Environment

Seldom missing an opportunity to upstage President Trump, Gov. Brown tonight will announce a global climate action summit, which he will lead in San Francisco in September.

Tracking sand from the Oregon border to south San Diego is serious business. There’s too much sediment in some places, clogging harbors and waterways, and too little in others, shrinking beaches and exposing homes and critical infrastructure.

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.

In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the state of California has notified the Trump Administration of its intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to enforce an Obama-era law calling for reduction in methane gas emissions. Methane’s potent heat-trapping capacity makes it many times more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

It's looking like the Trump administration has decided to sidestep a pollution fight with California over the state's power to set more stringent vehicle emission standards than the federal government. EPA chief Scott Pruitt said late last week that the Trump administration was not reviewing the California waiver, and hailed the state's "leadership" on clean air.

California Attorney General  Xavier Becerra today joined a dozen states in suing the federal Energy Department for failing to publish energy efficiency standards for some products, a step that would have made the greenhouse-gas reducing rules legally enforceable.

Hours after President Donald Trump announced his intention Thursday to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced a new climate pact, this one with a group of other elected officials vowing to uphold the goals of the international agreement.

(Update: On Oct. 15, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law SB 258. Manufacturers will now be required to list chemical ingredients on cleaning-product labels.) Nail polish and hair dye. Cleaning products. Plants and flowers for the garden. California lawmakers have been considering new labels for them, triggering an annual conflict in the state Capitol over […]

The Trump administration’s proposed spending plan would ax funding for a region-spanning earthquake early warning system that is in the process of being rolled out along the West Coast.

A new generation of legislators and the growing clout of eco-advocates from urban communities is changing the focus of environmental debates in California. Once sidelined as a fringe voice of activism, the “environmental justice” perspective—focused on how environmental decisions impact poor communities and people of color—is now at the center of high-profile deliberations.