Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a sweeping package of climate and environment bills aimed at reducing the cost of electricity, stabilizing gasoline prices and propping up California's struggling oil industry. At a bill signing ceremony at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Newsom told state lawmakers and representatives from labor, business, climate and energy groups that the package was a compromise, designed to push California toward a clean-energy future while still ensuring the state has enough affordable gasoline to meet drivers' needs.
The issue's macro-politics are that while gas-emitting industries and business groups favor its renewal as a predictable way of meeting emission reduction goals, environmental groups see it as business buying exemptions from pollution. They would prefer direct company-by-company regulation. Within that conflict are other issues, such as steadily dropping proceeds from the emission auctions, which emitters with vital products should be given permits without cost, and how auction revenues should be spent.
