As Newsom Touts California Climate Record, Progress Is At Risk

The COP30 climate summit is entering its endgame in Brazil. But the US will have no influence over any international agreement as President Donald Trump’s administration declined to participate.

In that vacuum, California Governor Gavin Newsom eagerly seized the mantle of US leadership, boasting about his state’s strides in decarbonizing its economy and slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

“The United States of America is dumb as we want to be on this topic but the state of California is not,” Newsom said last week in Brazil. As the world’s fourth-largest economy, “we are going to assert ourselves, we’re going to lean in, and we’re ...