Jerry Brown isn’t finished fighting climate change just yet.

The former California governor is launching a new partnership with China and UC Berkeley — the California-China Climate Institute — to research new solutions for cutting carbon emissions and averting the disastrous impact of global warming, he announced Monday.

“We want to provide a forum and an open line of communication between Americans and Chinese on one of the most important challenges we face,” Brown said in an earlier interview. The plan is to “do everything we can not only to contribute to China and California carbon reduction, but being a force for the rest of the world to emulate.”

The Berkeley institute, which is being funded by the Hewlett Foundation and other philanthropic groups, will bring together researchers at Berkeley and Tsinghua University, one of China’s top research institutions in Beijing and the alma mater of Chinese President Xi Jinping. They’ll help develop new climate technologies and policy plans and work closely with government leaders from both sides of the Pacific.

The unveiling in New York Monday was timed to coincide with this week’s United Nations General Assembly session, and featured Xie Zhenhua, China’s top official on climate change issues.

Brown made climate change a central focus over his most recent two terms as governor from 2011 through this January, strengthening the state’s cap-and-trade program, pushing to expand the number of electric vehicles on the road, and signing a law mandating California use 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.

He also worked to build ties between China and California on climate issues, visiting the country twice as governor. Brown met with Xi several times to discuss the issue, and signed a memorandum to create the joint institute two years ago.

In the wake of the election of Donald Trump, who’s questioned climate science and reversed a long list of federal programs designed to cut emissions, Brown redoubled his global efforts. He inked emission reduction deals with other countries and states and provinces around the world, and hosted a global climate summit in San Francisco last year.

“The world is goofing off, and the number one goof-off is Trump himself,” Brown said. “We can certainly fight him in the courts and do our best to get a saner human being in the White House, but in the meantime, California will continue as we have.”

The 81-year-old former governor, who hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate, said he liked what he’d read in a number of climate plans from the Democratic contenders, specifically mentioning Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals. But he said the next president needed to prioritize the fight to reduce carbon emissions above other concerns.

“Every day you wait, you make the problem all the more difficult, all the more expensive, with all the more suffering,” he said.

Speaking at the Climate Week NYC event, Brown’s successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, vowed to keep standing up to the Trump administration and continue Brown’s climate work.

“That’s California’s leadership — the fifth-largest economy in the world, a state that’s not just sitting back pointing fingers,” Newsom said. “We’re not bystanders, we have agency and we can shape this debate, like all of us, we can shape the future.”

Trump has argued that Obama-era climate rules need to be rolled back to help the U.S. economy. He’s delighted in bashing California’s Democratic leaders over the issue, tweeting last week that he was revoking the state’s authority to set stricter car emission standards to create “more JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”

The Berkeley institute is expected to work on issues like expanding the use of electric vehicles, implementing a cap-and-trade policy in China, and designing more effective clean electricity grids. One project that researchers could collaborate on, said David Ackerly, the dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources, is figuring out how to most effectively spread electric vehicle chargers and get more people to drive EVs at the same time — “a chicken-and-egg problem,” he said.

The new institute will launch at a pivotal moment for efforts to fight climate change in both China and the U.S. Scientists predict the world has only a few decades or less to avert a catastrophic rise in global temperature that would mean an increase in devastating hurricanes, sea level rise, droughts and wildfires.

Chinese government officials predict that the country’s emissions could peak in the next few years and then fall as more renewable energy comes online. But critics point out that China may end up exporting polluting industries and dirty power plants to other developing countries, even if domestic use of fossil fuels goes down.

The collaboration also comes at a time when U.S.-China tensions are at a high, with Trump escalating a trade war and raising a host of tariffs on goods. But Ackerly said he didn’t think that conflict had an impact on their work so far.

The country’s authoritarian government also makes it easier in some ways to pioneer policy changes to reduce emissions — although, Brown noted, the market still plays a big role.

“I once asked a high Chinese official who was more powerful, the Chinese Communist Party or the automobile, and he couldn’t answer,” Brown said.

Brown’s China collaboration will be the latest chapter of one of the longest careers in California politics. He also served two earlier terms as governor from 1975 to 1983, as well as mayor of Oakland and state attorney general.

“Every governor gets remembered for only one thing,” said Dan Schnur, a spokesman for former Gov. Pete Wilson. “Jerry Brown accomplished many other things over his four terms in office, but climate change is going to be the one thing that’s most associated with his image and his legacy.”

Brown — who isn’t a big fan of discussing his own legacy — said he didn’t have any regrets about climate policies he failed to pass during his years in Sacramento.

“If I could have done everything forever, that would have been rather miraculous,” he said. “We built civilization on oil, coal and gas — we’re not going to change it overnight.”