Continuing a years-long push, the California Air Resources Board cracked down further on emissions, sharpening the debate over the scope of its plans.

“The new rules, green-lighted [March 23] … seek to curb methane emissions at oil and gas production plants by up to 45 percent over the next nine years,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The cuts will come from a combination of heightened efficiency requirements, inspection mandates and rules meant to ensure that leaks are discovered and fixed swiftly. The regulations apply to both onshore and offshore oil and gas centers.”

“The standards, which experts said mark the first major piece of environmental regulation passed by any state since the turnover of power in Washington, were hailed as a triumph by environmental activists, but criticized as cumbersome, costly and ultimately unnecessary by oil and gas producers.”

Federal fortunes

CARB’s actions took on a particular edge as political battles in Washington have concentrated around environmental standards put in place over the previous eight years. “In the works for over a year, the rulemaking comes as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers work to unravel Obama-era measures to control emissions of the potent climate pollutant at oil and gas production sites nationwide,” according to Bloomberg BNA.

The foray into gas indicated CARB wasn’t satisfied with controlling vehicle emissions, although those make up the lion’s share of regulated pollutants. “The state’s proposal is its first attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at its onshore and offshore oil and gas facilities and natural gas storage sites and is part of broader effort, now mandated under state law, to curb emissions of short-lived climate pollutants like methane,” the site added. 

The automotive industry, working to pivot toward lower- and zero-emissions vehicles without surrendering market share in a still-robustly gas-powered economy, was instrumental to the inside-the-Beltway shift. “The CEOs of Ford, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler moved fast to cut a quick deal with Trump to reopen a review by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation of emissions and fuel-economy standards that had been closed under President Barack Obama,” Business Insider noted. “The automakers don’t like that California effectively plays by its own environmental rules and as a subplot in the Trump deal had argued for a single national standard to govern fuel-economy and emissions standards.” 

Fight for money

But California hasn’t budged. In fact, it has been rewarded for holding the line on its strict enforcement of auto emissions rules. “As part of its court-ordered payback for cheating on diesel vehicle emissions tests, Volkswagen might bring a heap of green – in the form of money and technology – to Sacramento,” observed the Sacramento Bee. “Under a settlement with federal officials and the California Air Resources Board, the disgraced automaker is poised to spend tens of millions of dollars promoting zero-emission vehicles in Sacramento and four other cities. In addition, Sacramento is the lead contender for Volkswagen’s first ‘Green City’ designation, which would bring the city $44 million between now and 2020 for public outreach and other programs related to zero-emission vehicles, according to a proposal Volkswagen has filed with CARB.”

Adding to the adversarial climate, automakers have grown frustrated with CARB’s unwillingness to loosen up on standards for zero-emissions vehicles despite what have become disappointingly flat sales. “With state rebates, federal tax credits and manufacturer discounts, the effective monthly payments in California for zero-emission vehicles including the Nissan Motor Co. Leaf and Ford Motor Co. Focus Electric can add up to zero – or less – a month, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said in written comments to the California Air Resources Board,” according to Automotive News. “Yet the ZEV market share has remained at the 3 to 3.5 percent level,” the alliance said in its 80-page submission, asking the agency […] to ease up on plans to require more sales of the vehicles.”

California’s utility companies have unveiled a plan to allocate $1 billion to a statewide charging station program, designed to meet the state’s rigorous emissions standards and extend the reach of electric and hybrid vehicles throughout the state. 

“Three major California utility companies are following the lead of the state’s clean transportation and emission-reduction goals by offering multiple programs to promote EV adoption by citizens and deployment by public and private agencies,” Digital Trends reported. “California Electric Transportation Coalition members Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric submitted applications to the California Public Utilities Commission for a variety of significant programs. All of the programs are aimed at moving the state closer to its zero-emissions vehicle goals.”

Keeping up with change

But environmentalist plans have not been the only driver of the state’s broad push toward more alternative energy-fueled transportation. Driverless vehicle technology, which could soon transform the business models of shipping and automotive companies, pairs naturally with zero-emissions technology. But the regulatory landscape, even in California, has not changed as swiftly as technological advances have progressed. 

“The overall goal is to facilitate the addition of tens of thousands of plug-in vehicle chargers at homes and businesses across the state, while further spurring the adoption of electric vehicles, particularly as a replacement to gas- or diesel-powered delivery trucks or buses,” Autoblog noted. “As it is, California accounts for almost 12,000 of the approximately 40,000 publicly accessible plug-in charging outlets in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.”

Bigger batteries

In pushing for an all-in approach to rechargeable technology, California’s utilities sharpened a two-prong approach to the opportunities and challenges facing the state on alternative energy. While the widespread use of charging stations could help swiftly drive Californians toward the economic lead in new transportation infrastructure, utilities officials have also focused in recent years on trying to achieve a breakthrough in the stubborn problem of scaling up battery storage to meet state needs.

State engineers, the New York Times recently reported, “brought three energy-storage sites close to completion to begin serving the Southern California electric grid within the next month. They are made up of thousands of oversize versions of the lithium-ion batteries now widely used in smartphones, laptop computers and other digital devices.”

“One of the installations, at a San Diego Gas & Electric operations center surrounded by industrial parks in Escondido, Calif., 30 miles north of San Diego, will be the largest of its kind in the world, developers say. It represents the most crucial test yet of an energy-storage technology that many experts see as fundamental to a clean-energy future. Here, about 130 miles southeast of Aliso Canyon, the site of the immense gas leak in 2015 — the global-warming equivalent of operating about 1.7 million cars over the course of a year — 19,000 battery modules the size of a kitchen drawer are being wired together in racks. They will operate out of two dozen beige, 640-square-foot trailers.”

What’s more, the paper noted, former longtime state energy policy czar Susan Kennedy has been “keeping a close eye on the Southern California battery efforts,” although the energy storage startup she now runs did not participate in the Aliso Canyon project. 

Shifting sales

Beyond environmental or technological justifications for its new charging station plans, California’s utilities have simple self-interest in play as well. “The utility industry is looking to electric car-charging as one of the few areas of growth as the increased use of rooftop solar panels and energy-efficient appliances weakens power sales,” Automotive News observed. “Last month, regulators approved a scaled-down version of PG&E’s plan to invest in charging stations.”

Stiffed, as he sees it, by bureaucratic incompetence, Elon Musk took the California Air Resources Board to task for the way it handles zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) credits — at a moment when Musk’s plans for success require a huge leap forward in business expansion.

“The California Air Resources Board is being incredibly weak in its application of ZEV credits,” Musk told those listening in on the company’s latest earnings call, as Bloomberg reported. “The standards are pathetically low. They need to be increased. There’s massive lobbying by the big car companies to prevent CARB from increasing the ZEV credit mandate, which they absolutely damn well should. It’s a crying shame that they haven’t. And as a result, you can barely sell the ZEV credits for pennies on the dollar.”

Musk has enjoyed the benefit of pre-existing policy, which required auto companies falling short of CARB standards to turn to Tesla for help. “California has a Zero Emissions Vehicle Standard that requires a percentage of all auto sales in the state to be zero emission vehicles. There are two ways to meet the standard — either a company has to sell a certain number of emission-free cars, or it has to offset the failure to do so by buying credits from another company that is exceeding the standard,” CNBC explained. “The program has been a source of revenue for Tesla — in 2013, the company made just short of $130 million selling the credits to other car companies, according to CleanTechnica. Then, in the latest quarter, Tesla only ‘recognized an insignificant amount of ZEV credit revenue,’ according to a letter to shareholders.”

Round two

The tiff marked the second time Musk publicly tangled with the CARB on matters of automobile policy. Following the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal, Musk signed an open letter to the Air Resources Board that portrayed the board’s measures as foolish and futile, arguing instead for an approach that would require Volkswagen to make dramatically more emissions-free cars. “For a significant fraction of the non-compliant diesel cars already in the hands of drivers, there is no real solution. Drivers won’t come in for a fix that compromises performance,” the letter read. “Further, solutions which result in net greater CO2 emissions, a regulated pollutant, are inappropriate for CARB to endorse. Retrofitting urea tank systems to small cars is costly and impractical. Some cars may be fixed, but many won’t and will be crushed before they are fixed.”

“A giant sum of money thus will be wasted in attempting to fix cars that cannot all be fixed, and where the fix may be worse than the problem if the cars are crushed well before the end of their useful lives. We, the undersigned, instead encourage the CARB to show leadership in directing VW to ‘cure the air, not the cars’ and reap multiples of what damage has been caused while strongly advancing California’s interests in transitioning to zero emission vehicles.”

Production prep

But Musk’s current frustrations suggested some urgency to settle scores before buckling in for a big production push. Tesla’s plans for extraordinarily rapid growth have promised a substantial increase in activity around its manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, purchased from Toyota after its partner in the property, GM, backed out of its role in the wake of the financial crisis. Musk’s automaker has already “announced plans for a gigantic increase in output when its $35,000 Model 3 enters production,” Green Car Reports noted. “That ex-GM plant had a capacity of half a million cars […]. Six years later, Tesla says it is now building 2,000 electric cars a week at the Fremont plant.”

The room for growth has spurred activity inside and outside its doors. Now, “companies small and large are looking to cluster operations around Tesla’s 5.3 million square foot factory in Fremont to help with production and also with research and development,” the San Francisco Business Journal reported. “Such companies range from a locally grown machine shop making parts for Tesla’s battery packs to a giant Mexican producer of plastic and foam auto parts opening an East Bay factory with 280 jobs.”

But there was also some eye-rolling. How could a governor who will be out of office in January 2019 possibly impose binding conditions on future chief executives and Legislatures beyond those established in AB32 and other emission-focused legislation formally adopted by the Assembly and Senate?

Now it turns out that the Legislature’s top attorney — Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine — shares this skepticism. Last week, state Senate Minority Leader Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, released a letter by Boyer-Vine responding to her questions about whether Brown could change state law by fiat.

“We think the determination of a standard for the statewide (greenhouse gas) emissions limit is a fundamental policy decision that only the Legislature can make,” Boyer-Vine wrote. She noted that under state law, the Legislature couldn’t assign sole policy-making authority on the issue to the governor even if it wanted to.

The California Air Resources Board defended the legality of the governor’s order with a statement that didn’t address the specific legal points made by Boyer-Vine.

“While the 2020 limit is an important first step in measuring progress, climate change will not end in 2020 and AB32 explicitly states the intent to ‘maintain and continue reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases beyond 2020,’” a spokesman told the Sacramento Bee.

Echoes of D.C. fights — with one big difference

The emerging battle has crucial similarities to the fights over executive authority in Washington, where Republican lawmakers have backed lawsuits challenging President Obama’s orders on immigration, pollution and other issues. But one big difference is that the Sacramento scrum is over a policy area in which California’s legislative and executive branches are generally in sync: greenhouse gas reduction.

But an Associated Press story about Boyer-Vine’s opinion hinted at why Brown prefers a unilateral approach to either deferring to or working with the Legislature on a measure expanding upon AB32 a decade after its passage:

Overturning the executive order would be a blow to Brown’s effort to establish a legacy and a global identity as a crusader against climate change. …

While Democrats maintain overwhelming control of the Legislature, Brown would face difficulty winning legislative approval for his emissions targets. A group of moderate Democrats in the Assembly has sided with business interests against efforts by Brown and conservation groups to create stronger environmental protections.

“The Legislature should not advance the cap-and-trade program under this dark legal cloud,” said Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

Last week, the seven Republicans on the 13-member board forced out AQMD Director Barry Wallerstein, long criticized by business interests as hostile and indifferent to the economic downside of heavy regulation. In December, the GOP bloc passed on staff recommendations and adopted rules on refineries and other heavy industries that had been lobbied for by the Western States Petroleum Association and other oil interests.

State Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, reacted sharply to both moves. This week, he announced plans to introduce legislation that would add three members to the AQMD board. The board now consists of 10 elected officials from cities and counties in the AQMD region as well as one member chosen by the governor, one by the Assembly speaker and one by the Senate Rules Committee.

Adding one public health expert and two “environmental justice” members to the board would likely lead to …

… more aggressive steps to curb pollution and would give the state Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown greater influence over the agency charged with protecting the health of 17 million people in the nation’s smoggiest region.

 

Under de León’s plan, two of the additional appointees would be selected by state legislative leaders. The public health member would be appointed by the governor, increasing the panel from 13 to 16 members. …

 

Recent appointees to the air board, including Highland Mayor Larry McCallon and Lake Forest Councilman Dwight Robinson, have said they want the agency to give more emphasis to the economic burden posed by tougher emissions regulations. Republicans gained a seven-member majority with the swearing in of Robinson last month following a campaign by GOP leaders to gain control of the regulatory agency.

That is from a Los Angeles Times report.

December decision triggers lawsuit from green groups

Meanwhile, the December vote against tough new emission rules has triggered a lawsuit, KPCC reports:

Southern California air has never met state and federal standards for ozone pollution, which is associated with various respiratory and health problems. In EPA-speak, it’s considered an “extreme ozone non-attainment area.” To reduce ozone pollution, the AQMD had proposed further reducing the emission of oxides of nitrogen — known as NOx. …

 

The AQMD staff had been working for three years to devise new rules that would limit the NOx that could be emitted by stationary pollution sources, mostly refineries and a cement plant. The AQMD board voted … for a proposal favored by … local refineries.

 

The WSPA proposal permits refiners and other stationary sources of pollution to emit 14 tons of oxides of nitrogen daily versus only 12 tons envisioned by the AQMD staff plan. The board also voted for a plan that relieved refiners and other polluters of a proposed requirement to install new emission controls and instead permitted them to buy air pollution credits.

 

The Center for Biological Diversity, Communities for a Better Environment, Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the AQMD over the decision. They called the staff-written proposal “the most significant smog-fighting proposal within its jurisdiction in a decade.”

 

The groups want a Superior Court judge to set aside the December NOx decision and require refineries and other stationery polluters to install equipment to reduce the amount of NOx they put out. The groups do not want the companies to be able to buy pollution credits instead.

The L.A. region has a long history of pioneering in efforts to combat smog and other air pollution. The Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District, established in 1947 — the first such agency in the nation — was the forerunner of the modern AQMD.

Air pollution in Los Angeles is generally believed to have peaked in the 1950s. Smog health alerts, once a common occurrence, are now rare. But the L.A. area still has the worst or among the worst records for air pollution of any U.S. city, depending on the category of pollutant.

Photo courtesy of mashable.com

Thanks to California regulators, Volkswagen hasn’t yet found a way out of worldwide trouble. Federal agencies have flexed their muscles in tandem. “U.S. regulators rejected Volkswagen AG’s plan for recalling nearly 500,000 diesel-powered cars,” as the Wall Street Journal noted.

“The Environmental Protection Agency, which is working with California regulators on the VW fraud, had already said it was not satisfied with the recall plan and requested more information from the company,” the New York Times noted. And the Justice Department, “which had opened its own investigation, filed a civil complaint against the company, accusing it of exceeding EPA air quality standards and violating the Clean Air Act.”

The California Air Resources Board, meanwhile, warned that “Volkswagen’s proposals failed to address how the fix would affect the engine’s performance, emissions and vehicle safety,” according to the Journal. “Some experts are concerned that a fix that strengthens the vehicle’s emissions control could reduce fuel economy and overall performance.”

The Board continued its extraordinarily stern treatment of Volkswagen, stemming from a protracted investigation of the company’s secret effort to skirt the rules on emissions tests for diesel vehicles. The Board “said that a recall plan presented in November and December was ‘incomplete, substantially deficient and falls far short of meeting the legal requirements’ to be approved,” as the New York Times reported. And it slammed the company, which was sent reeling this fall and winter by collapsing car sales, for dragging its feet. “The state agency added that VW was taking too long to devise a fix.”

Faulty plans

In its criticisms, the Board singled out problems with the vagueness of the company’s projections based on its own proposed fix. “The Air Resources Board lists a number of reasons why Volkswagen’s proposal was rejected, but it specified that among the most important reasons for the rejection was the fact that ‘the proposed plans do not sufficiently address impacts on the engine, the vehicle’s overall operation, and all related emissions control technologies, including the OBD [On Board Diagnostics] system,'” according to Ars Technica. “In other words, Volkswagen failed to specify whether the fix to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions would impact the car’s gas mileage or its projected lifespan.”

That meant the Board felt as if VW had prevented it from doing its job. “As a result, the Board lacked enough information to tell whether the proposed fixes ‘are even technically feasible,’ according to a letter from Annette Hebert, the board’s chief of auto emissions compliance,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Deep trouble

Although the Board’s ruling affects under 76,000 cars, Ars noted, the EPA’s concurrence meant VW continued to face a comprehensive challenge to its business. “VW reiterated that it is working on a solution and is meeting with EPA officials this week in Washington to submit a reworked proposal,” the Washington Post noted. “But the statements from the California board and the EPA demonstrate the lengths VW will have to go to fix its cars and regain the trust of regulators.”

Harm to VW for its malfeasance has been direct and substantial. Sales have fallen 5 percent, as the Post added. “The worldwide scandal has hammered Volkswagen’s sales, prompted hundreds of lawsuits and forced the German automaker’s former CEO to resign, although he insisted he knew nothing about the defeat devices,” according to the Chronicle.

As CalWatchdog reported previously, California’s Air Resources Board was instrumental in blowing the lid off of Volkswagen’s lengthy emissions scam, which quickly drew the attention of national and foreign regulators reaching from Washington, D.C., to Germany. The Board threw down a gauntlet in November, demanding the recall and repair of affected cars and a formal plan from the company as to how it intended to achieve compliance.

Photo courtesy of mashable.com

California’s powerful environmental regulator has ordered the recall of all Volkswagens, Audis and Porsches equipped with software secretly installed to defeat emissions tests.

“On November 25, the California Air Resources Board sent an In Use Compliance letter notifying Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche to start the process necessary to recall and repair illegal emissions software in all 3-liter diesel vehicles, model years 2009–2015, sold in California,” NACS reported. “According to a press release, the automakers have 45 business days to assemble their plan and deliver it to CARB.”

The figures were added atop the 482,000 cars Volkswagen had previously admitted to rigging, as Bloomberg noted. “That revelation, concerning 2-liter diesel engines from the 2009 through 2015 model years, sparked criminal probes in Europe and the U.S. and led to the resignation of the company’s chief executive officer.”

Flexing its muscle

The new letter marked just the latest twisting of the screws from the Board, which has aggressively pursued action against the auto maker. “The notice from the California Air Resources Board came less than a week after state and federal regulators disclosed that Volkswagen Group automakers installed software to cheat emissions tests on more diesels than initially thought,” AP reported. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board said last week the software was on about 85,000 Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche vehicles with 3-liter, six-cylinder engines going back to the 2009 model year.” Cars were programmed, according to the New York Times, to trigger a “special eco-friendly mode with lower emissions of nitrogen oxides” when they detected that a lab test had begun.

The Board was instrumental in flushing out Volkswagen’s malfeasance, helping blindside the company by making the revelations public. In a remarkable twist, the Board recently confirmed comments made by director Mary Nichols, published in a German business magazine, “suggesting that the German government may have had information as early as 2010 about Volkswagen AG’s difficulties meeting restrictions on nitrogen oxide emissions in the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Ms. Nichols said she was surprised that Ms. Merkel had such specific knowledge of the problems with nitrogen oxide emissions that German manufacturers faced.”

Just last month, it slapped the company with the second of two notices of violation. “On September 25, the California Air Resources Board sent letters to all manufacturers letting them know we would be screening vehicles for potential defeat devices,” Richard Corey, the Board’s Executive Officer said. “Since then ARB, EPA and Environment Canada have continued test programs on additional diesel-powered passenger cars and SUVs. These tests have raised serious concerns about the presence of defeat devices on additional VW, Audi and Porsche vehicles.”

An unending scandal

The damage to Volkswagen has been substantial: “Dealers labored for most of the month with inadequate saleable inventory on their lots,” as the Orange County Register reported, with the auto maker saying “sales of its namesake brand declined 25 percent from a year earlier, largely because the company couldn’t sell any diesel-powered cars.” The company, which confessed it had cheated emissions tests on its diesel cars, halted their sale, falling back on only its gasoline-powered vehicles.

Trouble has spread overseas as well. Although Volkswagen had previously said it was unsure whether the cheating software violated European regulations in addition to U.S. and Californian ones, German regulators recently announced that it did. “The determination by German regulators that VW had cheated could affect a flurry of European consumer litigation, though it is unclear what fines the company might face in Europe,” the Times observed. “While European Union member states were supposed to enact penalties for cheating on automotive tests several years ago, few have done so.”

The move put the self-driving car under development by the tech titan — codename: Project Titan — at the center of a flurry of speculation, opinion and analysis. Citing documents it had obtained, the Guardian reported that Mike Maletic, a senior legal counsel, “had an hour-long meeting on 17 August with the department’s self-driving car experts Bernard Soriano, DMV deputy director, and Stephanie Dougherty, chief of strategic planning, who are co-sponsors of California’s autonomous vehicle regulation project, and Brian Soublet, the department’s deputy director and chief counsel.”

Alongside Google and Uber, that makes three Silicon Valley heavyweights lined up to crank out driverless cars at some point in the future, the Guardian added, noting “Google already has a fleet of robot cars on the streets of California and is planning to have several hundred built in the near future.”

Critical mass

But the competition in driverless cars has already heated up around the world. “According to the California DMV,” Fast Company noted, “their autonomous vehicle program has issued permits for testing to Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, and Honda, along with Google and auto component manufacturers Delphi, Bosch, and Cruise Automation.” That program, begun at the start of this year, “is working on ways to guarantee autonomous vehicles are safe, tested, and meet quality and performance benchmarks.”

The race to deploy a robocar has led those companies, plus Toyota, Ford, and GM, to line the Valley’s main thoroughfare with research laboratories. The Central Expressway, reaching roughly from Stanford University to San Jose Mineta International Airport, has become so crowded with competitors that Apple’s penchant for secrecy may be at risk if it takes its cars out for a neighborhood spin. “Although Apple recently bought a 43-acre parcel in North San Jose, it doesn’t have much room in Silicon Valley to test its automotive ideas with the secrecy that usually surrounds its tiny devices,” the San Jose Mercury News surmised. “The question is: Would it be willing to test in public?”

Busy rivals

Traffic in secrecy has run both ways, however. Whatever Apple has under wraps, the Mercury News concluded, “its actions have contributed to a frenzy from rivals — especially in the auto industry — to take ownership of autonomous technology, in-car mapping software, vehicle-to-vehicle communication and dashboard Internet applications that could reshape the way we get around in the decades to come.”

To vault to the top of the pack, however, Apple would likely have to square off against Tesla, which has enjoyed a substantial head start. “In the next few years, Tesla has the potential to become the Apple of electric cars, even if Apple enters the industry,” according to Quartz. “The company will have four models on the streets — the Roadster, the S, the X, and the 3 — by the time Apple or any other competitor is likely to have a single model. Tesla will also have its Gigafactory — a massive production facility in Nevada that can produce up to 500,000 cars a year — up and running. If Tesla can bring down its prices, its cars could become a common sight on roads.” Of course, Tesla has automotive rivals of its own, with Audi, Mercedes and Porsche all poised to deliver electric vehicles in about five years or so.

Meanwhile, few inside the auto industry have thrown in the towel on more traditional vehicles. “When it comes to actually making cars, there is no reason to assume that Apple, with no experience, will suddenly do a better job than General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, or Hyundai,” GM ex-chairman Bob Lutz told CNBC, predicting that Apple’s labors would become “a giant money pit.”

“His announcement, which will help expedite debris removal and waive fees to replace essential documents like birth certificates for those who’ve had to abandon their homes and belongings, came one day after four firefighters were injured,” CNN reported.

The tally of affected counties included Lake, Napa, Amador and Calaveras. The growth of the blazes has been rapid. One fire, the Los Angeles Times noted, “spread southwest by almost 20,000 acres over the last two days to 119,069 acres in the area of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks […] as extended heat and wind have fueled its growth[.]”

Dire predictions

Brown also seized the opportunity to recast his environmental policies in terms that would raise the hackles of his Republican opponents. “What we see in Europe now, with mass migrations, that will happen in California,” he warned at a news conference in Sacramento County, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Central America and Mexico, as they warm, people are going to get on the move. It’s a real challenge.”

Although some analysts have cautioned that shifting climate conditions could prompt huge population displacements around the world, Europe’s current crisis was merely suggestive. “Heat, rising sea levels and drought are expected to disrupt populations around the world in coming decades, though the current refugee crisis in Europe speaks to other causes of migration,” the Sacramento Bee noted. “Millions of people have fled Syria as a result of civil war.”

California’s fire season has given Brown a superficially powerful but subtly complicated way to dramatize the state’s environmental challenges. Although he insisted “that California has to be ready for more fires like the ones raging through Lake County, Gold Country and Kings Canyon National Park,” according to the Chronicle, he also noted “he has talked to fire officials who say they have never seen the kind of erratic behavior that fires are showing this year.”

Policy pushback

Critics frustrated by Brown’s dogged attempts to slash California emissions pointed out how quickly the fires have likely negated the impact of recent cuts. Quoting a 2007 study by National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder scientists, the Wall Street Journal asserted that “a severe fire season lasting only one or two months can release as much carbon as the annual emissions from the entire transportation or energy sector of an individual state.” One researcher, the Journal added, “estimated that southern California fires that burned for one week produced as much carbon dioxide as a quarter of the state’s monthly fossil-fuel emissions.”

Meanwhile, even some supporters of Brown’s emissions agenda took issue with California’s broader fire and forest management policies. In an editorial proclaiming that the climate has already changed, the Los Angeles Times addressed a litany of questions to policymakers:

“Is the way we manage our forests, such as making them less dense by removing younger trees, adding to the possibility of massive fires? Are we making the right decisions about funding and fire prevention? Do land-use policies that allow development to push deeper into forested regions take into account the mounting danger of wildfires? Do we have adequate financial resources to fight the new normal fire season? Does it even make sense to fight fires to the same degree?”

Ironically, Sacramento has come under attack for its fire prevention fee, which doesn’t go toward actually fighting blazes themselves. “The Brown administration declined comment. But a recent state report says the fee raises about $75 million dollars a year for efforts like identifying evacuation routes and clearing brush,” Valley Public Radio observed. “A taxpayers group has sued the state, alleging the fee is an unconstitutional tax. But a final ruling could take years.”

In a remarkable reversal, California Democrats have dropped a main provision in landmark legislation ratcheting up emissions regulations. As Republicans cheered, liberals nationwide decried the turnabout, with Golden State environmentalists blaming a sizable campaign against the bills launched by a nervous oil industry.

Fueling fears

Petroleum interests were able to use Democrats’ dramatic objectives to raise an effective alarm in one of the most reliably anti-carbon states in the union. “The oil industry has poured money into a campaign against SB350, calling the legislation the ‘California Gas Restriction Act of 2015’ and warning that it could lead to bans on SUVs,” as ThinkProgress noted; according to the original terms of the bill, passed by the state Senate, California would be committed to a 50 percent reduction in gasoline use in both cars and trucks. In the new bill, expected to clear the Assembly, that provision has been removed.

Substantial curbs on emissions remained, however. “The amended bill still aims to curb carbon emissions from two other sectors of the energy industry,” the Wall Street Journal observed. “Using 2016 levels as the starting point, the legislation would require the state’s utilities to get half their power from renewable sources and all buildings in the state to increase their energy efficiency by 50 percent.”

Nevertheless, the more modest version of SB350 marked the second of two big disappointments for environmentalist policy advocates in California and around the country. As the Journal added, SB32, which would slash state emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels before 2050, also passed a vote in the Senate only to run aground in the Assembly.

Sharp rhetoric

Supporters of SB350, including Senate Leader Kevin de Leon, were adamant that industry scaremongering scuttled the 50 percent petroleum cut. Remarking on the bill’s modification, the New York Times reported, he said, “Big Oil might be on the right side of their shareholder reports, but we’re on the right side of history.”

Activists sharpened the message on their own terms. “Kathryn Phillips, who runs the Sierra Club’s California chapter, went even further, saying that the oil industry was waging ‘war on humanity’ by blocking efforts to reduce heat-emissions as much as scientists say is necessary to avert catastrophe,” MSNBC noted. Phillips, the network added, described the industry as “ruthless” and “determined to tell every lie they can and to scare people to death just so they can keep as much market share as possible.”

But a different, more practical factor weighed heavily on the minds of skittish Democrats. “The decision on how to carry out the proposed cuts would have been left to the state’s Air Resources Board, a matter of strong concern to many lawmakers,” according to the Times. If the board made decisions adversely impacting constituents, many of whom have already been struggling economically, the consequences could be dire. What’s more, angry voters would have little way to respond but at the ballot box.

An uncertain future

For now, however, anger was concentrated among climate activists convinced that the world’s fortunes depend in outsized measure on California’s ability to demonstrate a path forward on strict emissions reductions. “If they can’t succeed in their ambitions,” MSNBC suggested of Sacramento’s liberals, “it raises serious questions about the fate of a hoped for global climate agreement this December in Paris.”

Their dismay was compounded by the outright defeat of this year’s other embattled emissions bill, SB32, introduced by state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills. “Pavley tried to overcome opposition to her measure by changing it to provide more legislative oversight of the state’s powerful Air Resources Board,” the Los Angeles Times noted. But skeptics were unmoved, the Times reported. Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown’s office pulled its support out of concerns that it had become toothless, leaving Pavley to promise she would reintroduce the bill next year.