Climate Change
Climate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Housing and Climate
Fifth in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor.
(This climate issue brief is authored by CLEE’s partners at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation.) California faces complex and integrated challenges of unaffordable housing and climate change. Failure to build adequate housing supply has resulted in high prices that have pushed home buyers and renters to locations that are further from jobs, schools, and …
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CONTINUE READINGPolicy Implications of Accelerating Warming
If warming is coming more quickly, we need to pick up the pace on policy responses.
There seems to be an emerging scientific consensus that the rate of global warming is rising. After screening out the effects of natural factors like El Niño, scientists have concluded that the pace of warming has roughly doubled since the 1970s. What does this tell us about policy? Some of the implications are more obvious than others, and at least one implication may be unsettling for some climate advocates. Most obviously, we need to accelerate our efforts to carbon emissions. We will be closing in on possible tipping points faster than expected. Climate impacts that we might have expected twenty years from now could hit in half that time.
CONTINUE READINGClimate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Building Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency
Fourth in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor.
(This climate issue brief is authored by CLEE’s partners at the Building Decarbonization Coalition and Caliber Strategies.) As California pushes to decarbonize, its homes and commercial buildings are a central driver of the state’s affordability, energy and infrastructure challenges. Building energy consumption (both electricity to power appliances and gas to power furnaces and stoves) is …
CONTINUE READINGClimate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Water
Third in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor
California’s next Governor will need to grapple with a complex array of local, state, and regional water issues. Climate change, shifting population dynamics, and a changing economy are stressing California’s water systems and intensifying conflict over water resources. Floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe. And there are no major new sources …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Tangled Web of the Boulder v. Suncor Cert Grant
Pass me some aspirin. Attorney General Rob Bonta might want some, too.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the Boulder v. Suncor Energy case, one of the growing set of state-law nuisance and consumer protection cases filed by states and municipalities against fossil fuel companies for harms from climate change. The Court will review the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to allow the case …
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CONTINUE READINGHas Trump Actually “Driven a Dagger Through the Heart” of Climate Policy?
Lee Zeldin
Don’t jump to conclusions based on the Administration’s spin operation.
there’s a good chance that the repeal of the Endangerment Finding will be reversed by the courts. That would ground federal climate policy even more firmly in the law, so the Administration is taking a gamble. Saying they’ve one is as premature as a roulette player who’s just put all their chips on one number announcing that they’re now rich before the wheel has even started turning. Even if the courts do uphold the repeal, a lot will depend on just what legal theory the judges adopt. Some legal theories would slam the door on efforts by future Democratic presidents. Others would leave room to move forward.
CONTINUE READINGHot Take on the Endangerment Repeal
It’s a tweaked version of arguments that the Supreme Court rejected in 2007.
EPA’s argument for repealing the Endangerment Finding is basically a rehash of legal arguments that were rejected by the Supreme Court in 2007. These arguments haven’t improved with age. Notably, EPA doesn’t dare contest the science.
CONTINUE READINGMaintaining California’s Environmental Leadership
California’s 2026 Gubernatorial Race
California will elect a new governor in 2026. The primary is June 2 and the top two candidates will face off on November 3. If you are in California, make sure you are registered to vote! This election comes as a pivotal time for California’s environmental leadership. California’s next governor must be ready to step …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Trump Administration is Squandering Our Natural Heritage
Proposed Endangered Species Act regulations are designed to stifle protections and provide developers even more power.
The world’s ecosystems have been subject to an increasingly dangerous cocktail of stressors from land and ocean over-development, invasive species, and pollution. But rather than stem the tide of these harms, the Trump administration has resurrected several regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act designed to stifle species’ protections and provide land developers even more power to …
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CONTINUE READINGMilestones in State Climate Policy
The first efforts to clean up the grid date back forty years, but state climate policy really got moving at the turn of the century.
The federal government’s interventions in climate policy have been erratic, driven by political polarization and alternating control of the White House. In contrast, state governments have engaged in steady campaigns to reduce carbon emissions. Some people seem to think this has been a recent innovation, but it has now been ongoing for a generation. Here are some the key milestone along the way, closing with Trump’s pledge to bulldoze state policies that don’t fall in line with his priorities.
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