California Governor Gavin Newsom took California's clean energy leadership to the United Nations on Wednesday, telling a UN climate panel that the state will keep fighting for cleaner air and clean energy regardless of who occupies the White House.
Newsom was the highest-ranking U.S. official to join the United Nations Secretary-General's High-level Event on Climate Action and the Just Transition panel. He said California is proving that climate action and economic growth can go hand in hand, while accusing President Trump of serving as "the fossil fuel industry's puppet."
"Some of us are as dumb as we want to be, subsidizing and doubling down on stupid. Subsidizing the very problem we're trying to fix," Newsom said in his remarks. "That fourth-largest economy, California? Runs every day on 2/3 clean energy. In fact, so far this year, 9 out of 10 days, the fourth-largest economy in the world is run on 100% clean energy."
Newsom said California has grown its economy by 40% since 2019 while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by double digits, arguing that no jurisdiction in America and no democratic jurisdiction in the world has grown faster. "We're proving the paradigm that you're not sacrificing your economic future to change the way you produce and consume energy," he said.
The governor also pointed to California's role in hosting the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, and described the state as 27% foreign-born. "We don't tolerate our diversity; we celebrate our diversity. That's what has allowed us to become the fourth-largest economy in the world," he said.
Newsom said he looked forward to returning to the United Nations "with the fresh air of progress versus the stale air coming out of Washington, D.C."