Relishing the opportunity to take a signature issue to a world stage, Gov. Jerry Brown had his political work cut out for him in taking California’s approach to environmental policy to the next level amid the United Nations’ so-called COP21 summit in Paris.

Long known for successfully navigating a path between the Golden State’s political extremes when his own agenda called for it, Brown has found himself facing a complex, shifting set of constituencies at home. In Paris, he has sought to present a policy vision capable of satisfying most, if not all. 

An international turn

To his left, Brown has confronted activists and advocates displeased with the limits of his approach. While Brown peeled away cap-and-trade funds for his beloved high-speed rail project, the environmental left cried foul. (At the end of a speech in Paris, Brown was even “heckled by a group of protesters opposed to carbon offset programs they said could hurt indigenous people,” as the Sacramento Bee observed.) But to his right, within his own party, Brown has had to contend with moderate and electorally vulnerable Democrats who refused to go along with this year’s ambitious legislation to slash emissions yet further, as CalWatchdog previously reported.

Although the bullet train has been hamstrung by environmental impact and other concerns, Brown has found in the Paris talks a way to dramatize both the significance and workability of his plans on climate. By pressing ahead with regulations that won the approval of enough Democrats and the acceptance of enough Republicans, Brown positioned himself as the global leader in actually implementing a large-scale emissions policy. Consequently, as the Los Angeles Times noted, “California officials have rolled out the welcome mat in the last two years for representatives from more than three dozen countries — including China, Kazakhstan, France and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]. And with a slew of agreements with foreign leaders, Brown and administration officials have turned California’s Air Resources Board and Environmental Protection Agency into de facto diplomatic organizations.” For Democrats, Brown’s initiative and prestige has struck a reassuring contrast with Washington, where Congress has not looked to California as a model.

Dodging conflict 

Even for Republicans, Brown’s approach has avoided some major political hangups. Although few in the party, even in California, have embraced an emissions agenda as aggressive as Brown’s, his state-and-local-first strategy has enabled him to largely bracket traditional Republican opposition to handing the federal government sweeping new powers around regulating carbon. “We don’t have to wait for the federal government to say jump. We’re already moving,” he told Time. 

“The Compact of States and Regions, a consortium of sub-national governments from six continents, announced commitments on Dec. 6 to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a cumulative 12.4 gigatons by 2030 when compared to business as usual projections,” the magazine noted, adding that the entire United States emits between 5 and 6 gigatons each year.

Of late, state Republicans have complained that terrorism should take political precedence over climate. “Climate change has ebbed and flowed for eons. Mankind can deal with it intelligently. But I have serious doubts about our resolve in dealing with terrorists,” said state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Roseville, according to the San Jose Mercury News. But the reaction to Brown’s doings in Paris has been muted. 

Brown’s transcendental spiritual sensibility has also shown the ability to shield him from more vociferous Republican criticism. “Modernity has two major elements: individualism and oil,” he also told Time. “And those two we have to transform.” Not typical GOP talking points — but of a piece with the wave of Silicon Valley innovation that has been defined in large part by the sharing economy on the one hand and vast leaps in alternate-energy transportation on the other. California Republicans have not been afraid to show their political support for sharing-economy and transportation stalwarts like Airbnb and Uber, who have repeatedly run afoul of the municipal officials and state regulators often accused by the state GOP of stifling job growth and economic productivity. 

AB 32’s actual language read:

National and international actions are necessary to fully address the issue of global warming. However, action taken by California to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will have far-reaching effects by encouraging other states, the federal government, and other countries to act.

So it remains a political touchstone in two ways. First, it was passed in the waning months of “global warming” being the correct phrase; since then the P.C. phrase is the ambiguous “climate change.”

Second, any environmental action must be at least as stringent as AB 32 to be considered more than a pinprick on the earth.

Which is why the Climate Summit the last two days in New York City has achieved nothing. Not one state or nation will impose anything like AB 32. Indeed, China, India and other large nations didn’t even send representatives. They’re not going to allow their policies of lifting their people up from poverty be reversed by anything approaching AB 32.

Speaking today, President Obama called climate change a “growing and urgent threat,” and specifically called on China to cut carbon pollution. Fat chance with military tensions sometimes flaring between the two nations. China sees economic progress, fueled by carbon energy, as the key to its eventual military parity with the United States.

Obama is expected unilaterally to impose new pollution controls after the Nov. 4 election. But the Republican Congress will stimie anything more.

March

People’s Climate March protesters in New York City backed climate-change polices — whatever those might be given the phrase’s ambiguity. But counter-protesters pointed out the hypocrisy of the protesters. The NY Post reported:

David Kreutzer, a research fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation,shared a similar photo of the marchers’ refuse trashing the city’s streets.

“Somehow this doesn’t seem too green 2me,” Kreutzer tweeted.

He and other critics of the People’s Climate March called the protesters hypocrites for wasting paper and burning fossil fuel in getting to the big event.

“The hypocrisy varies from person to person,” economist Kreutzer, 61, told The Post. “The ones that fly in on private jets are the most hypocritical.”

He was referring to celebrity A-listers who joined Sunday’s march.

Stars such as Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken opponent of fracking, paraded through Midtown with people from around the country.

No global warming

It’s all mostly irrelevant.

There actually has not been any global warming for 18 years.

Even the Los Angeles Times, usually a global warming/climate change enthusiast, today reported:

Naturally occurring changes in winds, not human-caused climate change, are responsible for most of the warming on land and in the sea along the West Coast of North America over the last century, a study has found.

The analysis challenges assumptions that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been a significant driver of the increase in temperatures observed over many decades in the ocean and along the coastline from Alaska to California.

Changes in ocean circulation as a result of weaker winds were the main cause of about 1 degree Fahrenheit of warming in the northeast Pacific Ocean and nearby coastal land between 1900 and 2012, according to the analysis of ocean and air temperatures over that time. The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington, was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So, will California now repeal AB 32 and allow our industries to grow again and provide middle-class jobs?

As Steve Martin used to say, Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!