350 Humboldt

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350 Humboldt and Climate Action California successfully moved Air Resources Board to defy staff and require regulation of dairy methane.

By filing a legal petition with CARB asking for regulation of dairy methane and by meetings with CARB Board members 350 Humboldt and Climate Action California, the statewide organization we work with, was able to counteract CARB staff reluctance to regulate methane from the powerful dairy industry.

On Friday, the ARB Board approved a resolution that included this provision:

Election News with a Climate Focus

Locally, Eureka voters rejected Rob Arkley’s bid to pave over affordable housing despite Arkley’s 1.5 million dollar campaign of disinformation!

In Arcata climate champions Stacy-Salazar and Schaeffer won; Serna might still.

In Eureka climate champion Scott Bauer won as did climate advocate Katie Moulton.

The $10 billion Climate Bond (Proposition 4) passed.

Our statewide affiliate, Climate Action California, supported 15 incumbents for the California Legislature who all won. Of the tight races where they contributed money and publicity to climate advocates four won, four lost, and two are still uncertain.

Climate Cabinet reports: In North Carolina, we successfully broke the GOP supermajority, restoring the Democratic governor’s veto power, a vital backstop for climate protections in the state. Our state level candidates massively outperformed the top-of-ticket, especially in areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene.

In the state of Washington, voters rejected a ballot initiative aimed at repealing the state’s carbon cap policy, preserving one of outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature accomplishments and setting the stage for a broader linked market with California and Quebec as soon as late 2025. Initiative 2117, which would have repealed Washington’s carbon cap and banned future implementation of a similar program, drew “no” votes from 62 percent of voters. The policy was important enough to California that Newsom rallied with Inslee last month in Seattle to defeat the ballot measure.

Berkeley, one of California’s most liberal cities, overwhelmingly rejected a tax on natural gas consumption in large buildings. The money would have funded incentives for electric appliances.

In San Francisco, a controversial proposal to convert two miles of waterfront highway into a public park open to pedestrians and bikers, and closed to cars, appears likely to pass.

Residents of California’s Sonoma County rejected Measure J, which would have outlawed certain large farms — operations that produce lots of water and air pollution, including carbon. [Especially methane.]

Utah residents elected John Curtis, a Republican who says he wants to tackle climate change, to the Senate seat being vacated by former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Curtis defeated a Democratic climate activist who accused him of pandering to the fossil fuel industry.

A ballot initiative in Honolulu, Hawaii, creating a climate resiliency fund passed, according to initial results as reported by the Honolulu Civil Beat. Nearly 52 percent of voters cast their ballots in favor of establishing the resiliency fund, with money for the project coming from existing property tax revenue.

On Tuesday, Louisiana voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment that requires any revenue received by the state from renewable energy production to be deposited into Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund. More than 73 percent of voters cast ballots to approve the amendment, according to the Associated Press.

A ballot measure in South Dakota aimed at easing the construction of carbon dioxide pipelines was squarely rejected by the state’s voters on Tuesday. Dubbed the “Landowner Bill of Rights” by its advocates, around 60 percent of voters cast ballots to reject Referred Law 21. The law had been passed by state legislators earlier this year, but a grassroots group of South Dakotans amassed 31,000 signatures to force the issue to a ballot measure, effectively overriding lawmakers.

Republicans ended the Democratic trifectas in the governments of Minnesota and Michigan, delivering a decisive blow to progressives in their effort to combat climate change. [But not before Minnesota passed the most progressive climate legislation in the country.]

In Minnesota, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to continue allocating at least 40 percent of state lottery revenue to an environmental and natural resources fund and to set up a new community grant program for environmental education.

OTHER NEWS

[Rhodium Group, a very well-respected climate modeling group, put out a report with projections of emissions and temperatures  for four scenarios. Here are their conclusions: ] “We find that while we have successfully avoided the most catastrophic temperature rise projected just a decade ago, we are very unlikely to be on track for keeping temperature rise below 2°C, absent accelerated policy and innovation. The good news is that if countries chart a path to meeting their own nationally-determined mid-century net-zero or carbon neutrality targets, the likelihood of keeping global mean temperature rise below 2°C rises from less than 7% to as much as 68%. If remaining countries adopt net-zero by 2070 targets and countries update their existing carbon- neutrality targets to include all GHGs, that likelihood rises to an astonishing 96% and puts 1.5°C within reach (67% chance) by century’s end.”

1.55C –

The global average temperature in 2024 will likely be this much above pre-industrial levels, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday. This year will be the first to exceed the ideal 1.5C target set at the Paris climate conference in 2015.

The 10 deadliest weather disasters since 2004, including three tropical cyclones, four heatwaves, two floods and a drought, killed at least 570,000 people, and a new study shows how all of them were intensified by global warming, “caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal and deforestation.” In a press briefing on the new study, by World Weather Attribution, an international research group, the authors emphasized that the total death toll is a major underestimate. Many heat-related deaths, possibly running into the millions, are not reported officially and don’t show up in the International Disaster Database, especially in poorer countries that are most vulnerable to high temperatures.

South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled that part of the country’s climate law does not conform with protecting the constitutional rights of future generations, an outcome local activists are calling a “landmark decision”. The unanimous verdict concludes four years of legal battles and sets a significant precedent for future climate-related legal actions in the region. The court found that the absence of legally binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions for the period from 2031-49 violated the constitutional rights of future generations and failed to uphold the government’s duty to protect those rights. The court said this lack of long-term targets shifted an excessive burden to the future. It gave the national assembly and government until 28 February 2026 to amend the law to include these longer-term targets. The decision echoes a similar ruling by Germany’s federal constitutional court in 2021, which found the country’s climate law lacked sufficient provisions for emission reductions beyond 2030, potentially infringing on the freedoms of future generations.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee greenlights the proposed Horse Heaven Hills wind facility in the southern part of the state and urges regulators to streamline turbine permitting, saying it is essential to meeting “urgent clean energy needs.”

“The ongoing increase in extremes is like watching an avoidable car crash in slow motion. Our infrastructure and civilisation are based around a climate that no longer exists.” Dr John Marsham, professor of atmospheric science at University of Leeds, speaking about Spain’s devastating floods.

The Denver Police Department added 27 electric bicycles to its patrol fleet.

Carbon Brief’s team of specialist journalists at the COP 16 biodiversity summit published a 13,000-word summary explaining all the key outcomes. The article highlighted that, by the summit’s end, just 44 out of 196 parties involved – 22% – had come up with new biodiversity plans. Additionally, the CB team held two webinars – one in English and one in Spanish – discussing the summit’s outcomes.

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Take Action

In the wake of Trump’s election and the likelihood that he will try to push back on the energy transition (among many other regressive actions) what can we do to be effective? Ayana Johnson, a scientist and activist, has given us tools for figuring out our place in creating a new world. Check it out at: https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/climatevenn

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