Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024-25 aims to address a roughly $38 billion deficit with proposed cuts and funding delays affecting most areas of general fund spending – including the historic $54 billion California Climate Commitment.

The Governor’s budget proposal would attempt to preserve $48.3 billion for climate – still a historic investment. However, the relatively modest amount of these cuts proposed does not tell the whole story:

All told, cuts, delays, and funding shifts in this budget proposal affect a total of $9.8 billion – nearly a fifth of the historic $54 billion California Climate Commitment enacted in 2022.

We are encouraged to see that Governor Newsom’s administration is seeking to maintain over 89% of the original $54 billion, but his budget proposal shows how the state’s current approach to climate budgeting is becoming increasingly unsustainable as the costs of disasters rapidly increase but the pace of investment in solutions slows.

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