California governor Gavin Newsom endorses global fossil fuel phaseout

The leader of the world’s fourth biggest economy, California governor Gavin Newsom, has explicitly endorsed a global phase out of the fossil fuels that drive climate breakdown.Newsom told the Guardian that California is “100%” behind the efforts of the so-called Santa Marta coalition, a group of more than 50 countries that includes many of the world’s largest economies, to transition away from oil, gas and coal toward solar, wind, batteries and other non-carbon energy sources.Speaking at the Cop31 UN climate summit on Thursday, Newsom said: “When you have a product that is obviously superior, which clean energy is for the climate and the economy, why wouldn’t you make that shift as quickly as possible?”As the head of America’s most populous and economically powerful state, Newsom is the most prominent US politician at Cop31, a process the administration of US president Donald Trump continues to boycott.Newsom, a Democrat, is widely expected to run for president in 2028. His statement raises the possibility that the US, the world’s biggest economy and largest historical emitter of planet-warming gases, could join the Santa Marta coalition if he wins the presidency two years from now.More than 80 countries wanted last year’s COP30 to begin to develop a global “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels. A handful of petrostates led by Saudi Arabia blocked that effort, relying on the disputed notion that decisions at UN climate summits can only be made by consensus. Undaunted, countries favoring a roadmap met in April in Santa Marta, Colombia, to begin designing a phase out on their own.“Love it,” Newsom said of the challenge that this Santa Marta “coalition of the willing” is posing to the US and other states intent on keeping the world burning fossil fuels.An oil refinery near Salt Lake City, Utah. Photograph: VW Pics/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesThe coalition is in effect no longer allowing petrostates to employ procedural tricks and endless talk to prevent what scientists say is imperative: rapidly phasing out fossil fuels. Instead, this critical mass of countries, which includes Germany, France, Brazil and The Netherlands – with additional countries, perhaps including the UK, expected to join later in Cop31 – is proceeding on its own with roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels, hoping that its example and economic power will lead others to follow suit.“You don’t ask drug dealers to vote for Prohibition, and you won’t get petro-states to agree to phase out fossil fuels,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of The Maldives, who once convened a cabinet meeting underwater to dramatize the plight of low-lying island nations like his. “Countries wishing to phase out fossil fuels should just go ahead and do it,” Nasheed told the Guardian.Newsom’s statement could add momentum to a CopP31 summit that has been widely expected to yield modest progress at best. The governor’s comments follow two political earthquakes that also raised hopes of a new era in global climate politics. First came the surprising re-election of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil in October, then the crushing rebuke of Trump and his Republican Congress in the US midterm elections in early November.What makes the Santa Marta coalition’s vision more than a pipe dream is the coalition’s economic might. Collectively, the 80-plus countries that wanted a phase out roadmap at Cop30 amount to the biggest economic superpower on earth.If the coalition can begin implementing a credible transition away from fossil fuels, it “would send an unmistakable message that the age of oil, gas and coal is ending, and the smart money is shifting,” Mohamed Adow, director of the nonprofit Power Shift Africa, said in an interview. Governments and financial markets around the world would be put on notice that staying invested in fossil fuels will be an increasingly risky proposition that could leave them holding trillions of dollars of stranded assets.Thus far, Germany, the world’s third biggest economy, has committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045. France, the world’s sixth biggest economy, and The Netherlands, the 18th biggest, have released phase out roadmaps as well.Environmental activists march during the Global Climate Strike in downtown Chicago, Illinois, on 15 September 2023. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/AFP via Getty ImagesCalifornia’s clean energy track record aligns with the one policy goal that, analysts say, Cop31’s final agreement might endorse: a commitment to obtain 35% of the world’s energy from electricity by 2035. California’s economy has run on 100% clean electricity nine out of every 10 days during much of 2026, with batteries emerging as “a game changer”, as Newsom described it. As the costs of clean energy continue to fall, Newsom expects more counties to follow California’s example because “the markets are moving in our direction”.The midterms also brought to power scores of climate champions at the state and local level. In Texas, the US’s second largest state economy after California, the new governor is Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who shunned contributions from the fossil fuel industry that has long dominated her state. In all, 29 states will have Democratic governors who, among other things, could block datacenters.Humanity is in “a final battle against the evil forces” trying to keep the world burning fossil fuels, said Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research. As the Nepal glacier disaster and 50,000 extreme heat deaths in Europe this summer illustrate, climate breakdown is already wreaking terrible damage. Nevertheless, Rockstrom added, “89% of citizens across the world trust science [and] want action. We are a majority power that can have confidence we have a collective global community that really wants this to succeed--and that it isn’t too late.” Mark Hertsgaard is the executive director of Covering Climate Now and the environment correspondent for the Nation. He has covered UN climate summits since the 1992 Earth Summit