California has long prided itself as an environmental trailblazer. It was the first state to set its own vehicle emission rules and the first to outlaw plastic shopping bags.
In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, went so far as to seek a ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Standing in front of several electric cars, he warned automakers against being on “the wrong side of history.”
So it surprised environmentalists this year when Mr. Newsom and Democratic lawmakers began backtracking on signature green initiatives. They rebuked the state’s coastal preservation commission for regulatory overreach and rolled back the landmark California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA, to address the state’s severe housing shortage.
Then, to environmentalists, came the unthinkable: pushing legislation to keep oil refineries open and make oil drilling easier in California.
“It’s a complete 180,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a lawyer at the Climate Law Institute, part of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity that focuses on protecting endangered species. “It’s become more urgent than ever to rid ourselves of fossil fuels, so it’s really inexplicable why our policymakers in Sacramento are moving the exact opposite way we should be going.”
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The post California’s Environmental Past Confronts Economic Worries of the Present appeared first on New York Times.
