Last week, the California legislature passed an ambitious package of climate-change bills that, to borrow from President Obama’s description of the recent federal climate legislation, is a BFD. Just how big a deal? Pretty big. The new legislation includes oil well setbacks, carbon neutrality by 2045, a clean energy ramp-up, carbon sequestration through tree planting, and carbon capture through regulation—all of which, together, is cementing California’s position as a leader on climate action.

There are a lot of different pieces, so I’ll try to break them down one by one.

In a major victory for public health and welfare, the legislature passed a bill that will require at least a 3,200-feet setback between new oil and gas wells and people’s homes and schools. The oil well setbacks bill—SB 1137, proposed by state senator Lena Gonzalez—was three years in the making and is a tremendous victory for environmental justice advocates. In addition to the new setbacks, it will also create a pathway to ending existing drilling in the setback zone by prohibiting operators from seeking rework permits and also establishing a broad set of engineering and pollution controls.

California had long been the only oil-producing state in the nation without any kind of setback requirement. Environmental justice advocates for years have been outraged that Texas was doing more to protect public health than California. The new legislation, which Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign, fixes that and imposes some of the biggest setbacks in the country; by comparison, Colorado has a 2000-foot setback for oil and gas operations.

Versions of SB 1137 failed in the legislature twice before in the face of fierce opposition from the Western States Petroleum Association and the California Building Trades Association. Both times, Governor Newsom remained silent on the issue. In face of inaction, environmental justice advocates tried to work with the California agency in charge of regulating the oil industry, CalGEM, but grew frustrated with the agency’s fossil fuel mindset and glacial pace. All that changed in August, however, when Newsom announced that he wanted to see a package of climate bills passed.

Environmental and public health activists were delighted. “This is a victory for every single family and every single frontline community in California that has been fighting Big Oil’s drilling in our backyards for decades and pushing for setbacks for years,” said Kobi Naseck, the coalition coordinator at VISIÓN (Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods) in a statement. “Now, we urge the governor to end California’s legacy of environmental racism and stand with the nearly 3 million Californians against neighborhood drilling by signing SB 1137 immediately.”

A second bill, SB 1279, introduced by assembly member Al Muratsuchi, puts the force of law behind an existing executive order to make the state carbon neutral. In September 2018, Governor Newsom issued an executive order to make the state carbon neutral by 2045. But an executive order issued by one governor can always be undone by a later governor, so a law is considered stronger—even though the substance is the same. Muratsuchi’s bill essentially codifies the existing executive order, and the governor will of course sign it.

A third bill—SB 1020, introduced by state senator John Laird—is essentially a version 2.0 of California’s landmark 2018 law requiring all electricity sold in the state to be 100 percent clean by 2045. SB 1020 takes the existing law a step further by adding some interim benchmarks: 90 percent of electricity sold in the state must be carbon free by 2035 and 95 percent by 2040. The new law also requires all state agencies to get their power from renewables by 2035.

Those three bills—which environmentalists unanimously supported—were part of a grand political bargain to pass what has been a major priority for Governor Newsom: keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open five years past its expected retirement date of 2025. Aides to Newsom made it clear to legislators that the Diablo extension was the main course on the governor’s political menu, while setbacks and the rest were simply dessert for environmentalists.

Diablo Canyon is a carbon-free power plant that contributes about 10 percent of California’s power. It’s also an ongoing sore spot among environmentalists who protested its construction in 1975 and have long sought its closure. The Sierra Club of California, among many other environmental organizations, opposes nuclear power.

Governor Newsom began pushing the Diablo extension after some climate advocates blasted his first proposal (which the legislature approved in June) for more natural gas peaker power plants to sustain the state’s energy supply. And the governor got his wish. The Diablo Canyon bill passed easily on August 31, he signed it into law September 2, and Pacific Gas & Electric, the nuclear power plant’s operator, was able to apply for more federal funding before a September 6 deadline.

The legislature also passed three other climate-related bills that address carbon dioxide capture from very different approaches.

AB 1757, which was introduced by assembly members Cristina Garcia and Robert Rivas, encourages nature-based carbon sequestration: planting more trees, restoring wetlands, and scaling up public landscaping and urban forestry projects. Environmentalists have long sensed that the best answer to climate change is also the simplest one: re-green the world. AB 1757 aims to do just that.

SB 1314, introduced by state senator Monique Limon, bans the practice of using carbon capture for enhanced oil recovery, a method of squeezing every last drop of oil out of a nearly depleted well—and a perpetual pollution machine.

A parallel bill for carbon capture—SB 905, sponsored by state senator Anna Caballero—proved far more controversial. This legislation was supported by the oil industry and opposed by many environmentalists. Most climate scientists agree that ultimately humanity will need some method of removing carbon that has already been emitted from the atmosphere. So far, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is unproven, risky, and expensive. That hasn’t stopped politicians at all levels of government from shoveling cash at it. (The federal Inflation Reduction Act invests $17 billion into CCS research.) SB 905 is intended to create “guardrails” for a technology in its infancy. Is the alternative a Wild West of CCS without regulations, as its proponents have argued? Or does this bill only encourage California’s oil companies to keep drilling and spilling, as long as their emissions are scrubbed from the atmosphere?

CCS has never been tried at a large scale in California. However, the large-scale federal spending in the Inflation Reduction Act may well tempt some dreamers and schemers, and it will likely take time to see how this legislation plays out in real life.

The long roster of senators and assembly members sponsoring the various climate-action bills shows that this legislature’s climate accomplishments were a group effort. At the same time, Governor Newsom deserves recognition for helping to build the political momentum to pass these laws. Newsom hadn’t been terribly engaged on climate during most of the legislative session. But he then changed course and presented an emergency package of bills to the legislature in mid-August—and then used his political power to get them passed.

And even as the legislature was hard at work, other arms of California government were making major strides to clean up carbon pollution. Last month, the California Air Resources Board issued an order that may, in its benefits, be bigger than most of the bills combined: It required all new cars sold in California to be zero-emissions electric vehicles by 2035. It’s a bold move that will have repercussions far beyond California, as a dozen states consider similar moves and US automakers begin to contemplate the end of the gasoline-powered car era.

But even amid the victories, there were some setbacks. A few high-profile climate bills failed to pass this session, although their proponents have vowed to bring them back. These include a bill that would have required California’s giant pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest from fossil fuels, along with a bill that would have required large corporations doing business in California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. And a “Justice40” bill requiring that 40 percent of all climate funding in California be directed to disadvantaged communities was inexplicably vetoed by Newsom.

Those proposals—and no doubt many others—will all be back next year with a new legislature. When it comes to state-level action on climate change, California is now back on track—and the Golden State is just getting started.