Jerry Brown's holy war on Donald Trump
At the Vatican, the California governor rips the president's climate policies as a 'lie within a lie.'
By DAVID SIDERS 11/05/2017 07:12 AM EST
VATICAN CITY — California has opened a new front in its war on Donald Trump — the Vatican, where Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday sought to enlist the Catholic Church in his effort to undermine the president’s climate policies abroad.
Brown, addressing a somber gathering of scientists, politicians and religious leaders here, rebuked Trump’s rejection of mainstream climate science as a “lie within a lie,” urging religious establishments to help “awaken the world” to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The conspicuous repudiation of the president, in this center of Christendom on the eve of next week’s international climate talks in Bonn, Germany, served to underscore Brown’s role as one of the most prominent figureheads in the anti-Trump resistance. But it also highlighted California’s deep antipathy toward the president on a global stage, allying the nation’s most populous state with the international community against the backdrop of simmering tension between the White House and Pope Francis on climate change. The pope, who did not appear at the conference, implicitly criticized the president in October for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, a decision that weighed heavily over the gathering.
Brown wasn’t the only Californian emphasizing the American divide over global warming — or the state’s determination to blaze its own trail on the issue. Rallying the same audience the previous day, California Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de León cast California’s leaders — and not, explicitly, Washington’s — as the “faithful stewards of God’s creation.”
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https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/05/trump-california-climate-jerry-brown-244551