Newsom’s climate change waffling
The fight against climate change consistently ranks as the single top priority for California voters. And yet we can be an admittedly fickle bunch when it comes to actually doing something about it.
Take lanes of traffic from cars and give them to greener transit options like bikes and buses? Californians are going to give you a fight. Build dense housing near jobs in the vicinity of singlefamily neighborhoods to save workers from long commutes? Expect blood in the streets.
Ban fracking and oil drilling our backyards, on the other hand? Now that’s something most Californians can get behind.
And so it has been beyond perplexing to watch Gov. Newsom, as he stares down the barrel of a recall effort, waffle on this issue in recent weeks. Last year, Newsom was praised for calling on the California Legislature to send a bill to his
desk banning the issuance of new fracking permits by 2024. Yet when Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, and Sen. Monique Limón, DSanta Barbara, delivered something even more ambitious — a ban on new permits by 2022 and an outright end to fracking by 2027 — Newsom balked, refusing to put his political muscle behind the bill. Days later, facing political heat, Newsom announced his intention to keep to his original promise by going around the Legislature to ban new fracking permits by 2024. He also went one step further, saying he’s going to ban oil drilling, too.
By 2045.
For context here, Joe Biden has stated his goal is to zero out American carbon emissions by 2050. In that light, Newsom’s plan might as well be an invitation for the oil and gas industries to milk California’s fossil fuels as long as they possibly can, to the very last drop.
That’s not leadership. And it portends devastating news for the climate. Keeping untapped fossil fuels in the ground is essential if America is going to end their use. Yet if the country’s selfprofessed climate leader won’t do it urgently, who will?
Newsom’s unilateral action on fracking, meanwhile, is welcome. But a 2024 ban on new permits is hardly a bold maneuver.
Here’s a depressing factoid you might have missed amid the general carnage of 2020 — methane levels in the atmosphere reached record levels, with oil and gas extraction being one of the primary culprits. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases on earth, inducing a warming effect up to 80 times greater than carbon dioxide. And when humans try to capture, store and transport methane, it leaks. Constantly. The 2016 Aliso Canyon gas leak in Southern California was the worst manmade greenhouse gas event in American history — the equivalent of releasing the annual exhaust from 600,000 cars.
Aliso Canyon should have been a wakeup call for California’s oil and gas industries to prepare for a future where their services are no longer required. The climate fight doesn’t have time for Newsom to baby them to triage his political fortunes.
Yes, these industries are responsible for at least 7,700 jobs in state. But rising seas won’t better worker fortunes. Neither will wildfires, heat waves or drought. We either stop the most catastrophic effects of climate change or we don’t. If California wants to do its part to stave off disaster, and claim the mantle as America’s climate leader, it needs to act like it.
Meanwhile, if Newsom is looking to save himself from recall, it’s hard to imagine a better political strategy than bold, aggressive and uncompromising leadership on climate change — especially on an issue so universally popular as ending fracking and oil drilling as soon as possible. And if that strategy should fail in the face of fossil fuel industry opposition, at least Newsom can say he went down swinging for the future habitability of California.