brown said the earthimaging company has launched 150 satellites.

“With science still under attack and the climate threat growing, we’re launching our own damn satellite,” he said.

The Democrat, who is leaving office at the end of this year, didn’t announce a launch date or divulge a cost estimate.

Brown’s office said government scientists and staff members will work on the project, but that no state money will be spent directly developing the satellite. Private donations are being made by San Francisco investment banker Richard Lawrence and his wife, Dee Lawrence, along with the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust.

Brown foreshadowed the announcement in a December 2016 speech to the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco a month after President Donald Trump’s election. Trump had threatened to scrap NASA’s climate change funding.

“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” Brown said at the time to cheers and applause from the geophysicists. “We’re going to collect that data.”

He also reminded them that he had floated a simi lar proposal during his first term as governor in the 1970s. Royko, a Chicago SunTimes columnist, gave Brown the “Moonbeam” moniker in 1976. Royko wrote that Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote.”

The name stuck for decades — even after Royko, who died in 1997, apologized and tried to retract it. Brown used to dislike the name, but more recently he has embraced it.

Before Brown’s bold announcement Friday, two prominent Democrats and a Republican mayor criticized Trump for his decision to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate accord.