Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced an immediate suspension of permits allowing new hydraulic fracturing and steam-injected oil drilling – the latest in a series of moves in the past week underscoring California’s determination to be seen as a leader in climate change efforts.

“These are necessary steps to strengthen oversight of oil and gas extraction as we phase out our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on clean energy sources,” Newsom said in a statement released by his office.

While Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, also used his job to promote the Golden State as a leader in the effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions believed to be a primary cause of global warming, he opposed a fracking moratorium. Brown’s aides noted the economic benefits of being the third-largest oil-producing state – home to 72,000 wells and 350,000-plus good-paying oil-related jobs. Brown may also have been intrigued by disputed reports in 2013 that the Golden State was sitting on massive oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, pushed back hard at Newsom’s assertion that California had no choice but to crack down on unsafe drilling practices.

“Multiple state agencies already validate our protection of health, safety and the environment during production,” she said in a statement. Reheis-Boyd joined several Republican officials in warning of severe economic consequences of what they depicted as an end to new oil drilling.

State may require buffer zones around many oil wells

But the obstacles Newsom plans to add to gas and oil exploration don’t stop with a ban on the two extraction techniques. The Los Angeles Times reported that he “plans to study the possible adoption of buffer zones around oil wells in or near residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and other facilities that could be exposed to hazardous fumes” – a move with the potential to sharply add to regulatory burdens of owners of the wells.

Other moves that Newsom has announced in the last week include:

• The state will no longer purchase gas-powered sedans. Law-enforcement agencies are exempted.

• The state will only buy vehicles from automakers that agreed to follow California’s vehicle-emission rules rather than the weaker rules backed by the Trump administration. So far, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW have sided with California. General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia and Fiat Chrysler last month said they would follow the weaker federal standards.

• The Newsom administration has formally asked the California Public Utilities Commission to permanently close the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch as soon as feasible. The facility has been the target of intense protests by its neighbors and environmentalists since a 2015 disaster resulted in among the largest releases of methane gas in world history – an immense leak that took nearly four months to stop and forced the evacuation of nearly 3,000 households.

Environmental groups hailed Newsom’s series of moves – especially what they depicted as the beginning of the end of fracking in the state.

Livermore lab experts must OK new fracking permits

But the governor’s announcement left open the possibility that new fracking permits could be – if independent experts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory attested to their safety.

That’s not necessarily a long shot. Even as greens spent years depicting hydraulic fracturing as dangerous and destructive, several Cabinet members in the Obama administration said it was akin to other heavy industries – mostly safe if properly regulated.

In 2015, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told KQED, the Northern California PBS channel, that local moratoriums on fracking approved by several cities in the state were the “wrong way to go.”

“There is a lot of misinformation about fracking,” she said. “I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science behind it and I think there needs to be more science.”

But Newsom said he didn’t agree with this benign view of fracking while campaigning for governor in 2018 and promised a crackdown if elected.

Actions taken in recent days by the University of California Board of Regents, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer Fiona Ma have ushered in a new era of pension divestment to take a stand against fossil fuels.

Jagdeep Singh Bachher, UC’s chief investment officer and treasurer, and Richard Sherman, chair of the UC Board of Regents’ Investments Committee, announced last week that the university’s $13.4 billion endowment will be free of any investments in fossil fuels by month’s end and that UC’s $70 billion pension fund will also end its last such investment in coming months. 

Several UC regents, the UC Academic Senate and other faculty groups have long since called for such divestment as an obvious step in an era in which fossil fuels are a major source of the green-house gases believed to contribute to global warming. But Bachher and Sherman also said that fossil-fuel investments – long a staple of hedge funds and pension funds alike – were no longer safe, given the rapid emergence of alternative energy sources and growing opposition to reliance on oil, natural gas and coal.

Oil company investments seen as risky

Newsom also cited both environmental concerns and financial risk on Friday in signing an executive order directing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which has $380 billion in investment assets, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has holdings of $237 billion, to transition to a new investment model that drops investments in fossil fuels.

Newsom’s office said he would work with CalPERS and CalSTRS on a mission statement that establishes “a timeline and criteria to shift investments to companies and industry sectors that have greater growth potential based on their focus of adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.” 

The governor said California as a state had to be all-in in the fight to stop the planet’s warming.

“How we meet this moment will define our state – and country – for decades to come, just as the emergence of the internet defined our economy over the past few decades,” Newsom said in a news release. “We have to get ahead of this and align our state investments, our purchasing power and our transportation and housing policies to be ready to meet this moment head-on.”

State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who is a member of both the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards, foreshadowed Newsom’s decision two weeks ago when she urged CalSTRS to sell its $6 billion holdings in oil and gas companies.

The Pensions & Investments website reported that Ma made the call after hearing more than 40 students tell the CalSTRS board on Sept. 5 of the importance of divestment.

CalPERS trustee: Prioritize high returns

While the surge in support for divestment will likely prove popular with California Democrats, it’s not clear how CalPERS members will react. Corona police Sgt. Jason Perez stunned CalPERS Board President Priva Mathur in an October election after running on a platform that said CalPERS investment decisions should be solely based on their likely returns. Perez says many CalPERS members fear that they’ll never get close to their full pensions when they retire.

According to the most recent updates, CalPERS only has 70 percent of the funds it needs to meet its obligations to present and future retirees. CalSTRS is 63 percent funded, a huge disappointment to state officials who thought a 2014 bailout orchestrated by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature would get it back to health. 

The University of California pension system is in much better shape than either CalSTRS or CalPERS, with 85 percent of needed funding.

The drought second-guessing comes amid a near-record dry January and February. While most of the focus on the return of the drought has been on Southern California, downtown San Francisco and downtown Sacramento have also gotten close to negligible precipitation this year.

Californians depend on the Sierra snowpack for significant amounts of water supply when it melts in spring and early summer. While overall conditions aren’t as dire as at the peak of the 2012-2017 state drought, some data are daunting. The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that water in the Lake Tahoe region snowpack is one-fifth the average level seen in late February. Strikingly, at the Fallen Leaf measuring station at the 6,242-foot-level, the Times reported there was no snowpack at all.

There was better news elsewhere. The National Weather Service told the Times that the snowpack at the Heavenly Valley site at the 8,534-foot elevation was nearly half of normal. The Hetch Hetchy reservoir in the Yosemite Valley was at 79 percent of capacity earlier this month, water officials said.

Still, the overall picture was troubling enough that state leaders are being urged to make permanent the unprecedented mandatory conservation rules ordered by the governor in 2015 and partly suspended in 2017. In an editorial last week, the San Francisco Chronicle called for “strict 25 percent conservation orders for cities and towns, along with a long list of prohibitions for ordinary citizens and businesses.”

30-year-plus drought in Southwest called possible

The skirmishing over conservation policies and second-guessing over whether it was premature to call the drought over last year are dominating the headlines for now. But some climate scientists warn that this short-term focus is questionable. They note that just as global warming has changed the basic weather patterns in Alaska by thawing the permafrost normally seen year-round in much of state, the American Southwest could face a harsh new default long-term weather pattern. On science websites, there’s a debate over whether the “mega-drought” that a February 2015 NASA study warned about has already begun.

According to Ben Cook, climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the study’s lead author, “Natural droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl and the current drought in the Southwest have historically lasted maybe a decade or a little less. … What these results are saying is we’re going to get a drought similar to those events, but it is probably going to last at least 30 to 35 years.”

Cook put the current chances of the Southwest facing a drought that lasted more than 30 years at 12 percent.

Felix Kogan and Wei Guo of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a paper published in August 2015, argued that the dry weather seen in the Southwest from 2006-2015 already fit the definition of a “mega-drought.” The claim was based on how dry, hot conditions had created unusually heavy “vegetation stress” – the negative effects that severe climate conditions can have on a plant’s metabolism, growth or development.

“Among Western states, California was the most severely drought-affected, especially in 2014, when areas of stronger than moderate vegetation stress reached 70 percent,” Kogan and Guo wrote.

Last week, meeting in Sacramento, members of the state Water Resources Control Board put off for the time being a decision on whether to make the old drought conservation rules permanent.

But the move looks inevitable. Water board chairwoman Felicia Marcus said at the meeting that such restrictions are “the least we should do,” according to an Associated Press report.

In 2011, after his seven-year run as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger had plenty of reasons to worry about how his time in elected office might be remembered. It wasn’t just that he was widely viewed as an under-performing leader who never lived up to his early promise as a brash outsider who would tackle unaddressed state problems. An ugly scandal broke in his final days in office, triggering a political firestorm, and an even more embarrassing scandal emerged soon afterward.

On his last night as governor, Schwarzenegger commuted the prison sentence of Esteban Nuñez – the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, his friend and occasional political ally – from 16 years to 7 years for his manslaughter conviction in the killing of a San Diego college student. Schwarzenegger initially characterized the sentence as extreme, given that the student died after being knifed by another man. But in an interview with Newsweek three months later, he said he commuted the sentence because “of course you help a friend.” The younger Nuñez is now a free man as a result.

In May 2011, as his celebrity marriage to Maria Shriver collapsed amid intense gossip, Schwarzenegger admitted to fathering a 13-year-old boy with Mildred Baena, long a maid at his Brentwood estate. The revelation triggered headlines around the world.

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez cited both scandals in a scathing column that saw them as evidence that Schwarzenegger “has always seemed to live in his own celebrity world by his own twisted rules of privilege and entitlement, his life an orgy of self-glory.”

Legacy play pays off in big way

But six summers later, such harsh rebukes are hard to find. Instead, Schwarzenegger’s image has been resurrected to a considerable degree. His 2006 legacy play – shepherding Assembly Bill 32 to passage to make a California a pioneer in targeting and reducing the greenhouse gases believed to help cause global warming – has paid immense dividends.

This was on display last week when Gov. Jerry Brown featured Schwarzenegger at the signing ceremony for legislation extending the state’s cap-and-trade program for emissions that was established by AB32, with the men swapping praise for being leaders on what they called the world’s most pressing issue.

Last October, on the 10th anniversary of AB32’s signing, Schwarzenegger was also featured at an event organized by the governor’s office.

This was nothing new for the Austrian-born movie star, who’s been feted around the world for his environmental leadership. The praise is usually unstinting, and doesn’t note interesting nuances about AB32’s actual record – starting with the fact that the main reason for declining emissions in California in recent years is not the landmark law but the increased use of cheap, relatively clean natural gas, a fossil fuel of the sort the law targets. In 2015, Forbes said natural gas – not renewable energy – was “easily California’s most important source of energy.”

But now Schwarzenegger finds himself winning praise for another reason: His history offers an easy way for journalists to make the point that President Donald Trump doesn’t speak for all Republicans when he either questions whether climate change is real or opposes ameliorative efforts by the government to reduce its effects. A Nexis news database search shows major publications from Los Angeles to New York to London to Singapore have regularly made this point since Trump’s inauguration.

Schwarzenegger directly sought to promote this narrative with his late June visit to Paris to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and jointly criticize Trump for his decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord signed by President Obama in December 2015. Schwarzenegger used social media – including the image shown above – to publicize his meeting with Macron.

“One man cannot destroy our progress,” said Schwarzenegger, who turned 70 on Sunday. “One man can’t stop our clean energy revolution. And one man can’t go back in time.” He laughed heartily at Macron’s mocking Trump for not wanting to “make the planet great again.”

His new cause: redistricting reform

Now Schwarzenegger is trying to build on another of his accomplishments while governor. He led the successful push for Proposition 11 in 2008 and Proposition 20 in 2010 to assign redistricting duties for state and congressional districts to a nonpartisan commission and intends to lobby for similar reforms in other states. His official website declares “let’s shine a light on gerrymandering,” which has been blamed for increasing partisanship and discouraging moderates of both parties by packing voters with similar views into uncompetitive districts.

Schwarzenegger “has a Terminate Gerrymandering Crowdpac that he’s pledged to match dollar-for-dollar,” Politico reported last week. “He’ll be appearing at events, meeting with lawyers, having his team jump in to rewrite incomprehensible charts of the ‘efficiency gap’ and other technicalities ahead of Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin gerrymandering challenge that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg … called ‘the most important’ case of the Supreme Court’s next term.”

Top Democratic donor  Tom Steyer considered for Cabinet position

Good morning. Have a good Tuesday! We start this morning with someone else’s story — but it’s a good story.

“Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist and possible candidate for California governor, was under consideration to become President Barack Obama’s first energy secretary, according to a hacked email exchange released Monday by WikiLeaks.”

“John Podesta, an Obama transition adviser and now chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, included Steyer’s name for the Cabinet post in September 2008 correspondence,” but Steyer was passed over.

“Emails from 2012, also disclosed by WikiLeaks, showed Podesta discussing a planned meeting between Steyer and former President Bill Clinton. Podesta wrote in the exchange that he would try to push Steyer to support the Clinton Foundation.”

“The praise heaped on Steyer, a major Democratic donor, by one of Clinton’s top advisers is being scrutinized for its political ramifications in California. Should Clinton win next month, she may look to Steyer for a Cabinet position, giving him direct White House policy experience and a formal title as he mulls a run for governor.”

The Sacramento Bee has more. 

In other news:

• “Climate change from human activity nearly doubled the area that burned in forest fires in the American West over the past 30 years, a major new scientific study has found, and larger, more intense fires are all but guaranteed in the years ahead,” writes The San Jose Mercury News. 

• “If Prop. 55 passes, the state budget will rely even more on California’s highest earners,” reports the Los Angeles Times. (Many budget experts think this is a troubling trend.)

• The always-zigging-when-others-are-zagging Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, called “GOP leaders ‘gutless’ for bailing on Trump.” The Orange County Register has more.

• “Over the past four decades, (actor Mike Farrell), who has wielded his celebrity to bring attention to social and political issues in Central America, the Middle East and Africa, has become a leading voice against the death penalty. This year, he is the author of a ballot measure that seeks to end capital punishment in California. For Farrell, the cause has taken precedence over others because at its root, he says, is the idea that some people are dispensable.” The Los Angeles Times has more.

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. 

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @RunGomez

It was just nine months ago that Gov. Jerry Brown basked in the

A Sacramento Bee account laid out how the four-tern governor had come to see the issue as vital to his legacy and considered the conference “the crucial event for the future of the world” because of its potential to inspire much broader efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming.

But back home, Brown’s vision is getting a much tougher reception than it did in France. It’s increasingly unclear whether the governor can even garner enough support in the California Legislature for legislation that would build on AB32. While the measure, SB32, won approval from the Assembly on Tuesday and is likely to be approved by the Senate next week, its implementation is tied to the passage of AB197 by Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella. SB32 can only take effect if AB197 is approved this session.

Garcia’s measure would both increase legislative oversight of the state Air Resources Board and require the air board to put more pressure on local factories and oil refineries to cut their emissions. This, in theory, would respond both to greens’ concerns that the cap-and-trade framework is too passive and to state lawmakers’ anxiety over the air board throwing its weight around in ways that cost local jobs.

Siding with ‘people’ over ‘polar bears’

Such a concern about the effects of environmental laws on local jobs wasn’t raised by many Democrats during 2006 when AB32 was approved. But since California switched to the “jungle primary” in 2012 — in which the top two candidates in the June primary advance, regardless of party — the Legislature has seen a surge in business-friendly Democrats suspicious of the green agenda.

“It’s great to hear about saving polar bears and hugging trees, and making sure we address global warming from a world perspective,” Garcia told the Los Angeles Times. “But how about people?”

Last year, these pro-business Democrats teamed with Republicans to kill Gov. Brown’s and Senate President Kevin de Leon’s push for a 50 percent reduction in gasoline use by vehicles in California by 2030.

Increasingly, it looks like Brown’s best option to build in on his legacy is a 2018 ballot measure extending AB32. Polling shows Californians support even more ambitious climate change policies than AB32.

In 2010, Proposition 23 — a measure to repeal AB32 — was rejected by state voters, 62 percent to 38 percent.

The governor may also try to use executive orders to extend AB32. But few authorities on California’s government believe a current governor can bind the actions of future governors or legislatures.

Judge rules against Hayward’s exorbitant public records fees

Good morning! It’s Friday — we made it.

A Bay Area judge recently ruled against the city of Hayward and its police department for charging exorbitant fees for public records.

The case stemmed from the National Lawyers Guild’s request for footage from officers’ body cameras as they helped patrol a contentious overnight Black Live Matters protest in Berkeley on Dec. 6-7, 2014 — a request police complied with after the guild paid $3,247.

Police justified the high cost by saying the footage had to be carefully examined and redacted.

CalWatchdog has more.  

In other news: 

• Loretta Sanchez, the Orange County Democratic Congresswoman, secured yesterday another high-profile Republican endorsement in her bid for U.S. Senate: Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. The Huffington Post has more.
• Sanchez is still trailing in polls, however. Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris is still on top after her first place finish in last month’s primary, leading a new Field Poll 39 percent to 24 percent for Sanchez. The San Jose Mercury News has more.   
• After being placed under a three-year restraining order by a judge for domestic violence allegations and subsequently being stripped of his committee assignments, Assemblyman Roger Hernandez has fallen on hard times. Now, at least six fellow Democratic lawmakers have revoked their endorsements of Hernandez’s bid for Congress. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• “After 42 years of regulating the state’s political ethics, with countless updates and tweaks, the Political Reform Act is due for an overhaul — and stakeholders are set to begin the process next week,” writes CalWatchdog.
• “Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has been talking directly with oil companies in hopes of reaching a consensus on extending California’s landmark climate programs, opening a back channel with an industry the governor has harshly criticized as a barrier to addressing global warming,” writes the Los Angeles Times. 

Legislature: 

• Gone ’til August.

Gov. Brown:

• On vacation.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @callucrs @Endnearing

But on niche websites devoted to energy production and energy markets, the picture of how California is responding to its mandates is more muddled. A recent free report from SNL, the McGraw-Hill financial publication that typically charges for the proprietary information it provides to shareholders and potential investors, puts California’s progress in a different light:

Carbon laws are choking demand for coal-fired power in California, but the state still imports a large amount of coal-based power and is one of the nation’s top industrial users of coal, providing a needed market for Western producers facing dimming prospects elsewhere.

 

California’s carbon law AB32, which requires the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to return to 1990 levels by 2020, sets in-state plant performance standards that are too stringent for conventional coal units. But California is still importing coal-based power from neighboring states until current power purchase and plant ownership contracts expire.

 

In 2014, less than 5 percent of California’s total energy demand was served by coal and petroleum coke-fired plants, nearly all of it from plants outside the state, according to an Oct. 12 report from the California Energy Commission. By 2026, California will end virtually all its reliance on coal.

 

But at times, as much as 50 percent of Southern California’s electricity still comes from coal-fired plants, Steve Homer, director of project management for the Southern California Public Power Authority, or SCPPA, told SNL Energy.

 

The three main out-of-state coal plants serving California — the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, the San Juan plant in New Mexico and the Navajo plant in Arizona — together received 10.1 million tons of coal in the first seven months of 2015, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. …

 

California is also one of the country’s biggest industrial users of coal, although consumption for that sector is relatively small. In 2013, the latest year for state-level EIA data on industrial coal consumption, California was the eighth-biggest industrial coal user, burning 1.4 million tons.

How states game energy reports

The report is another interesting example of how states play games with energy exports and imports to make themselves look greener than they are. In 2010, Orange County lawmaker turned Austin policy wonk Chuck DeVore laid out how California and British Columbia benefit from this maneuvering:

California has become America’s largest electricity importer. With 37 million people producing about 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, California imports about 23 percent of its electricity.  …

Complicating matters are a trio of California energy policy laws passed in 2006: AB32, SB1368 and SB107. AB32 mandates a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 … . SB1368 outlaws the renewal of coal-fired electricity contracts — imported coal energy powered about 16 percent of California’s grid in 2008. While SB107 accelerated the requirement that California derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources [in 2010], renewable being defined as small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and biomass (we missed the target, meaning utilities, read ratepayers, get dinged).

Enter government-owned BC Hydro and its Powerex subsidiary. With abundant hydro power potential, British Columbia is seeking to become the Saudi Arabia of “green” energy.  … [But] in fact, BC Hydro has imported more energy than it has exported in 10 out of 11 years.

What’s going on here? British Columbia sells its clean hydropower to neighboring governments which need to meet renewable energy mandates. But then it doesn’t have enough power for its growing economy, so it imports power from coal and gas-fired power plants in Washington state and Alberta.

A California compromise — or a loophole?

A 2014 Los Angeles Times story raised similar questions about the gaming of the intention of the state’s landmark climate change laws. Its key conclusion:

California regulators say they have taken steps to prevent utility company executives from outwitting them and insist state rules will lead to real reductions in carbon dioxide, the main gas scientists blame for global warming. But officials concede their efforts have run up against the limits of California’s ability to control what takes place outside its borders, a point the utilities also emphasize. …

Originally, California’s climate-change policies included a provision that would have demanded utility executives swear under penalty of perjury that the actions they took to reduce emissions would not result in a spike in greenhouse gases someplace else.

 

But federal officials warned Gov. Jerry Brown that too aggressive an effort to control emissions across state lines would risk disrupting the complex interstate electricity system.

 

In the end, the California Air Resources Board — which oversees the state’s 2006 climate-change law — allowed utilities a dozen “safe harbor” conditions under which electricity companies would be permitted to shift emissions to nearby states.

 

Critics called the conditions loopholes. …

 

The exemptions are so broad, the board’s own advisory committee cautioned, that all the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made by electricity companies could end up existing only on paper.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A strong majority of Californians say they support tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions and more ambitious renewable energy goals to combat climate change, according to a statewide poll released late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said global warming is contributing to California’s ongoing drought. About half said global warming is a “very serious” threat to the state’s future, according to the poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based nonpartisan research center.

“At a time when many Californians are making a connection between the current drought and climate change, there is strong support for expanding the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s president, in a news release.

Results of the survey — titled Californians & the environment — are based on phone interviews with 1,702 California adult residents from in July.

Of those who took part, 44 percent said they were registered Democrats; 28 percent were Republicans; and 24 percent independents or decline-to-state voters, according to the institute.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they believe there’s a connection between the drought and global warming, while 28 percent said they saw no link.

Spray irrigation on a field in the Imperial Valley in southern California. This type of irrigation is more efficient than flood irrigation that is popular in this region. Still, in the high temperatures of this desert region a lot of the water evaporates, leaving the salts, that are dissolved in the Colorado River water that is used, on the soil.

The institute has not asked that question in the past, said PPIC spokeswoman Linda Strean.

California is mired in its fourth straight year of severe drought. While not going so far as to say climate change has caused the drought, recent scientific studies have said global warming exacerbates the extreme high pressure systems that block rainfall in the Western United States.

PPIC’s past surveys have found strong support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including majorities across party lines a decade ago who favored California’s landmark emissions reduction law, AB32. That law requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

It was signed into law in 2006 by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“A strong partisan divide has opened up since then,” the institute observed in its release.

Now, 79 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of independents favor the law compared with 46 percent of Republicans, the institute said.

The poll also found that large majorities of Californians favor new, more aggressive goals for combating climate change.

Eighty-two percent of those polled said they support a proposal to require half of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. And 73 percent favor cutting petroleum use in vehicles by 50 percent.

Those are key pieces of Senate Bill 350, a bill introduced earlier this year by Senate leader Kevin de Léon.

Other findings from the PPIC survey include:

• 88 percent of adults favor building more solar power stations in California.
• 78 percent want to boost tax credits and other incentives for rooftop solar panels.
• 49 percent favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 38 percent are opposed.
• 56 percent oppose increased use of fracking to extract oil and natural gas. It’s the highest level of opposition since PPIC started asking about it in 2013.
• 53 percent approve of Gov. Jerry Brown’s job performance, while 47 percent approve of the way he handles environmental issues.
• 39 percent approve of the California Legislature’s job performance.
• 57 percent approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance.
• 29 percent approve of Congress’ performance.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

But we haven’t seen some crucial context about Brown’s latest energy policy and about how the state has done in meeting the primary original goal of AB 32, the landmark 2006 state law that dictates the use of a cap-and-trade system in which emission credits are bought and sold to try to limit the gases that are believed to contribute to global warming.

The first is that business groups listened to the governor’s speech last week and came away believing that as with fracking, he is signalling he’s not necessarily in sync with the National Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club. This is from a new story in the trade publication “Inside Cal EPA,” which is not available free online:

As the debate has begun, many industry groups are seeking to ensure that any new “second generation” climate and energy programs emphasize “affordable” energy, “achievable” goals, accountability for regulators and other similar approaches.

In his inaugural address, Brown appeared to acknowledge the industry concerns. “How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution. It will require enormous innovation, research and investment. And we will need active collaboration at every stage with our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and officials at all levels,” he said.

‘Industry groups welcomed Brown’s note of caution’

“Inside Cal EPA” reported that the governor’s green-energy speech was seen as reassuring in what may seem as some unlikely corners.

Industry groups welcomed Brown’s note of caution, with California Manufacturers & Technology Association President Dorothy Rothrock underscoring Brown’s remarks by saying “our efforts to inspire technologies to reduce climate change emissions must do so without harming the vibrancy of our economy, so we must ensure that we control costs for manufacturers and not further increase the already highest electricity rates of any industrial state.”

 That’s not how the governor’s speech was described in newspaper accounts.

Meanwhile, the coverage of the speech outlining a policy billed as a follow-up to AB 32 didn’t provide much historical context for the original measure. It imposes the cap-and-trade system as part of a requirement that the state get one-third of its electricity from cleaner-but-costlier sources by 2020. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former state Senate President Darrell Steinberg, among many others, now consistently depict the law as having a primary intention of helping California develop green jobs and green industries.

But the first four “findings and declarations” in the text of the law don’t mention economic development as a goal at all. Sections 38501(a) and (b) outline the threat that global warming poses to California’s environment and core components of its economy.

AB 32 text: It will have ‘far-reaching effects’ on world

And the next two sections make explicit AB 32’s primary goal.

(c) California has long been a national and international leader on energy conservation and environmental stewardship efforts, including the areas of air quality protections, energy efficiency requirements, renewable energy standards, natural resource conservation, and greenhouse gas emission standards for passenger vehicles. The program established by this division will continue this tradition of environmental leadership by placing California at the forefront of national and international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

(d) 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.

The law did go on to say that AB 32 would help California’s tech economy by positioning the state to benefit from “national and international efforts to control greenhouse gases.”

But that hasn’t happened since 2006. Instead, as former Obama economics adviser Larry Summers wrote recently in The Washington Post, the rest of the world mostly gave up on a cap-and-trade approach as clunky and inefficient in reducing greenhouse gases. A simple carbon tax is viewed as a much smarter approach than the one California adopted with the stated intent of changing the world.