POLITICO: Democrats retreat on climate: ‘It’s a reversal that is dismaying to climate activists’ – Now ‘recalibrating on climate policies’ – ‘Pulling back on climate policies in the name of affordability’

“California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,” said Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air. “It’s questionable whether or not that leadership is still there.”

California leaders are still positioning themselves as the vanguard of the resistance to the president’s environmental rollbacks, and polls still consistently find voters believe addressing climate change is worth the cost. Gov. Gavin Newsom has sued to block Trump’s removal of California’s permission to enforce its clean car standards and vowed to extend a landmark cap-and-trade program imperiled by Trump.

But they’re in a far different position than during Trump’s first term, when they were signing deals with automakers to keep the state’s emissions rules afloat — and even two years ago, when they were taking on oil companies by threatening to cap their profits. It’s a reversal that is dismaying to climate activists, an outspoken part of the Democratic Party’s base. And it’s a trade-off — freighted with significant and potentially long-lasting policy implications — that party leaders are making in an effort to regain political strength.

“We’ve got some challenges, and so it just requires some new considerations,” Newsom told reporters last week, after his administration proposed steering clear of the oil-profits cap as a way to keep refineries open. “It’s not rolling back anything — that’s actually marching forward in a way that is thoughtful and considered.”

Other parts of the country are pulling back on climate policies in the name of affordability, too. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is delaying plans for a carbon-trading system and slowing enforcement of the state’s rules for clean cars and trucks, which follow California’s. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is similarly pausing on carbon trading. And in Congress, some 36 Democrats — including two from California — signed on to the effort to overturn California’s vehicle rules.

But California, as the state with the strongest suite of climate policies and a decades-long reputation of stalwart environmentalism, is now becoming an unlikely leader in Democrats’ pivot as they try to respond to cost-of-living concerns that they fret may have cost them the election.

“This is part of the Democrats’ doing some soul-searching and really trying to figure out what they stand for,” said Marie Liu, a climate-focused lobbyist and a former top environmental adviser to legislative Democrats.

Housing reviews, fuel standards, plastic rules targeted

Newsom and other Democrats last week infuriated environmentalists by punching exemptions for housing developments and other projects like health clinics and high-speed rail into a decades-old law requiring a wide range of projects to clear environmental reviews.

A separate push in the state Senate to dilute the state’s stringent fuel rules drew a rebuke from the head of California’s powerful Air Resources Board, who called it “irresponsible” in the face of a federal onslaught.

And Newsom in March ordered his recycling regulator to rewrite plastic waste reduction rules to lessen costs for businesses, which upset the state lawmakers and environmental groups who originally negotiated the waste reduction deal but energized business groups opposing similar rules in New York.

The backtracking reflects a pervasive sense that once-popular climate policies are exacting a political price by pushing up energy and housing costs, draining support from both Democratic candidates and climate policies themselves.

“For a lot of Democrats, the 2024 election was a reality check about the importance of cost-of-living issues and affordability for Californians,” said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California. “That’s given policymakers some pause about what is actually workable in terms of environmental policy.”

From Sacramento to Washington

Newsom and allies are retrenching in Sacramento as Republicans in Washington take aim at core California climate planks, like its longstanding ability to set tougher pollution limits.

Yet even on Capitol Hill, Democrats who typically decry Trump’s agenda have sided with Republicans who call California’s policies unsustainable. Rep. Lou Correa, who has said the 2024 election showed Democrats must heed cost-strained voters, and Rep. George Whitesides, who flipped a commuter-heavy Los Angeles district last cycle, voted to block Newsom’s order phasing out the sale of new entirely gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

Climate change has dominated Sacramento’s agenda in recent years. Newsom spent substantial political capital in 2022 to muscle through a sweeping set of environmental laws, reviving efforts that had formerly succumbed to resistance from the oil industry and its union allies. Newsom followed up by pushing to cap industry profits.

Not in 2025. “Affordability” has become the watchword for Democrats who saw inflation woes drive votes to Republicans across the 2024 ballot. In a poll presented to Assembly Democrats during a caucus meeting, cost of living led voters’ stated priorities. Climate change sat in last place.

Yet Liu warned Democrats were learning the wrong lesson by focusing narrowly on immediate concerns like gas prices at the expense of a larger effort to shift from fossil fuels.

“It’s easy to focus on the very short-term responses but not take the longer-term view,” Liu said, which would require “not just playing around on ten cents a gallon, but looking at the actual transition to cleaner alternatives.”

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“It’s one of the more disappointing turnabouts,” said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, whose group has advocated tougher oil industry rules. “We have backed down, and we may not be flying a white handkerchief, but it’s pretty close to white.”