State leaders, especially those with ambitious climate goals, are trying to decide between slowing climate change and the cost of living, especially on an ever-warming planet.
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In California, Democrats’ grip on the state legislature took a slight hit last November when Republicans gained a handful of seats amid rising concerns about the cost of living. Now Democrats in Sacramento say reducing costs is their top priority. But that could force some big changes in California’s nation-leading efforts to fight climate change. From member station KQED, here’s Guy Marzorati.
GUY MARZORATI, BYLINE: Southern California legislator Jacqui Irwin can easily list the ways that the effects of climate change are hitting the state.
JACQUI IRWIN: Cycles of intense flooding.
MARZORATI: Historic droughts.
IRWIN: Rising seas that threaten our coastlines.
MARZORATI: Unprecedented heat waves.
IRWIN: And closest to home for me, devastating wildfires.
MARZORATI: Those fires, like the ones that tore through Los Angeles earlier this year, are making life more expensive for all Californians.
IRWIN: Whether through rising utility bills…
MARZORATI: Because power companies are raising prices to update their equipment and limit the risk of starting wildfires. On top of that…
IRWIN: …Insurance premiums.
MARZORATI: Which are going up for homeowners to cover the massive losses insurers like State Farm are incurring in these disasters.
JAMES GALLAGHER: Poll after poll has shown this is the No. 1 issue for California voters – the cost of living.
MARZORATI: That’s James Gallagher, the Republican leader in the State Assembly. His party sees an opportunity to use anxiety over costs to chip away at the supermajorities Democrats hold in both houses.
GALLAGHER: We need to do something. We need to act urgently on this issue, and Republicans are prepared to do so.
MARZORATI: But Republicans still have no real leverage at the California capitol. It’s Democrats who are now facing the challenge of weighing affordability against another top party priority – reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening these climate disasters. And that balancing act could result in changes to the state’s landmark climate initiative, known as Cap-and-Trade. That program is a key way states like California and Washington have come to fight climate change on their own, apart from the federal government. Here’s how it works. Cap-and-Trade starts with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says Meredith Fowlie of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley.
MEREDITH FOWLIE: We set a target. You know, California has some emissions targets that say, we want to reduce our emissions by X percent by this date.
MARZORATI: That creates a cap – a statewide limit on pollution. Then California requires companies to buy and trade credits that allow them to pollute under the cap, creating a market for carbon.
FOWLIE: You can think of a carbon market like an auction.
MARZORATI: And those auctions raise a lot of money for California, with around 3- to $4 billion a year flowing into state coffers. Michael Wara, a climate research scholar at Stanford, says right now, the state spends most of that money to further reduce carbon emissions.
MICHAEL WARA: In California, we invest a lot of money in high-speed rail.
MARZORATI: In building housing near train and bus stops.
WARA: And lots in NN EVs.
MARZORATI: But the question in front of lawmakers…
WARA: Is whether that approach is sustainable or whether we need to be thinking about giving money back to people.
MARZORATI: That could mean taking some dollars away from transit and housing and instead giving it back to Californians to help pay for the rising cost of things like electricity or gas. Those are the tradeoffs facing California lawmakers as they seek to balance global climate leadership with an electorate already feeling the cost of a warming planet.
For NPR News, I’m Guy Marzorati, in San Jose.
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