A Climate Policy Firestorm in California

On this week’s episode of Political Climate: how California is coping with ongoing wildfires and attacks from the Trump administration.

Julia Pyper November 01, 2019

Julia Pyper

Senior Editor
Greentech Media

Julia Pyper is a Senior Editor at Greentech Media covering the energy transition. She is also the host and producer of the Political Climate podcast. She previously reported for E&E Publishing, and has covered clean energy and climate change issues across the U.S. and abroad, including in India, Haiti, Israel and the Maldives. She holds degrees from McGill and Columbia Universities. Find her on Twitter @JMPyper.

There has been no shortage of climate-related news in recent days ⁠— from President Trump’s attack on California’s emissions-trading system to Senator Schumer’s $450 billion electric vehicle proposal, with disastrous wildfires raging in the West and the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy in the East.

It’s a grab bag of climate headlines on this week’s episode of Political Climate.

We begin by revisiting the wildfire crisis in California, as co-host Shane Skelton copes with a power outage and warnings that his community may soon have to evacuate. Governor Gavin Newsom's administration inherited this challenge, but now that he's in power, what's his plan for coping with it?

Next we look at the Trump administration's attack on a foundational California climate policy: its cap-and-trade system. Did California overstep by partnering with the province of Quebec? We also look at the latest developments in the clash over California's clean-vehicle standards.

Finally, we check in on the new bipartisan climate caucus in the Senate and debate the Republican backlash over the Democrats' climate agenda in the House.