California: only words?

Surprising departures from the California Air Resources Board

As I was having a quick look at the Los Angeles Times yesterday, I stumbled across two highly intriguing articles, reporting the almost simultaneous departures of two top officials of the California Air Ressources Board.

I would probably not have found the story appealing if it hadn't been for the fact that it seemed to involve a deep rooted conflict between the top officials of an agency in charge of monitoring and regulating greenhouse gases emissions in California and the now famous Governor who succeeded in making the issue one of the Golden State's top priorities.

The impressive leadership of California

As anyone in America, I have of course heard quite a lot about California during the last months. I followed the legal battle opposing the Environmental Protection Agency and the States in favor of a regulation of cars greenhouse gases emissions, where California, as the first State to implement such a regulation in 2002, was quite naturally under the spotlights. I also read about the Global Warming Solutions Act, effective since January 2007, that aims to reduce Californian emissions to the 1990 level by 2020. I finally heard of local initiatives, like the ban on plastic bags adopted by the city of San Francisco at the beginning of the year. As a whole, I concluded that California was probably the leader of climate change actions in America.

Could it have been only a public relations campaign?

But I now start wondering whether these climate actions should not be seen for an important part of them as a big public relations coup. Until now, most of Governor Schwarzenegger's actions have indeed been focused on driving the spotlights on the (revolutionary) steps taken by the State to deal with climate change. However, most of them still remain quite academic. And his recent conflict with the top officials of the Air Resources Board seems to indicate that the concrete step is not necessarily going to be an easy one.

Robert Sawyer, former head of the Board, said that he had been fired by Schwarzenegger after having pushed for more aggressive actions to curb greenhouse gases emissions. The Governor's administration officials replied that he had actually been fired for not being tough enough. This version could have been believed if it wasn't for the departure of the Board executive director, Catherine Witherspoon, less than a week later, saying that she resigned because the very same administration was pressuring her and her staff to soften the regulation measures planned for the construction industry.

Knowing that the construction industry offered millions of dollars to the Governor during his electoral campaign, one will easily understand that Schwarzenegger might be keen to ensure that regulations don't get too tough for these precious allies. Let's see during the next months whether the actions announced by the Californian Governor are indeed real.