When California embarked on its quest to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a global model to stave off climate change, its first target was the state’s electric power industry. A series of ever-tightening decrees required utilities to shift from coal, natural gas and other carbon.based sources to a “renewable portfolio,” eventually reaching 100 percent non-carbon sources by mid-century.
A pesticide that growers use on crops from apples to walnuts, in the face of evidence that it can harm the farmworkers who spray it and the children who eat foods that contain it, is about to be outlawed in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration said Wednesday that it would ban the agricultural use of chlorpyrifos, an action from which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency backed away on a nationwide scale once President Trump assumed office.
As a farmer and researcher dedicated to a healthier and more sustainable food system, we often are asked how good food can be made cheaper and more affordable. Given the staggering rates of food insecurity in wealthy areas such as San Francisco which is struggling to meet its 2020 target for eliminating hunger we understand this interest in making food cheaper.
In just over a year’s time, the nation’s rainfall fortunes have shifted suddenly and dramatically. Rainfall famine has turned to rainfall feast. Thanks to its wettest 12-month period in recorded history, the amount of U.S. real estate covered by drought has plunged to its lowest level in recent decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday. But at the same time, excessive rainfall and flooding plague large areas of the country.
The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a permit Wednesday to develop and install permanent seawater intake and discharge facilities at the Claude “Bud” Lewis Desalination Plantin Carlsbad. The plant currently produces roughly 50 million gallons of potable water each day for use across San Diego County, but draws most of its water from the Agua Hedionda Lagoon, which is then circulated to the plant by the Encina Power Station.
San Diego regional water quality regulators today issued a permit for the installation of new, technologically advanced and environmentally sensitive seawater intake and discharge facilities at the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant. The plant and the new permit support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s April 29 executive order for California “to think differently and act boldly by developing a comprehensive strategy to build a climate-resilient water system.”
It all began this February when Anne Jackson Hefti and friend Amy Ryan were walking their dogs in Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, and claim they were exposed to wind-drift toxic herbicide sprayed by workers there. “They were spraying in front of us and behind us and there were ‘No’ signs posted, and the area was not taped off to keep us off the trail,” said Jackson Hefti, adding Ryan “asked the contractors to stop spraying until we left the area.”
In seeking a five-year suspension of sales taxes on diapers and menstrual products, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that it was wrong for the government to increase the cost of essentials of life and that doing so hurt families. Newsom was praised by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who has touted legislation to end sales taxes on infant and toddler diapers
When Jerry Brown began his first governorship in 1975, he quickly set himself apart from his father, former Gov. Pat Brown. The elder Brown’s legacy had been an immense expansion of the state’s public-works infrastructure—new colleges and universities, a web of freeways and, most of all, a massive project to carry water from Northern California to the fast-growing cities of Southern California. The younger Brown echoed economist E.F. Schumacher’s aphorism that “small is beautiful,” suggested that California’s high population growth was a thing of the past and virtually shut down highway and freeway construction.
Four years ago, construction crews with huge jackhammers tore apart a 10-story concrete dam in the wooded canyons of the Carmel River, between the Big Sur hills and the beach front town of Carmel. The destruction of the San Clemente Dam, which had blocked the river since 1921, remains the largest dam removal project in California history. It’s still early, but one of the main goals of the project seems to be on track: The river is becoming wilder, and struggling fish populations are rebounding.
