Affordability Concerns at Center of Cap

When California’s flagship climate program was last reauthorized in 2017, the biggest champions of cap-and-trade were looking to the future.

“This isn’t for me, I’ll be dead,” then-Gov. Jerry Brown thundered at a panel of state senators, as negotiations intensified that summer.

Brown’s goal was to forge a bipartisan coalition to limit planet-warming emissions, balancing the concerns of environmentalists and industry to solidify California’s global leadership and avoid the worst climate damages he foresaw: vector disease, mass migrations, and “Southern California burning up.”

Eight years later, the costs of climate change have arrived. Intense wildfires are driving up the price of electricity and home insurance for Californians already struggling with affordability.

Climate-fu