As the largest wildfire of the year rages across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is doubling down on an aggressive strategy to combat climate change — one that also appears to involve boosting his national profile.
Newsom on Saturday proclaimed a state of emergency in Mariposa County due to the Oak Fire near Yosemite National Park, which since igniting on Friday has burned through more than 15,600 acres of bone-dry fuel and was 0% contained as of Sunday night, according to Cal Fire.
California has secured federal support to help defray the costs of battling the blaze, which as of Sunday was being attacked by nearly 2,100 firefighters. More than 6,000 people were under evacuation orders, nearly 3,000 PG&E customers were facing power outages and 15 structures had been destroyed or damaged with thousands more threatened.
The Oak Fire marks the end of California’s relatively calm start to the fire season: Fewer than 34,000 acres burned statewide from Jan. 1 to July 19, the lowest total during that time period since 2009, according to a Mercury News analysis. Isaac Sanchez, a Cal Fire battalion chief: “People shouldn’t get complacent. If this was a baseball game, we are in the middle innings. There are still a lot of dry months to come.”
Newsom alluded to complacency at the national level in a Saturday letter to President Joe Biden, in which he slammed “uncooperative Republicans and a lone Democrat from a coal-producing state” (West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin) for holding “hostage” parts of Biden’s climate agenda.
Newsom added: “We want to reiterate our commitment to … finding new ways to work around those Senators who chose to keep their head in the sand instead of confronting the crisis we are all facing together. Partnering with California and other leading states and cities is now essential.”
As a proof point of what Newsom described as California’s world-leading action on climate, he cited a blueprint — released just the day before — to make the state’s ambitious climate plans even more aggressive.
In a Friday letter to Liane Randolph, who leads the powerful California Air Resources Board, Newsom outlined goals he said would add teeth to the state’s sweeping climate strategy, which regulators are set to consider formally adopting this fall. In so doing, he appeared to agree with activists who said the plan doesn’t go far or quickly enough in transitioning California away from fossil fuels. However, some of the strategies Newsom proposed, such as carbon capture, are unlike …