California is widely viewed as the country’s climate policy leader. But on several fronts, the state’s current approach is falling short.
That was the through-line of BESI’s April expert panel on the past and future of California climate governance, which you can now watch in full on YouTube.
The state met its 2020 emissions targets years ahead of schedule, but is off track for 2030. Its energy prices are among the nation’s highest, a burden that falls hardest on low-income residents. And its signature vehicle-emissions program is in legal limbo, under attack from the Trump administration and Congress.
Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, traced many of California’s problems to what he called the ‘tinker-bell’ theory of climate politics: clap loudly enough, and the policy will work out. A political culture that stifles dissent, he argued, has propped up programs like the Low Carbon Fuel Standard — which raises pump prices without delivering meaningful environmental benefits — while crowding out the harder reforms needed to actually reduce vehicle travel.
Nuin-Tara Key, Chief Operating Officer at California Forward, gave the pathology a different name: ‘greenwishing,’ or setting an aggressive target and hoping it materializes. California has led on regulation, she argued, but has not done the harder work of building a decarbonized economy that delivers for every region of the state.
Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA, defended California’s ambitious targets but argued that, absent durable federal action, the state can no longer rely on greenhouse-gas emissions standards to decarbonize transportation. Her alternative: Promote electric vehicles as a tool for meeting ozone standards under the Clean Air Act. This, according to Carlson, would put California on firmer legal footing.
In terms of broad governance questions, the panelists agreed that CARB has been asked to do too much. The agency is highly capable at regulating tailpipe emissions, but has struggled when handed cap-and-trade markets, complex programs like the LCFS, and land-use planning. Decarbonizing an entire economy is an economic, technical, and political project — and California has loaded much of it onto an air quality regulator.
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