Governor

While in Beijing last month, Gov. Jerry Brown publicly promoted the fight against climate change. Just as important was the quiet attendance of AES, a major builder of fossil-fuel power plants in California.

Was the governor making plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, or was he making deals to build more climate-warming natural gas plants? Unfortunately, California’s transparency laws don’t ensure the disclosure of such backroom conversations.

Documents obtained by Capitol Watchdog reveal that Governor Jerry Brown is shopping cap and trade bill language directly from Big Oil's Power Point playbook to exempt refineries from air pollution regulation.

Brown has handed Big Oil a pen to rewrite the law so that it protects refiners from making deep cuts to climate-warming emissions. The legislation blocks powerful Air Districts in the Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin from setting tough limits on emissions, like requiring refineries to install pollution control equipment.

Four Democrats currently have the power to determine who really runs the state of California’s fossil fuel policies—policymakers or a major energy company named Sempra.

The litmus test: Whether these Democrats vote for SB 57, a bill authored by Henry Stern that requires the state and Sempra’s subsidiary Southern California Gas to reveal what caused the biggest methane well blowout in US history before the Aliso Canyon gas reserve is allowed to reopen.