Quotes of the Day

Environmentalists are great at visualizing catastrophe — just see An Inconvenient Truth — but even the most doom-filled green would have had a difficult time imagining the past 12 months. From the debacle of the hacked Climategate e-mails to the bitter disappointment of Copenhagen to the slow death of carbon cap and trade in the Senate, the past year has mostly been one of reversals for the U.S. environmental movement.

The midterm elections aren't looking any better. Tea Party-backed candidates not only oppose cap and trade, they question the reality of climate change. (Ron Johnson, the Republican candidate who may unseat Senator Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, chalks up any climate change to "sunspots.") Even many Democrats are running away from climate and energy legislation — Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for Senate in West Virginia, filmed an ad that shows him actually shooting a bullet into a cap-and-trade bill. (That's pandering to two constituencies with one bullet!) And fossil-fuel companies are flexing their political muscle, flooding conservative candidates with quantities of cash that environmental groups can't possibly match.

But it's a different story in California, where a coalition of Hollywood celebrities, philanthropists and tech billionaires is fighting to save a favorite piece of climate policy and backing its efforts with millions of dollars in campaign donations. The battle is over Proposition 23, a ballot initiative that would all but repeal California's landmark climate-change law. And unlike in much of the rest of the country, in the Golden State, the greens look to be winning — in campaign cash and at the polls. "The coalition we've put together to fight Prop 23 is the new face of the environmental movement," says Annie Notthoff, California advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "This is enough to actually make a difference in the political process."

Here's what Proposition 23 would do. In 2006 — with the support of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, perhaps the last green Republican left — California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as AB 32. The law requires the state to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — roughly a 25% cut off business-as-usual numbers — and empowers the California Air Resources Board to create the policies to reach that goal. Essentially, AB 32 did for California what the cap-and-trade bills rejected by the U.S. Senate would have done for the nation as a whole: chart a path to a low-carbon economy.

AB 32 was always controversial, with opponents claiming that the bill would raise energy costs and drive businesses out of California, and supporters arguing that it would kick-start the state's nascent clean-tech industry. So it's not surprising that in California — with its grand, if dysfunctional tradition of direct democracy — a pair of conservative state assemblymen would eventually produce a ballot initiative like Proposition 23. The initiative wouldn't repeal AB 32 — rather, it would suspend it until California's unemployment level had fallen to 5.5% or lower for four consecutive quarters, on the grounds that the state wouldn't be able to afford action on climate change until the economy improved.

Sounds somewhat reasonable. Except that as Schwarzenegger and other opponents of the initiative point out, California's unemployment is currently at 12.4%, and it hasn't been at 5.5% or below for an entire year since 1980. That means that if Prop 23 passes, it would essentially end AB 32. "It's an attempt to kill an energy revolution under way in California," says Tom Steyer, a financier and the co-chair of the No on Prop 23 campaign.

Unsurprisingly, the supporters of Prop 23 don't see it that way. To them, California's economy is far too weak to justify a pioneering law on climate change that might raise energy prices and — according to advocates — cost more than a million jobs. (Which is probably why they've termed it the California Jobs Initiative, while opponents of Prop 23 call it the Dirty Energy Proposition.) "The regulatory environment in California [already] makes it the worst place to do business," said James Duran, the founder of a California human-resources company, at a recent debate on Prop 23. "Local businesses are going away to Nevada and Asia because of the additional costs they are being subject to."

It's the same argument that opponents of a national cap-and-trade bill made in the Senate this year: it's too costly for a country just emerging from a recession. It's not surprising, then, that fossil-fuel companies are spending millions to support Prop 23, just as they fought to kill national cap and trade. Kansas-based Koch Industries and Texas-based oil refiners Valero and Tesoro have contributed nearly $10 million to the cause. And the fact that most of the money for Prop 23 has come from oil companies from outside the state hasn't escaped the notice of Californians. "Valero and Tesoro want to stop the movement from old energy to new energy because it means lost market share," said Schwarzenegger, who has pinned his legacy on his climate actions. "Does anybody really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?"

It's a little unfair to accuse Valero and Tesoro of being antigreen carpetbaggers — both companies operate refineries in California and employ thousands of workers in the state. But what's really interesting about the Prop 23 battle is that it reverses the narrative found elsewhere in the midterms season. The No on Prop 23 campaign has received more than $30 million in donations, more than three times what its opponents have raised. That money has come from a mix of sources. Steyer — a longtime environmentalist — himself has given $5 million, while the National Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups have collectively donated around the same amount. Greenish celebrities have gotten in on the action — Hollywood director James Cameron, a longtime environmentalist, has given $1 million, and other stars have donated their time in robocalls and TV spots.

But around a third of the money against Prop 23 has come from high-tech titans like venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and John Doerr. While peer pressure probably plays a role — in California it is definitely not cool not to care about climate change — the tech players are essentially doing the flip side of what the oil companies are doing: spending money on politics to protect their financial interests. Nine billion dollars has been invested in the clean-technology market in the state, and, according to one estimate, half a million Californians now work in clean tech or green jobs. This isn't just about saving the trees: there is major money at stake over California's climate politics, and the "good guys" aren't shy about spending millions to get their way.

It can be a bit dispiriting to think that green forces have raised millions to defeat a ballot initiative that, even if they beat, will just maintain the status quo. California will still be a lonely outlier, and environmentalists will have to grapple with the fact that there continues to be no strong national policy on energy and climate — and depending on how the midterms go, that might not change for a long time. But the fight against Prop 23 could represent a rallying point for greens. "If we defeat Prop 23, we will build a stronger coalition going ahead," says NRDC's Notthoff. "We have built a coalition that is broadly engaging and can keep pushing forward to build a clean-energy future." And they learned this lesson: it's good to have the rich people on your side.

• Bryan Walsh
• In California, a coalition of celebrities, philanthropists and tech billionaires is fighting to save a favorite piece of climate policy by defeating Prop 23, which would all but repeal the state's landmark climate-change law