PD Editorial: California’s time to lead on climate policy

On Friday, one day after President Donald Trump renounced the Paris climate accord, Gov. Jerry Brown left for China.

The timing of his trip was coincidental. It also was serendipitous.

With Washington retreating from its commitments, and Trump on a quixotic crusade to revive the coal mining industry, California, more than ever, must assume national leadership on climate policy.

Brown responded to Trump’s announcement by forming a new climate alliance with two fellow governors. And with his weeklong swing through Chengdu, Nanjing and Beijing, he can reassure a global audience that most Americans remain fully committed to preventing a climate catastrophe.

Brown also has a golden opportunity to showcase the clean energy policies that are delivering economic and environmental dividends in California - and to enlist more support for a separate international agreement to reduce carbon emissions enough to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, which scientists have identified as the tipping point for severe climate change.

The pact, initiated in 2015 by Brown and leaders of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, has since been signed by mayors, heads of state and other representatives of 170 jurisdictions on six continents, representing more than 1.1 billion people and $27.5 trillion in GDP.

“Trump is AWOL,” Brown said in a statement issued Thursday, “but California is on the field, ready for battle.”

It’s true that no single state, even one that boasts the world’s sixth-largest economy, can match the leadership potential of a united America.

But with the president abandoning a leadership role on climate policy, California has the gravitas - and the track record - to step in.

The state has been a leader on air quality standards for decades, requiring that vehicles emit less exhaust and that appliances operate more efficiently, and by directing utilities to replace coal with cleaner fuels.

It’s been more than a decade since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a watershed law committing California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by expanding the use of renewable energy. Brown has signed legislation setting still higher standards, and he started a cap-and-trade system that put a price on carbon pollution.

This year, the state has set new records for peak use of renewable energy, and a bill passed this week by the state Senate would require utilities to produce 100 percent of electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2045.

Along the way, California has enjoyed solid economic growth. Over the past seven years, 2.3 million new jobs have been created, many of them in clean energy and related industries. The state’s unemployment rate fell by half, an enormous budget deficit was erased and the state’s credit rating was restored.

China, where smog can be denser than the worst day in Los Angeles in the 1960s, knows what California has accomplished and committed itself to the Paris accord’s targets. So has India and every other eligible country, except Syria, Nicaragua and, now, the United States.

Brown’s trip is a reminder to the world that most Americans are committed to renewable energy, clean air and other sound, science-based policies to ease the impact of climate change. Let’s hope that message finds its way to the White House before it’s too late.