A nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California’s policies and politics
The California Air Resources Board approved a paragraph, tucked within a 17-page resolution, that will likely result in benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the oil and agriculture industries. It was the first domino to visibly fall as a consequence of behind-the-scenes dealmaking that produced a cap-and-trade program acceptable to both key environmental groups and major polluters.
Growing up with 12 people packed into a two-bedroom apartment in Wilmington, Magali Sanchez-Hall rarely left the bubble of her south Los Angeles neighborhood. She assumed everyone lived with chronic...
Minutes after a bipartisan coalition of California lawmakers voted to extend the state’s landmark climate change policy for another decade, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown stood in front of a bank of...
As the quieter ‘companion bill’ to Monday’s cap-and-trade extension legislation, Assembly Bill 617 sought to placate environmental justice advocates who have increasingly complained that the state’s...
For Will Travis, it began 12 years ago, with an eye-opening article in the New Yorker magazine about rising seas and the widespread flooding and dislocation that would bring.
Within California’s gargantuan bureaucracy there is a group of experts that more or less counts the grains of sand on state beaches? Pretty much. The scientists and agency officials work from a statewide ‘sand budget’ that determines the volume of sand that should reside on the beach. These are not people with rakes, bagging the red cups from last night’s party. Or the guys in small tractors smoothing the beach in front of luxury hotels. No, this is the California Coastal Sediment Management Working Group. It figures that in a state where famed beaches are manicured and sand curated, there would be attention paid to movement and disposition of sand itself.
A slow-moving emergency is lapping at California’s shores— climate-driven sea-level rise that experts now predict could elevate the water in coastal areas up to 10 feet in just 70 years.
The California Democratic party’s ‘supermajority’ was mightily tested with the nail-biting passage of a $52 billion transportation package, that will add 12 cents to the price of gasoline. What does that bode for another supermajority vote that could raise gas prices: the reauthorization of the the state’s landmark climate change legislation, cap-and-trade?
Struggling with what officials call the largest and most expensive toxic contamination in California history, embattled state regulators have changed the formula for assessing the level of...
California officials have discerned a chilling signal that the Trump administration may be willing to halt the state’s unique authority to impose its own vehicle emission rules—a move that could...
In what is likely Barack Obama’s final environmental action before Donald Trump moves into the White House, the president has just expanded the California Coastal National Monument—adding a mix of...
Cap and Trade in Two and a Half Minutes Salmon—made possible by the rivers they run in and the forest canopy above them—are the lifeblood of the Yurok Tribe. The native word for salmon, Ney-puy,...
As they suit up for battle against the Trump administration, Democrats who dominate California’s Legislature vow to unleash one of the superpowers of holding a supermajority: the ability to enact...
RYER ISLAND—The report’s findings were unequivocal: Given the current pace of water diversions, the San Francisco Bay and the Delta network of rivers and marshes are ecological goners, with many of...
California’s high country is a delight in summer, a cool respite from the heat of the state’s lower elevations. That’s especially true in the Sierra Nevada, where a corridor of shade transports...
Oh, to be a plastic bag. Helpful, ubiquitous and ever useful. Carefree, wafting on the wind, and alive for a thousand years. On the other hand, you are cheap and trashy. Discarded, your presence...
In California’s Democrat-dominated statehouse, big business usually plays defense. Liberal groups—like labor unions and environmentalists—typically push for new bills, while corporate interests work...
The day Brian Feeney walked into a Palm Springs dealership to buy a new Nissan Leaf, he was fulfilling the dream of state policy-makers to entice Californians to break off their love affair with...
