Spotlight on the Sunshine State: California set to become climate front line

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(David Callaway is founder and editor-in-chief of Callaway Climate Insights. He is the former president of the World Editors Forum, editor-in-chief of USA Today and MarketWatch, and CEO of TheStreet Inc. His climate columns have appeared in USA Today, The Independent, and New Thinking magazine).

It isn’t every day we have a tornado warning in San Francisco. In fact, we’ve never had one. Until over the weekend when a massive storm pushed through with 83 mph winds and the entire city was under alert for half an hour. Videos then emerged of a damaging twister actually touching down later in the day in nearby Santa Cruz.

Just another unprecedented climate event to add to the 2024 tally, but also perhaps a symbol of what’s to come in California as President-elect Donald Trump takes office. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, eyeing 2028, has pledged that California will pick up the climate gauntlet from President Joe Biden when he steps down. It won’t be easy.

One of Trump’s early attacks will likely be on California’s auto emissions standards, which Biden is expected to reinforce in coming days by granting the state permission to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. About a dozen other states hope to follow this lead but Trump said he will rescind the permission on his first day.

Emissions standards
At the same time, the Supreme Court has agreed to review a case in the New Year to decide whether oil and gas companies can sue California over its stringent auto emissions standards, which are higher than anywhere else in the country. And finally, a California law requiring large companies to report climate risk, the toughest in the country after federal attempts at such a law failed, is under fire after the state agreed to delay enforcing it for at least a year because companies said they aren’t ready.

All of this drama makes for a busy climate calendar here in California in the New Year and portends a shift in battle lines as Trump does his best to dismantle what he can of the electric vehicle revolution, which is very much alive here. None of it will stop people from buying electric cars as they get better and can run farther on a single charge. But it will be a national political fault line that will run right through to the midterm elections in two years.