California Governor Says ‘This Is a Damn Climate Emergency’

California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing to speed up his state’s effort to fight climate change as wildfires rip through the region at a record pace and a 1,000-mile sheet of smoke drives air quality to dangerous levels.

“This is a climate damn emergency, and it’s real,” Newsom said in a briefing Friday from a fire zone in Butte County, surrounded by charred trees and shrouded in smoke.

His comments came as the air quality across the U.S. West deteriorated in the wake of record-breaking wildfires that have consumed more than 3.1 million acres in California and 1.4 million acres in Washington and Oregon. But the move may garner pushback as California’s aggressive push toward clean energy in recent years was partly to blame for the state’s August blackouts, the first rolling outages in 20 years.

Newsom said Friday he’s tasked the head of the California Environmental Protection Agency and the natural resources agency with reviewing the state’s climate programs and finding a way to achieve 100% clean energy sooner than 2045. “I think 2045’s too late,” Newsom said.

The air quality index in Eugene, Oregon, neared the ceiling set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday while Portland and Seattle had the worst air quality among major world cities, according to IQAir AirVisual pollution data.

The gloom will last into the weekend before a Pacific storm bringing rain to coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest and winds in Northern California may push the smoke eastward, according to the National Weather Service.

While the weather system might move the smoke, there’s also the risk that winds could fan the fires further, especially over the Sierra Nevada mountains, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento.

Earlier this week, a wind storm prompted utilities in California and Oregon to proactively shut down power lines lest they be toppled by high winds and ignite new blazes.

“The moisture is good for fire suppression, but the winds are not,” Chandler-Cooley said.​

​There are no critical fire weather conditions present across the U.S. and none forecast through the weekend, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center said. However, low humidity in many areas of the West and high temperatures mean the risk of fire spreading will remain.

The highest chances for rain will be in Oregon and Washington, said Bryan Jackson, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

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