Here’s how some Gubernatorial candidates talked about environment at Health Matters forum

Nearly a dozen of California’s major health foundations hosted a gubernatorial candidates forum at UC Riverside last week. Broadcast live on NBC4 and Telemundo, the Health Matters Forum brought together four Democratic candidates — Xavier Becerra, Tony Thurmond, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Betty Yee — to discuss how they would tackle the state’s health, climate, and equity challenges.

Organizers said they chose the Inland Empire for its diversity and ongoing struggles with health care access and environmental impacts. 

Here’s how the candidates lined up on climate change and environmental justice.

Betty Yee

Yee said addressing climate change requires strengthening California’s public health system, which she called the foundation of all health care.

“The relationship between climate impacts and public health runs deep, especially here in the Inland Empire, where we saw some of the highest COVID rates and ongoing challenges like chronic health conditions and limited access to care,” Yee said.

She added that the state must pursue both short- and long-term strategies, which she says includes investing in emergency preparedness, building community resilience, and supporting industries and technologies that reduce pollution and help manage chronic health conditions.

Xavier Becerra 

Becerra said California’s approach to climate and development remains fragmented, with programs that often work at cross-purposes and end up in court rather than producing results.

“We have great programs in some of those areas, but they don't work together, and the result is sometimes they crash against each other, and we end up in court, and we spend lots of money going nowhere,” Becerra said.

As attorney general, he created the state’s Bureau of Environmental Justice to support disadvantaged communities most affected by pollution and poor planning. He said better statewide coordination on growth and development could prevent costly conflicts and ensure that building projects comply with environmental laws like CEQA and NEPA.

“We’re going to build, we have to build, but we have to build smart,” he said. “The only way to build smart is if we coordinate together as a state, not as separate communities.”

Tony Thurmond

Thurmond said his approach to climate change is rooted in personal experience, recalling two decades living and serving in a city heavily impacted by industrial pollution and asthma-related hospitalizations.

“Climate change is real,” Thurmond said. “I spent 20 years in a city surrounded by heavy industry, and for those reasons, I’ve spent most of my career holding polluters accountable — charging the biggest fees for those who harm our environment and calling for the closure of idle oil wells.”

He outlined a broad agenda that includes investing in renewable energy, teaching environmental stewardship in schools, and pushing CalSTRS to divest from fossil fuels. Thurmond also said the state must address sea level rise through smarter infrastructure planning and protect communities like the Inland Empire from pollution-driven development.

“We need fewer warehouses in the Inland Empire,” he said. “If we need to do that with a moratorium and an executive order from the governor, I will damn well do that, because you deserve to have a job — but not a job that kills you.”

Antonio Villaraigosa

Villaraigosa pointed to his long record on environmental policy, citing efforts to clean the air and reduce greenhouse gas emissions during his time as a legislator and Los Angeles mayor.

“I had a 100% record when I was in the Legislature, according to the California League of Conservation Voters,” Villaraigosa said. “I led the effort to create the Carl Moyer program, the biggest effort to clean up the air since the Clean Air Act, providing grants to truckers to retrofit their rigs to cleaner diesel.”

He also noted his role in converting Los Angeles’ 2,500-bus fleet to clean fuel and transforming the city’s port into one of the greenest in the world.

Villaraigosa said the next challenge is building the infrastructure to support California’s clean energy goals.

“We’ve built 167,000 charging stations in the last 10 years, but we need 2 million more and the grid to power them,” he said. “We need an all-of-the-above energy policy that includes solar, wind, and transitional fuels, but above all, we’ve got to build.”