Why California Is Still a Climate Bellwether

It goes without saying that California can’t replace the federal government. But as the largest and most economically prosperous state in the country, its position is consequential. As companies try to parse the signal from the noise and determine the future of climate policy and demand for clean technologies, the federal government is just one indicator. Leaders now need to interpret a range of signals from governments moving in different directions. And California makes the case better than any other state that climate policy will continue in the U.S.

“You have a federal government that’s really trying to send market signals away from this,” Wade Crowfoot, California Natural Resources Secretary, told me last fall. “But you also have the rest of the world moving in this direction, as well as a bunch of American states.”

There was never any question from the outset of the second Trump Administration that it would take a hostile approach to states with aggressive climate policy. Almost immediately, the administration pulled back climate funding that had been directed to states. And it successfully pursued a reversal of the federal waivers that allowed California to enforce its own vehicle emissions standard.