Newsom brings California to the heart of the Amazon — and the U.N. climate conference
California state officials are in Brazil for the annual United Nations climate conference. The visit highlights California’s role as a climate leader and supports its environmental policies, especially since the U.S. has no official federal delegation. However, some critics question whether the trip is worthwhile because California lacks the power to make international agreements.
In summary
California state officials are in Brazil for the annual United Nations climate conference. The visit highlights California’s role as a climate leader and supports its environmental policies, especially since the U.S. has no official federal delegation. However, some critics question whether the trip is worthwhile because California lacks the power to make international agreements.
California likes to think of itself as a nation — and this week, it’s acting like one. Gov. Gavin Newsom, top state officials and legislators are leading a delegation to the United Nations’ 30th Conference of Parties this week in Belém, a gateway to Brazil’s Amazon region.
The state has no seat in the rooms where nations will negotiate their commitments under international law to curbing greenhouse gases. But California and the governor are there anyway, to project his and the state’s climate message onto the global stage.
“The reason I’m here is the absence of leadership coming from the United States — this vacuum, it’s rather jaw dropping,” Newsom said Monday in São Paulo, speaking at the Milken Institute Global Investors’ Symposium. “Not even an observer; not someone taking notes.”
After the Trump administration withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement for the second time earlier this year, California was left symbolically standing in for a United States government.
Supporters say the annual global climate conference is worth it, pointing to policies inspired by and partnerships formed at past conferences. But environmental justice advocates question the value of these excursions, arguing the events are too distant and industry-driven to reflect frontline communities.
California’s presence on the world stage may matter more than ever, experts said — but the state can’t substitute for the world’s leading superpower. Although it’s Newsom’s first time at the summit, he has sent state representatives to every event since he took office.
“If we weren’t doing things like this, then the rest of the world would be even more puzzled as to what’s going on inside the United States,” said UC San Diego climate expert David G. Victor. “The symbolic value of showing that the United States has not completely abandoned climate and clean energy…is pretty important for the rest of the world, but there’s not a huge caloric value to it.”
International events influence state policy
California officials who attend the climate conference say they foster relationships with international leaders that influence policy, both through subnational agreements and through legislative efforts.
“Californians have been very clear that we also need to take actions … to combat climate change,” said state Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot, part of the delegation to Brazil. “And simply put, it doesn’t make any sense that all of the answers would be found in California.”
As a strategy to achieve its goals, California has signed dozens of agreements with other regional governments and some nations, including Mexico, Australia and Denmark.
In August, Newsom signed an agreement with Denmark committing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 — a goal established in an executive order and in state law — and to collaborate on ways to improve cyber resilience. In March, the state entered an agreement with the Mexican state of Sonora to expand renewable electricity generation and cross-border energy trade.
The state’s relationship with Denmark has helped California gain access to technology to better manage its water systems, Crowfoot added. Using that geophysical imaging technology, Stanford researchers were able to map the state’s groundwater system as part of a joint study.
Legislators say the climate conference itself has brought solutions from abroad to local problems.
Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat who represents Merced, said severe climate impacts to her region prompted her to look for answers internationally. In 2023, she traveled to the U.N. summit in Dubai – in part, she said, looking for climate solutions that would keep workers in her region employed as the state transitions away from fossil fuels.
“I’ve been concerned with the lack of investments that actually make a difference in rural and poorly resourced communities,” Caballero said. “So I was looking for alternatives.”
The Dubai trip inspired a number of bills, she said, including one that directs the state Air Resources Board to develop carbon capture and sequestration technologies to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals. Newsom signed the bill into law in 2022. Caballero said she has met with people from the Amazon who are affected by climate change, and “it was very moving,” she said.
“The impact we have on the world is tremendous, and we just need to be more sensitive to that.”
What’s in it for state leaders?
With the fourth-largest economy in the world, California wields clout even without being directly involved in global climate talks. Newsom is continuing a decades-long tradition of state governors who have used the U.N. summit as a chance to cement their status as climate leaders and substitute diplomats.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first California governor to attend the conference, flying to Copenhagen in 2009. Then, Jerry Brown attended the 2015 summit where the United Nations signed the Paris agreement, a legally-binding treaty aimed at limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. That year, Brown started the Under 2 Coalition, a group of 200 subnational governments that share knowledge with each other to work toward that goal.
It’s Newsom’s first time attending the international conference, but he has burnished his profile as a climate leader by travelling to other events.
In the past, Newsom has appeared regularly at Climate Week in New York City, where he told a United Nations summit in 2023 that “this climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.” This year, however, he has moderated his posture toward the fossil fuel industry, advancing legislation to expand drilling in Kern County and slowing certain regulations. In 2023, he also traveled to China to promote California’s zero-emission vehicle agenda.
He was named co-chair of the U.N. summit’s newly-formed Local Leaders Forum, a group of regional and state leaders that met in Rio de Janeiro the week before the conference to discuss subnational strategies to reduce emission.
So far at events around the conference in Brazil, Newsom has highlighted the state’s progress in deploying electric cars, extending its cap and trade program through 2045 and increasingly running the grid on renewable energy such as wind, solar, and battery storage.
“The state of California has been a consistent partner for a half century, and will continue to be for decades to come,” he said.
For Newsom, attending the conference is also about positioning himself as a global leader as he considers a 2028 presidential run.
Shannon Gibson, a University of Southern California professor who teaches global climate policy, said the U.N. summit offers a massive international stage, media coverage and access to world leaders that help Newsom advance his climate agenda.
It’s not a bad place for Newsom to showcase his presidential leadership abilities, she added.
“It’s the ability to network and rub elbows with high level leaders, prime ministers and presidents from all around the world,” Gibson said. “It does present an international stage where Gov. Newsom could take his domestic policies and advance them at that global level.”
Not everyone sees the governor’s global spotlight as a virtue. State Senator Tony Strickland, a Republican from Huntington Beach, said Newsom should be tackling the state’s affordability crisis instead of viewing every decision through the lens of a future presidential run.
“We have major problems here in California,” Strickland said. “We need a leader to solve these problems.”
Costs & Controversy
A private nonprofit tied to the governor paid for Newsom’s trip to Brazil. The non-profit helps fund a range of official travel and ceremonial events, drawing money both from his inaugural committees and outside donors.
The California State Protocol Foundation is a charitable nonprofit corporation whose purpose is “to lessen the burden on California taxpayers by relieving the state of California of its obligations to fund certain expenditures.” The Governor’s own inaugural committees have contributed at least $5 million since 2019, according to data from the Fair Political Practices Commission reviewed by CalMatters. The governor established inaugural committees to pay for events and official activities surrounding his 2019 and 2023 inaugurations.
The protocol foundation has drawn a range of outside donors to pay for state officials’ international travel – not just to climate conferences. The Hewlett Foundation provided $300,000 in 2023 to support the Governor’s climate-focused trip to China. The Los Angeles Dodgers contributed $25,000 in 2021 to help underwrite his State of the State address at Dodger Stadium.
“We don’t live in an ideal world,” said Jessica A. Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles and former president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. “On the one hand, you’re trying to protect our scarcest resource, which is taxpayer dollars,” she continued, “on the other hand, you are, of course, allowing private influence over public officials.”
Legislators said they cover their expenses to attend international climate conferences with campaign funds and their own money. And in 2021, two nonprofits, the Climate Action Reserve and the Climate Registry covered some costs for lawmakers to attend the event in Scotland.
That year, the Assembly covered the costs for a few security staff to accompany them – funded by taxpayer dollars. This year, there is no extra security or staff accompanying the two legislators attending: Senator Josh Becker, a Democrat from Menlo Park, and Senator Henry Stern, a Democrat from the Calabasas area.
Recently, environmental justice and indigenous communities have criticized the U.N.’s choices to hold events in regions that have an economic interest in fossil fuels: Dubai in 2023 and Azerbaijan in 2024.
This year’s conference is also controversial for some, because it’s located in populous but remote Belém, which some say lacks sufficient infrastructure. Attendees took multiple planes to reach the city, and hotel options are limited.
Caballero said she opted out of attending the conference this year, as she did last year, because of the length of the journey.
“I would go in a heartbeat,” she said, “if it weren’t for the inconvenient travel.”
Environmental groups are skeptical
Schwarzenegger was seen as a trailblazer when he first attended the U.N. conference. But more than a decade later, he offered a different perspective: bringing world leaders together to commit to the same goals year after year is a waste of time.
“The definition of insanity is you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results,” he said. “When it comes to the negotiations with the U.N., these COP kind of agreements, I think it’s set up the wrong way.”
Critics question the practical value of California’s presence around international climate talks. The state’s subnational agreements are largely aspirational. Environmental activists, who lack access to international talks and funds to attend conferences, raise concerns about how well state agencies represent local interests abroad.
“In a lot of ways, it seems like it’s a pretty performative meeting,” said Catherine Garoupa, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition and a member of the Air Resources Board’s environmental justice advisory committee. “I’ve never had a conversation or been consulted by anyone who participates in that forum.”
Jaron Browne, an Oakland organizer with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, traveled to Belém for the People’s Climate Summit, a parallel gathering where activists and Indigenous leaders called for fairer climate policies, stronger land protections, and accountability for major polluters.
Browne said that while California speaks with urgency on climate, its continued reliance on imported crude oil undercuts that message.
What communities near the fencelines of refineries and other industrial polluters want is to stop pollution at its source, said Browne. The bigger problem, he added, is that carbon markets like California’s cap-and-trade system let companies keep polluting while claiming progress by buying offsets or funding forest projects.
“Thank God we have a voice that is speaking about the urgency of the crisis, and that’s very important, and taking some really important progressive stances,” Browne said. At the same time, “we talk out of both sides of our mouths.”
