With President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate pact, the leader of the U.S. state with the strictest clean-car rules is turning toward Beijing in his longtime mission to stem automotive pollution.
California Governor Jerry Brown departs Friday for China, where he’ll urge the world’s most populous country and largest car market to take environmental cues from Sacramento, not the U.S. capital. Brown — an anti-smog crusader since a previous term as governor starting in 1975 — is now 79 with less than two years left to serve. His gambit in China could create an environmental legacy beyond what he could hope to accomplish in California itself.
“There’s so much propaganda and outright climate denial in Washington,” Brown, a Democrat who attempted runs at the U.S. presidency in three different decades, said in an interview last week. The trip to China is a way “to forge agreements that will counteract the misguided Republican efforts in Washington.”
“China is the world’s largest single market for electric vehicles today,” said Roland Hwang, director of the transportation program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. A California-like electric car sales mandate “in China will kick the whole global electric vehicle market into even higher gear,” he said.
‘Remain Vigilant’
Brown has vowed to fight attempts by the Trump administration to undermine the state’s stringent auto rules and to go to court if there’s a challenge to California’s 47-year-old permission to enact clean-air rules that are tougher than U.S. standards.
In the interview, Brown accused the U.S. auto industry of backing Trump, saying it hasn’t changed much since General Motors claimed in 1973 that it would go bankrupt if California forced the installation of catalytic converters.
“The leopard is not going to change its spots,” Brown said. “We have to remain vigilant.”
In separate statements, GM and Ford Motor Co. signaled that the Paris withdrawal may do little to sway their plans for current and future electric vehicles. Though neither addressed The pullout directly, Ford said climate change is real and GM said “international agreements aside, we remain committed to creating a better environment.”
Brown’s opposition to Trump’s policies could have political ramifications at home. “Climate change could be a unifying issue that pulls the Democratic Party together if the 2018 midterm elections become a referendum on Trump,’’ said Alan Baum, an independent auto analyst in Bloomfield Township, Michigan.