California governor prepares to lecture world on environment. Then opponent exposes where the state’s oil really comes from

California Governor Gavin Newsom is at a major climate meeting in Belém, Brazil, where world leaders are talking about protecting the environment.

On Tuesday, Newsom spoke at the COP30 summit and attacked President Donald Trump over his environmental record. He called Trump “an invasive species” and said he acts like “a wrecking ball” when it comes to fighting climate change. 

But not everyone thinks Newsom should be speaking at this conference. Steve Hilton, who used to host a show on Fox News and is now running for California governor as a Republican, sent a letter to the people organizing COP30. In the letter, Hilton asked them to stop giving Newsom chances to speak. He says the governor is being a hypocrite about climate issues and that letting him talk could make the whole conference look bad.

Hilton’s main problem with Newsom comes down to where California gets its oil. He says that under Newsom’s watch, California has bought almost half of all the crude oil that gets drilled from the Amazon rainforest. This looks really bad for someone who wants everyone to think he cares about the environment. Hilton wrote in his letter that Newsom “has built his political image around climate virtue signaling while presiding over one of the most environmentally destructive hypocrisies in the world.”

Turns out the oil imports are actually a real issue

It turns out this Amazon oil issue is a bigger deal than just one politician complaining about another. Even Democrats in California’s state Senate agree something looks wrong. Earlier this year, every single member of the state Senate voted to look into how California is helping to fund oil drilling in the Amazon. That kind of agreement across party lines doesn’t happen very often.

The environmental damage from drilling oil in the Amazon is serious. Groups that study the rainforest say the drilling is making deforestation worse and killing off plants and animals that live nowhere else on Earth. This makes California look pretty bad when the state tries to tell everyone else how to protect the environment. 

In his letter, Hilton pointed out that this oil “comes from one of the most sensitive ecosystems on Earth, contributing to deforestation and the displacement of Indigenous communities.” Instead of fixing this problem, Newsom keeps traveling around the world to talk about climate change while his state pays for the destruction back home.

Hilton didn’t hold back in his criticism. He said Newsom showing up at the summit is just “political theater masquerading as leadership.” He told the conference organizers that letting Newsom talk about climate justice while California helps destroy the Amazon “would be an insult to the conference and its members.” At the end of his letter, Hilton wrote that “the UNFCCC and COP 30 must not reward hypocrisy with a platform.”

 But when you look at where California actually gets its energy, the picture gets a lot messier. As Newsom keeps making speeches at COP30, people both in California and around the world are asking harder questions about whether the state’s actions match up with its words.