Climate Change

Delay of a plan for more renewable energy in California could carry a price tag for consumers.

It should come as no surprise that when the California Legislature recently began the process of divvying up proceeds from the state’s cap-and-trade auctions, a cavalcade of local officials, community activists and lobbyists rushed to Sacramento, with hands out. Billions of dollars burning a hole in the state’s pocket has that effect on people, and […]

The very reason Arnold Schwarzenegger called GOP Assemblyman Chad Mayes the “future of the Republican party”—his work on climate change—was what ultimately cost Mayes his leadership post.

An irritated chairman of a state Senate Budget subcommittee says he intends to thwart a recent move by the state Air Resources Board that could give California’s biggest polluters a cushion of more than $300 million. In a sharp rebuke of the board, Sen. Bob Wieckowski said Thursday that he’ll insert language into the 2018-19 budget bill instructing regulators to reduce the free compensation they’re giving oil refineries and other industries covered under cap and trade, California’s signature climate policy.

The state Air Resources Board approved a paragraph, tucked in a 17-page resolution, that will likely mean benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for oil and agriculture.

The underbelly of cap and trade: Letting industries buy carbon credits or offsets, rather than modernize old equipment, means pollution in many poor communities could get worse.

In California, a deep blue state leading the charge to curb climate change, the question for many Republicans isn’t whether global warming is happening—it’s what kind of policies are best to address it.

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.