With help from Alex Nieves

AND THE WINNER IS — Last week, while the legislature was in full end-of session scramble mode, we sent out a poll:

“Who are the biggest climate champions in the legislature right now?” we asked.

Before we get into the results, it’s important to note this was not a scientific poll or a real election by any stretch.

We suspect some enthusiastic supporters voted more than once, and we also added a candidate to the ballot mid-vote after a few lawmakers reminded us we left off a well-known climate champion.

Still — we do have some takeaways from the nearly 1,200 responses we received.

For one, there’s a lot of attention on the climate work being done by Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara). She co-authored SB 1137, a bill to phase out neighborhood oil drilling in the state that the industry is now trying to overturn with a ballot proposition. She also co-authored a bill to limit offshore drilling in California waters and others that have made her a thorn in the side of the state’s oil industry.

The California climate policy community is also behind Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who’s working on a big climate bond for the November 2024 ballot. Allen, chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, got a major plastics-reduction bill through last year after several tries. He passed another bill this year to strengthen the state’s authority over water rights.

And while she wasn’t on our original list, so many people wrote in about Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) that we added her to our poll on the second day. She’s introduced measures the last two years that would block the CalSTRS and CalPERS retirement systems from investing in fossil fuel companies, the most recent of which, SB 1314, is still alive in the Assembly. She also teamed up with Limón on SB 1137 and another bill to prohibit carbon capture technology from being used for enhanced oil recovery.

That said, everyone’s a winner. All ten of our nominees received votes of support. And one reader said they struggled to cast a vote because they just couldn’t decide between Sens. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).

There were also a few write-in candidates:

• Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), who authored legislation for California to achieve carbon neutrality and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2045
• Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who has courted controversy for his bill that would limit the ability to challenge housing projects under the California Environmental Quality Act
• Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), who is still revealing what kind of climate leader he will be but helped get Wiener’s corporate climate disclosure bill over the finish line last week

We also received hundreds of responses to our bonus poll question: Who do you think is the best candidate to replace U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein?

Again, this poll is not scientifically sound and is based solely on people who read this newsletter, but it’s no surprise that California’s climate policy community thinks it’s shaping up to be a competitive Democratic primary race between Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, with Porter and Schiff neck-and-neck for the lead. We also saw some write-in votes for candidates, who — as far as we know — aren’t even in the race: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

YOU TELL ’EM — California Gov. Gavin Newsom told world leaders Wednesday that fossil fuel companies have played them for fools and bought off politicians. Newsom said they must be clearer that “this climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.”

Speaking at a United Nations climate summit in New York, the governor also sought to invoke a bipartisan spirit over the proceedings. He name-dropped Ronald Reagan, who as governor created the California Air Resources Board, and Richard Nixon, a Californian who as president signed the federal Clean Air Act.

Newsom spoke after a series of other world leaders with similar views, including U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres who blamed the “naked greed of entrenched interests” for the world being decades behind in tackling climate change. “Humanity has opened the gates of hell,” Guterres said. He also called for putting a price on carbon.

Newsom has been upping his rhetoric against the oil industry this week in New York, while President Joe Biden focused mostly on his $370 billion climate law to ratchet up clean energy.

Over the weekend, for instance, after announcing his lawsuit against five major oil companies and their subsidiaries, seeking compensation for damages caused by climate change, the governor called out Mike Wirth, the CEO of California-based Chevron, by name and blamed his company for death and deceit.

“Decent guy, I’m sure — or I thought, before we filed the lawsuit and I finally understood more than I did before we put together all the evidence,” Newsom said.

METHANE MUTUALS — In other Climate Week news, Newsom announced a pact today to bring subnational governments together to collaborate on reducing methane emissions. It doesn’t establish any specific targets — there’s already a global goal under U.N. auspices to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 — but so far subnational governments from Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria and India have signed on.

A NEW WAVE OF WORKERS — The White House and five states are following California’s lead on creating a Climate Corps.

The Biden administration, Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah said today they would start giving stipends of up to $30,000 as well as scholarship funding through a partnership between AmeriCorps and private philanthropy. Fellows will participate in activities like urban forestry, wildfire and flood resiliency building, and composting.

California was the first to establish the program, in 2020, and is going to swear in its next class of 300-some fellows next week in Riverside — the biggest class to date, since the program got more funding this year (it’s at $23 million of state and federal funding combined).

“We’ve been working very closely with the White House on this,” Josh Fryday, California’s chief service officer, said in an interview. “I think they saw the success we’ve had in California the last few years and President Biden knew this is something we should be doing across the country.”

— Over half the warehouses in Southern California are not in compliance with the Indirect Source Rule passed two years ago to improve the region’s air quality.

— Bottled water company BlueTriton was ordered to turn off its taps after the state water board found it had illegally diverted millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest.

— As evidence mounts on pollution from tires, so do calls for regulatory action, thanks in part to a California rule to find alternatives to a particularly toxic tire chemical.