Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is teaming up with California to use satellites to track climate pollutants. Bloomberg Philanthropies announced its partnership with the state and the San Francisco Earth-imaging company Planet yesterday. It builds on former California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's declaration last year the state would launch its "own damn satellite" as the federal government receded from global climate commitments (Climatewire, Sept. 14, 2018). Bloomberg's involvement puts the effort on a larger scale and helps Planet and the California Air Resources Board expand what it will track. Antha Williams, the philanthropies' head of environment programs, declined to say how much Bloomberg plans to spend on the initiative. "We really see the potential in the kind of imaging that Planet can bring combined with California's appetite to actually then use that info," Williams said. "That really provides a model for what certainly other states across the U.S. could be doing but [also] other jurisdictions around the world."
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