By David Roberts
Kevin de León, probably responsible for more enacted climate policy than any other single legislator.
California Gov. Jerry Brown (click here) kicked off a week full of climate change news with an announcement, and boy was it a doozy: at once surprising, strange, and stunning. It was so out of left field and yet so profound in its implications that few in the media, or even in California, seem to have fully absorbed it yet.
To explain, we must begin with a little backstory.
This week, from September 12 to 14, the Global Climate Action Summit will take over San Francisco. The big climate shindig — three days of meetings, exhibitions, and glad-handing with big names in climate policy from around the world — will, among other things, serve as a kind of capstone celebration of Brown’s climate legacy.
Brown had hoped to begin the week by signing a high-profile package of energy bills. The one he most wanted to sign, into which he had poured the most political capital, was a bill that would link California’s energy grid to a larger Western power market. The one for which he had shown the least enthusiasm, into which he had put the least capital, was a bill that would commit California to 100 percent use of zero-carbon electricity by 2045.
The latter bill, shepherded by state Sen. Kevin de León, passed the legislature. The former bill did not. Initially there were rumors that Brown was threatening to veto de Leon’s bill if the regionalization bill wasn’t also passed in a special session, but that was probably a bluff, and so on Monday, more or less as expected, Brown signed the bill, SB 100, into law....
