Written by by DAN MORAIN at calmatters.org
As the Trump administration pulls back on environmental enforcement, former Gov. Jerry Brown and China’s top climate change official have formally launched a California-China Climate Institute. Brown calls it a way “to keep doors open” with a global power and a response to environmental “malfeasance” in Washington.
As world leaders gathered Monday for a United Nations summit on global warming, former Gov. Jerry Brown and China’s top climate official formally launched a California-China Climate Institute to research ways to combat climate change.
Brown, who was to speak by phone from California, announced the initiative with China’s Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs Xie Zhenhua in New York, where officials from 60 countries were convened for a United Nations Climate Action Summit in advance of the U.N. General Assembly.
Brown, who made the fight against climate change a signature issue of his second stint as governor, will partner with Xie in overseeing the institute to be housed at UC Berkeley, his alma mater. The goal, he said, will be to encourage climate action through research, training and collaboration — a contrast to Trump, whose administration is engaged in a trade war with China and who last week referred to its government as “a threat to the world.”
In an interview with CalMatters, Brown said the research initiative was less about politics than about addressing a crisis he has repeatedly referred to as “existential.” However, he did note the president’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama, and the increasingly fraught relations between the Trump administration and China.
“As storm clouds continue to darken relations between China and the United States, climate change is a way to keep the doors open,” Brown said. “We are going to do something important, during this rather dismal state in our mutual relationship.”
President Trump’s stand on climate change, Brown said, is “bordering not only malfeasance but is almost criminal behavior.” His decision to pull out of the Paris Accord is “worthy of condemnation by decent people everywhere.”