In apparent anticipation of the 2028 presidential election, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been cultivating an image as the “anti-Trump.”

But on nuke power and renewable energy, Gavin and Donald are soul mates…to our universal danger and detriment.

Trump loudly hates wind and solar, but loves fossil fuels and atomic energy. 

Newsom paints himself green. He loudly favors banning new gas-fired cars in California after 2035.

But he’s killed the landmark plan he signed in 2018 to phase out California’s last reactors at Diablo Canyon. He’s also gutting the state’s once-booming renewable industry, even sending his attorneys to fight solar installers in court. 

The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the regulators' decision.

Both Donald and Gavin grovel before a fossil/nuke industry desperate to delay the booming global transition to a green-powered Earth. 

Thus the Trump/Newsom Energy Plan: Kill renewables, push nukes.

Worldwide, nearly all new-built energy capacity is now wind, solar, geothermal and battery backup.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586

The transition to a Solartopian Earth is powered, in part, by green-leaning activists terrified by an over-heated planet and the next nuclear catastrophe…but more significantly by an undeniable economic imperative.

All fission reactors burn the earth at 300 degrees centigrade. Fusion might work at 150 million degrees centigrade, about ten times hotter than the sun’s core. Accidents at either could threaten our survival. 

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/nuclear-power-reactors#:~:text=A 

But what’s really killing nukes is the plunging cost of wind and solar, which now supply electricity far cheaper than existing or promised commercial reactors. They can come on line far quicker than any proposed reactors. When the sky is dark and the wind is still, they can now be amply backed by advanced batteries.

At night, wind power in west Texas is now “too cheap to meter.” So is central California’s solar juice at mid-day.

But Trump’s anti-green antics nationwide, in tandem with Newsom’s in California, have killed the early American lead in the epic green boom now sweeping the global energy industry. 

China’s global exports in solar panels, wind turbines and advanced lithium batteries now dwarf those of the US. So does the cheap renewable energy from wind and solar China reaps at home, giving it a long-term competitive advantage we may never overcome.

Trump has also gutted the US electric vehicle industry. 

Newsom loudly defends it in California. But China’s cheaper, faster-to-charge EVs are burying the fossil car market everywhere but here. Their much-loved BYD, for example, now sells worldwide for less than a third the domestic price of inferior American-made competitors.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/cars/china-byd-profile-tesla-rival-intl-hnk#:~:text=You can't buy one in America&text=In the world of electric,in annual sales last year.

Trump, Putin, the Saudis and their ilk are desperate to cash out their “stranded” planet-killing coal, oil, gas and uranium inventories before they’re forever buried by renewables.

Newsom‘s pro-nuke war on solar serves that agenda. While funneling $11 billion in over-market charges for Diablo’s PG&E owners, he’s already driven scores of California’s solar companies into bankruptcy while killing at least 17,000 installer jobs. 

From a global green leader with 2 million solar rooftops, Newsom has rendered California a fossil-nuke dinosaur whose unbearable electric rates cloud its economic future. 

Democratic Governors in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and more are following Newsom’s path by backing nukes, even to the point of advocating insanely expensive, untested attempts to re-start reactors that have already shut.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/palisades-three-mile-island-duane-arnold-nuclear-reactor-restart-holtec-nextera-constellation-nrc/730393/

Meanwhile Trump just fired one of five Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners. Another has resigned. With zero technical expertise, DOGE’s 32-year-old Adam Blake has ordered the NRC to slash its staff and “rubber stamp” all industry attacks on atomic safety. Averaging 42 years of age, our 94 licensed US reactors are obsolete, uninsured, unregulated disasters in progress.

Had Russia’s huge recent earthquake struck any of them, including the two Newsom has kept open upwind of Los Angeles, much of our nation would now smolder in radioactive ruin. 

But the Trump-Newsom fossil/nuke decimation of our renewable energy industry has already done that to our economic future. 

The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.