A majority of Californians believe global warming is happening now and that it’s a serious threat to the Golden State’s future, according to the results of a recent poll. What’s more, Californians are ready to cast their votes and spend their money to fight it. The findings from the Public Policy Institute...
Teachers Look Online for Climate Change Info, Find Propaganda
When science teacher Diana Allen set out to teach climate change, a subject she'd never learned in school, she fell into a rabbit's hole of misinformation: Many resources presented online as educational material were actually junk. "It is a pretty scary topic to take on," said Allen, a teacher at...
What Happens if PG&E Goes Bankrupt?
Investigators are massing. Lawsuits are mounting. The death toll in Butte County's historic Camp Fire stands at 88, so far. Another year, another megafire, another calamity in which faulty Pacific Gas and Electric equipment is a prime suspect. And once again, Californians face a familiar question: What’s going to happen...
Scientists Admit Errors in High-Profile Ocean Warming Study
Get ready for more "I told you so's" from climate-change skeptics. Two weeks after a high-profile study was published in the journal Nature stating that Earth's oceans are warming much faster than previously thought, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication. What went wrong with the study? The scientists...
Big Oil Asks Government to Protect It From Climate Change
PORT ARTHUR, Texas — As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile "spine" of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast....
America Is a Mess, and Baby Boomers Should Own It
One of the more popular books in America is Bruce Cannon Gibney's "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America." Certainly, millennials love it. And it's hard to argue against Gibney's indictment of baby boomers, a generation that has enriched itself repeatedly without paying the tab for its...
Toxic Algae Threatens Drinking Water Across the US
SALEM, Ore. — The words blasted to cell phones around Oregon's capital city were ominous: "Civil emergency. prepare for action." Within half an hour, a second official alert clarified the subject wasn't impending violence but toxins from an algae bloom, detected in Salem's water supply. Across the U.S., reservoirs that...
Those Trees on Your Street? One of the Best Bargains on Earth.
Megacities are on the rise. There are currently 47 such areas around the globe, each housing more than 10 million residents. More than half the global population now lives in urban areas, comprising about 3 percent of the Earth. The ecological footprint of this growth is vast and there’s far...
Why California Gets to Write Its Own Auto Emissions Rules
Editor’s note: On April 2, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the Trump administration plans to revise tailpipe emissions standards negotiated by the Obama administration for motor vehicles built between 2022 and 2025, saying the standards were set “too high.” Pruitt also said the EPA was re-examining California’s...
Here's the Text of Gov. Brown's Final State of the State Speech
Gov. Jerry Brown touched on a bit of everything in his final State of the State speech delivered Thursday morning — including a spirited defense of his highly controversial "bullet train" and "Delta tunnels" projects. For the most part, Brown, 79, gave an optimistic speech. He highlighted California's booming economy,...