As the White House has weakened environmental policies, California has charged in the opposite direction – and Gov. Jerry Brown has often played the role of both a champion of his state’s path and a vocal antagonist of the White House. | Stephen Lam/Getty Images Gov. Brown: Trump administration’s rollback of methane rules ‘insane’

Gov. Jerry Brown used the spotlight of a global climate change conference to excoriate the Trump administration for rolling back restrictions on releasing methane, calling the reversal “insane.”

“It borders on criminality,” Brown said to applause from an international audience of climate experts and government officials gathered in San Francisco.


As the White House has weakened environmental policies, California has charged in the opposite direction – and Brown has often played the role of both a champion of his state’s path and a vocal antagonist of the White House.

When California sued over the administration’s effort to blunt reductions in vehicle emissions, Brown branded then- Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt “outlaw Pruitt.” More recently, when Washington moved to revoke California’s authority to set more stringent emissions standards, Brown vowed to “fight this stupidity in every conceivable way.”

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Continuing its efforts to erode Obama-era environmental laws, the EPA is poised to dilute a requirement that energy companies check for methane leaking from new wells. The walkback is expected to result in hundreds of thousands of additional tons of methane flowing into the atmosphere.

Noting that methane is one of the more potent greenhouse gases – meaning that its release would accelerate the effects of climate change – Brown called the move “the most obvious and dangerous and irresponsible action by Mr. Trump.”

“That’s saying quite a lot,” said Brown, who has regularly clashed with Washington over environmental policies.

The governor didn’t restrict his criticism to Trump, lambasting Republicans in Washington for enabling the president’s environmental agenda.

“Unfortunately, his acolytes in Congress will probably cheer. So they’re cheering destruction on a large scale,” Brown said.

Brown’s remarks came a day after he signed a bill that would have California derive all of its retail electricity from clean sources by 2045, a landmark measure that Brown and his allies trumpeted as a sign of California’s climate progress even as Washington moves in a different direction.

Over the weekend the governor signed a pair of bills prohibiting new oil exploration off of California’s coast, lauding them as tools to counteract a Trump administration order opening coastal waters to more energy development.

