As climate journalists, it’s pretty common for us to see oil companies or other large polluters fight back against climate proposals, sometimes stopping these rules dead in their tracks. One of the biggest climate setbacks in recent memory, however, wasn’t delivered by fossil-fuel giants or heavy industry, but, rather, a restaurant group in California.

I became intrigued by the emergence of the California Restaurant Association as a surprisingly powerful climate foe, so I decided several months ago to dig in and better understand how and why this came to be.

Back in 2019 the city of Berkeley became the first in the country to ban the extension of gas infrastructure into new homes and buildings. It’s a basic first step: The combustion of gas inside of buildings for heating and cooking is a large contributor to climate change. In California, it generates about 33 million metric tons of heat-trapping emissions, which is roughly equivalent to the entire climate footprint of Hong Kong. There’s just no feasible way to get the dramatic carbon reductions needed to avert catastrophic warming without shrinking the combustion of gas inside of buildings.

More than 100 cities, counties and states have followed Berkeley’s lead. But the California Restaurant Association, which represents about 20,000 eating establishments, filed a lawsuit to stop Berkeley’s law. Even though the rule wouldn’t require any changes to existing restaurants, they argued their members prefer to cook with a flame and these local rules are preempted by federal energy laws.

After a four-year legal battle, the restaurants prevailed and Berkeley in March agreed to cancel its ordinance. Now, as our story examines, the gas industry and its supporters are planning to wield the restaurants’ legal victory to beat back many of these other local rules enacted after Berkeley’s.

However, the story I learned goes back much further than five years. In order to understand recent events, you have to look back to the 1980s and 90s, when restaurant associations around the country rallied to the aid of tobacco companies, as they sought to beat back indoor smoking bans. The science was clear and the public-health risks were immense, but groups representing dining establishments fought for years for an embattled industry, before one particular restaurant association finally broke ranks with Big Tobacco.

Read the full story here.

Source bloomburg.com