California, the world’s sixth-largest economy and a bastion of progressivism, is now being hailed as a kind of great blue firewall—Democrats’ most important bulwark against the retrograde policies of Donald Trump. Here’s what the Golden State is already doing to counter the president-elect on a range of major issues and defend its progressive achievements.

According to reports… Trump is preparing for everything from a witch hunt against our government’s foremost climate scientists to de-funding the Environmental Protection Agency. Do the Bay Area’s most level-headed researchers and earth-science experts respond to Trump’s ascension with similarly grabby quips?

The California carbon market could rebound from a sluggish 2016 — assuming it survives the new year. “Emitters have an incentive to buy early, as long as prices are at the floor. In light of this, I would expect an average of at least 80 percent of offered allowances to be sold and perhaps higher,” Energy Innovation director of research Chris Busch said.

Two days before the presidential inauguration, scientists are expected to announce that 2016 was the hottest year on Earth since record-keeping began in 1880 ​— news that will test national, state and economic leadership on climate change.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has long pledged to undertake a profound policy shift on climate change from the low-carbon course President Obama made a cornerstone of his eight years in the White House. But will a President Trump noticeably affect the globe’s climate in ways that, say, a President Hillary Clinton would not have?

President-elect Donald J. Trump has packed his cabinet with nominees who dispute the science of global warming. He has signaled he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He has belittled the notion of global warming and attacked policies intended to combat it. But California, a state that has for 50 years been a leader in environmental advocacy, is about to step unto the breach.

Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and a cadre of billionaire partners rolled out long-awaited details yesterday for how they plan to channel billions of dollars toward development of promising new low-carbon technologies.

The forces driving clean energy are likely to continue progressing regardless of efforts by President-elect Donald Trump to reverse them, a leading expert in energy policy said last week at Stanford University. “…We’re going to lose a lot of good stuff, but it’s not as bleak for this purpose as one might expect,” said Hal Harvey, CEO of Energy Innovation during a Nov. 28 lecture at Stanford.

China is a country in transition. No longer striving to maintain its title as the “world’s factory,” China has embarked on a national program to ascend the economic value chain, focusing on innovation and the service sector to develop an economy that’s befitting of the middle-income country that it has become.

State agencies tasked with leading on energy efficiency may face resistance from utilities if the burden of change falls too heavily on them, according to a recent working group report.