Last week, the Trump Administration weakened the Endangered Species Act, making the broadest changes to the bedrock environmental law in decades.
The Trump administration’s new rules make it harder to consider the future impacts of climate change when officials are considering whether a species is threatened and should be placed on the endangered species list. It also introduces an economic analysis, which is meant to calculate the impact of protecting a species on the economy.
During a call with reporters, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra promised he’d take the federal government to court, saying California doesnât pick a fight every time the Trump administration takes action only when officials deem it ânecessary.â
While Becerra may not be filing suit over each of Trumpâs action, it certainly seems like it.
Less than 24 hours after he promised legal action over endangered species, Becerra gathered reporters again to announce that California is suing the Trump administration over another environmental law, a rollback of Obama era rules to reduce pollution from power plants.
The latest suit over the Clean Power Plan raises the number of times that Becerra has sued the Trump administration over an environmental issue to 27, according to a tracker by the nonprofit, nonpartisan CalMatters, a Sacramento-based news site. That’s almost as many as all other lawsuits he’s filed against the administration, at least 29 in total, on subjects ranging from immigration to health care.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Obamaâs policy mandated that states curb pollution from power plants and aimed to reduce U.S. power sector emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, but it also allowed states to carve out their own plans.
Trumpâs EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler often criticized the Obama policy, saying it would require Americans pay more for energy. Under his plan, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, the agency will still regulate emissions by drastically lowers the bar to about a percent by 2030.
KQED Science reporter Kevin Stark covered both stories and spoke with KQED’s morning radio news anchor Brian Watt about how the new federal policies will impact California.
Scientists Are Concerned
A lot of media attention is on the megafauna, but there are more plants that are threatened in this state than animals.
We hear a lot about the big animals â the grizzlies, the bald eagles, the California condor but the scientists that Iâve talked to are more concerned about Californiaâs biodiversity.
In Northern California. We have the old growth forests. The redwoods and Douglas fir are habitat for a lot of threatened critters. Their threatened status extend protections to the ecosystem.
On the Central Coast, there are specific manzanita that are facing pressures from wildfire. So the climate change analysis is really important here.
On the economic analysis, the law expressly prohibits agencies from using economics in their determination if a species should be listed as threatened. The Trump administration is saying that agencies can do the analysis, provide it to the public, but they wonât use the study in a species listing determination.
California Law
Californiaâs environmental laws are strong, but animals donât care about state boundaries.
The endangered grey wolf for example. It just walked from Oregon. It’s protected here, but if it walks into another state, California can’t protect it (although, the state is trying, wildlife leaders are pushing back on the federal governmentâs proposal to delist wolves from the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48 states).
The same thing goes when we’re talking about emissions the Clean Power Plan. California’s part of a regional grid system. So states around us are burning coal. California might have strong laws about reducing emissions but other states don’t. Also about half of California’s land is public land. Some of that is managed by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, there’s military land â Camp Pendleton and China Lake Naval Air Station â and endangered species doesn’t know whether or not it’s on military land or if it’s on state land.
One last point on that is that California has more endangered species than in any other state besides Hawaii.
California’s Legislature
Becerra promised that California would push back on the fed’s plans for environmental deregulation through any and all means.
California Legislature is considering a bill SB 1, which provides that any federal environmental or worker safety standard in place and effective when Trump took office will remain enforceable under California law.
This is sometimes called the Trump insurance bill, or the Trump backstop bill. It would apply to both the Clean Power Plan and the Endangered Species Act. Right now, the bill is an appropriation committee, and it’s working its way through the Legislature. The bill must move beyond that committee by August 30.
Why Now?
Itâs no coincidence that this is all happening right now. The rapid-fire pace of the lawsuits is all about the next presidential election.
The Trump administration wants to see all of these legal questions answered by 2021.
Either we have a new president which can reverse all of these executive orders or Trump is beginning his second term and his administration wants to have the legal disputes settled.
All of these lawsuits are either going to be heard by the Supreme Court or by a panel of judges at the D.C. Circuit Court. But these proceedings take a long time. So they’re getting the lawsuits filed now.
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