Climate Change

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.

Saying ‘a deal is a deal” the California Air Resources Board voted last week to endorse the stringent automobile emissions standards hammered out with federal agencies five years ago, vowing to go to court if the Environmental Protection Agency follows through on a threat to undo the regulations—and then blocks the state from setting its own standards.

President Trump traveled to Detroit today to announce that his administration was shelving the Obama administration's aggressive fuel-economy standards for cars—standards that California has been relying on to spur the production and sale of energy-efficient, electric and hybrid cars, thus reducing greenhouse gases.

Just as the Trump Administration is proposing significant cuts to federal agencies that employ climate scientists , a California official is planting himself outside federal agencies this week—hoping to poach skittish federal researchers.

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 undercut its pioneering effort to battle climate change. The threat arose during the confirmation hearing for Scott Pruitt, Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection […]

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, means “that which is eaten” and the iconic fish and its habitat sustain California’s largest tribe in ways that are […]

How did California define itself in 2016? As the state girding itself to mastermind the progressive resistance against a looming Trump administration? The state struggling to take the global lead in a daunting quest to halt global climate change? The state saddled with unfunded liabilities to pay off generous public employee pensions, and riddled with […]

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 its native fish species now experiencing a “sixth extinction,” environmental science’s most-dire definition of ecosystem collapse. Once a vast, soaked marsh and channel fed […]

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 vacationers from Fresno to Yosemite National Park under a dense canopy of cedar trees, firs and pines. But after five years of drought and insect infestation, […]

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 to kill them. Legislators feel that push and pull. A similar dynamic is now at play on California’s ballot, where major industries are spending big bucks to defeat policies backed by progressives. […]