Exhaust fumes blown into the sky. (credit: MIT News)

Last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issued a proposed plan (PDF) to get California’s greenhouse gas emissions down to 40 percent below what they were in 1990 by 2030. The plan expands California’s current goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to parity with 1990 levels by 2020. CARB says the state is on its way to meeting the latter goal and suggests the former goal will be reached by continuing the state’s cap-and-trade market and pushing for millions of zero-emissions vehicles on California’s roads.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration issued a freeze on grants and contracts under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last night, which ProPublica reports could hold up toxic cleanups and water-quality testing. Myron Ebell, a climate change denier and the Trump transition team’s EPA lead, told ProPublica that the freeze was not unusual. “They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” Ebell said.