Washington, California, New York announce formation of United States Climate Alliance

Fed­er­al­ism is com­ing to the res­cue of our plan­et, and not a moment too soon. Today is one of those days to be grate­ful to our founders for devis­ing a plan of gov­ern­ment that requires pow­er to be shared between the fed­er­al government.

We don’t usu­al­ly run press releas­es in their entire­ty. But we believe this one is worth shar­ing. It’s real­ly impor­tant news. It’s vital that peo­ple out­side of the Unit­ed States under­stand that the resis­tance to Don­ald Trump will not stand by as Trump and his regime attempts to abdi­cate Amer­i­ca’s moral leadership.

In response to Pres­i­dent Trump’s deci­sion to with­draw from the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment, New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Edmund [Jer­ry] G. Brown Jr., and Wash­ing­ton State Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee today announced the for­ma­tion of the Unit­ed States Cli­mate Alliance, a coali­tion that will con­vene U.S. states com­mit­ted to uphold­ing the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment and tak­ing aggres­sive action on cli­mate change.

“I am proud to stand with oth­er gov­er­nors as we make sure that the inac­tion in D.C. is met by an equal force of action from the states,” said Inslee. “Today’s announce­ment by the pres­i­dent leaves the full respon­si­bil­i­ty of cli­mate action on states and cities through­out our nation. While the president’s actions are a shame­ful rebuke to the work need­ed to pro­tect our plan­et for our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, states have been and will con­tin­ue to step up.”

“The White House’s reck­less deci­sion to with­draw from the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment has dev­as­tat­ing reper­cus­sions not only for the Unit­ed States, but for our plan­et. This admin­is­tra­tion is abdi­cat­ing its lead­er­ship and tak­ing a back­seat to oth­er coun­tries in the glob­al fight against cli­mate change,” said Gov­er­nor Cuomo.

“New York State is com­mit­ted to meet­ing the stan­dards set forth in the Paris Accord regard­less of Washington’s irre­spon­si­ble actions. We will not ignore the sci­ence and real­i­ty of cli­mate change which is why I am also sign­ing an Exec­u­tive Order con­firm­ing New York’s lead­er­ship role in pro­tect­ing our cit­i­zens, our envi­ron­ment, and our planet.”

New York, Cal­i­for­nia and Wash­ing­ton, rep­re­sent­ing over one-fifth of U.S. Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct, are com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the U.S. goal of reduc­ing emis­sions 26–28 per­cent from 2005 lev­els and meet­ing or exceed­ing the tar­gets of the fed­er­al Clean Pow­er Plan.

“The Pres­i­dent has already said cli­mate change is a hoax, which is the exact oppo­site of vir­tu­al­ly all sci­en­tif­ic and world­wide opin­ion,” said Gov­er­nor Brown. “I don’t believe fight­ing real­i­ty is a good strat­e­gy — not for Amer­i­ca, not for any­body. If the Pres­i­dent is going to be AWOL in this pro­found­ly impor­tant human endeav­or, then Cal­i­for­nia and oth­er states will step up.”

Togeth­er, New York, Cal­i­for­nia and Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sent approx­i­mate­ly 68 mil­lion peo­ple – near­ly one-in-five Amer­i­cans – and the states account for at least 10 per­cent of green­house gas emis­sions in the Unit­ed States. Cal­i­for­nia will con­tin­ue to work close­ly togeth­er with oth­er states to help fill the void left by the fed­er­al government.

With input from all par­tic­i­pants, the U.S. Cli­mate Alliance will also act as a forum to sus­tain and strength­en exist­ing cli­mate pro­grams, pro­mote the shar­ing of infor­ma­tion and best prac­tices, and imple­ment new pro­grams to reduce car­bon emis­sions from all sec­tors of the economy.

Now that the Alliance is formed, the next step is to get oth­er states to join and work on devis­ing an inter­state com­pact or some sort of oth­er agree­ment that com­mits the states to aggres­sive­ly reduc­ing emis­sions. States par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Alliance should aspire to meet high­er tar­gets than what the Paris accords envision.

Ore­gon, Vir­ginia, and Hawaiʻi should be invit­ed to join the Alliance imme­di­ate­ly. The num­ber of states with gov­er­nors who rec­og­nize the need for cli­mate action may grow fol­low­ing next year’s midterms, and there will be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther expand the alliance in defi­ance of Trump, Pruitt, and their minions.