"Energy Firms Help Pay for State Regulators' Far-Flung Trips"

"State officials who lead California's war on global warming often travel abroad on trips supported by the major greenhouse gas polluters they regulate, a Bee investigation has found. Industry lobbyists and executives routinely join them.

Since 2006, more than two dozen top state officials have fanned out across the globe on such trips, bound for a climate change policy tour in Europe, meetings with high-level government officials across South America and China, even a safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa – all on someone else's dime.

They have logged more than 700,000 air miles and touched down in 17 nations, on trips collectively costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the process, their air travel alone emitted 275,000 pounds of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Joining them were more than 30 business executives, at least 19 legislators and a handful of spouses and partners."

Tom Knudson reports for the Sacramento Bee July 26, 2009.