California To Launch Its Own Satellite, Governor Announces

LOS ANGELES, CA — Gov. Moonbeam is at it again. Gov. Jerry Brown brought Friday's climate change summit to close with an out-of-this-world announcement: California is going to launch its own satellite, a piece of space hardware designed to pinpoint and track pollution in realtime.

What a difference 30 years makes. The announcement earned him praise, and it further positions California as a leader in the battle to slow down climate change. But when he first floated the idea of a state satellite decades ago, critics dubbed him Gov. Moonbeam, and the name stuck.

“We’re going to launch our own satellite — our own damn satellite to figure out where the pollution is and how we’re going to end it,” Brown told the crowd of local and international leaders in wrapping up the summit in San Francisco Friday.

According to the governor’s office, the state will team up with San Francisco’s Planet Labs to launch a satellite designed to pinpoint and track emissions that could alter the climate. The Los Angeles Times quoted the the governor’s office claiming the technology could, “pinpoint — and stop — destructive emissions … on a scale that’s never been done before.”

The launch is likely years away. The California Air Resources Board is developing the monitoring technology that will be used.

The dramatic announcement capped a summit where private and government leaders from around the world drew a line in the sand, proclaiming that the federal government’s agenda of rolling back environmental protections won’t slow down states and industries determined to fight climate change.

Though a state satellite has long been an ambition for Brown, the concept of a pollution-tracking satellite is being spearheaded by environmentalist groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, which will launch a satellite in 2021 targeting the emissions 0f the world’s oil and gas producing facilities, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We need to see who is emitting how much greenhouse gas,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, told the newspaper. “Having an eye in the sky allows us to find out who is releasing how much.”

In addition to the satellite, Brown also made headlines this week when he signed a bill that aims to make California derive all electricity from clean sources. He and other California officials framed the efforts as a battle for the fate of the planet with the Trump administration on the other side.

“We will not take responsibility for all the unwanted hot air blowing out of Washington, D.C., when it comes to this particular issue,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said.

“In California, it’s not just about fighting,” Becerra added, according to Politico. “It’s about winning, and that has to be our motto.”

Photo: California Gov. Jerry Brown (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)