Gavin Newsom moves to international stage to tout California’s climate efforts in Scotland

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will travel to Glasgow, Scotland, next month for the United Nations climate conference, his first major conference abroad since becoming governor in 2019.

World leaders will meet at the conference, which runs Oct. 31 through Nov. 12, to discuss progress on achieving their climate goals and set more ambitious targets to lower global emissions. Newsom will attend the conference from Nov. 1-3, his office said.

Newsom will attend the conference alongside his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and several members of his administration, including Environmental Protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld and Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. More than a dozen Democrats in the Legislature also plan to attend, according to Newsom’s office.

Newsom’s announcement that he will attend the conference comes on the heels of his administration releasing a draft rule that would ban new oil drilling within 3,200 feet – more than half a mile – of schools, homes and other sensitive buildings like hospitals. Newsom has also previously set ambitious targets for California to combat climate change, including signing an executive order to phase out sales of new gas-powered cards by 2035 and directing his state agencies to plan to phase out oil extraction in California by 2045.

Newsom has long made combating global warming a centerpiece of his agenda. He speaks often about how California’s devastating wildfires, floods and droughts are being exacerbated by human-driven climate change and the urgency for governments to act to reduce carbon emissions.

Newsom spoke at a different international climate conference in New York in 2019, where he spoke about California as a model for transitioning to a clean energy economy.

Newsom took his first official trip abroad as governor in April 2019, when he traveled to El Salvador. He characterized that trip as a fact-finding mission to understand the factors spurring Salvadorans to leave their home country and migrate to California and other parts of the United States. On that trip, he met with the leaders of the country in the capital San Salvador to discuss tourism and other issues, and also traveled to the village of Panchimalco to see traditional art and performances.

The largest state in the U.S., California would have the world’s fifth-largest economy if it were a sovereign nation. Newsom follows in the tradition of his predecessor Jerry Brown, who also sought to have an international influence on climate policy and traveled to China to discuss climate policy with President Xi Jinping.

Newsom’s announcement frustrated some Republicans, who said the governor has too many problems in California that need immediate attention. The California GOP has been highly critical of Newsom’s climate change agenda, which it argues will kill jobs and drive up energy costs in the Golden State.

“If it had anything to do with climate change, they could’ve done it on Zoom. Because we’ve been Zooming for a year and a half,” said Assemblyman Thurston Smith, R-Apple Valley. “Once the governor and his delegation get back to California they’ll get to work on solving the problems in California.”

Hanney Wiley of The Bee Capitol Bureau contributed to this report.