California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a crackdown on oil and gas wells, a long-awaited move to protect public health that sets up a fight between environmentalists and labor unions allied with industry.
The governor's proposal — which comes just weeks after an offshore oil spill that fouled stretches of the Southern California coast — would require new wells to be more than half a mile away from neighborhoods, schools and other public areas. Officials said the policy would give California the strictest environmental standards in the country for fossil fuel extraction.
As the United States and nations around the world struggle to blunt the effects of rising temperatures and extreme weather, sweeping assessments released Thursday by the White House, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon conclude that climate change will exacerbate long-standing threats to global security.
Together, the reports show a deepening concern within the U.S. security establishment that the shifts unleashed by climate change can reshape U.S. strategic interests, offer new opportunities to rivals such as China, and increase instability in nuclear states such as North Korea and Pakistan.
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