California
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Friday in the Park With George
Bush Calls For More National Parks Funding; Critics Remain Skeptical Speaking at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on Friday, President Bush asked Congress to commit billions more dollars to the national park system, a move his supporters saw as evidence of his environmental commitment and critics called a pointless PR op. The president […]
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The Price Pump Is Right
A growing number of California businesses are taking steps to become more eco-friendly, and are saving money in the process, according to a new survey conducted by the Sonoma County Economic Development Board. One example is the Price Pump Co. in Sonoma, which has switched to more environmentally conscious packaging, using brown boxes instead of […]
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Cutting the Cord
Fuel cells and hybrids are hot; electric vehicles are not. That’s the word from the California Air Resources Board, which yesterday axed groundbreaking 1990 rules requiring auto manufacturers to sell a fixed number of electric vehicles (EVs) in the state, including 10 percent of cars sold this year. Instead, the board approved more modest regulations […]
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Mining Gets the Shaft
The pay dirt has run out for gold miners in California. Last week the state mining board okayed the nation’s toughest regulations on open-pit metallic mining, requiring companies to refill mining pits and flatten waste piles in order to restore the landscape to at least some semblance of its pre-mining state. The industry complains that […]
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An INS project threatens Southern California lands
On a sunny afternoon in Southern California, a Border Patrol agent watched as a man climbed the metal fence that divides the beach between the U.S. and Mexico. When the man dropped onto U.S. sand, the agent yelled, and the man’s friends hauled him back over to the other side of the fence. The fence […]
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The Shipping News
Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn has announced an agreement in which several of the largest shipping companies in Asia will work with L.A. to clean up air quality in the city’s port. Last year, the port received 2,200 cargo ship visits, each burning about 14 tons of heavy bunker fuel. Under the new plan, the […]
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A new language is needed to win the day for native species
This cold morning at the Presidio, elegant terns wheel over the lagoon at the edge of the San Francisco Bay, screeching like a fleet of squeaky bicycles. In the distance, fog blots out the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. On the strip of beach closest to the water, dogs chase tennis balls into the […]
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Ready, Willing, and Sable
There’s sad news and a silver lining in the world of endangered species today. On the sad side, the first California condor chick brooded and hatched in the wild in nearly two decades was found dead of unknown causes last Friday in Los Padres National Forest. The death of the chick was a blow to […]
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Sleep With the Fishes
At least 20,000 chinook salmon and other fish have died in Northern California’s Klamath River in the last two weeks, but federal officials are unwilling to attribute the deaths to the Bush administration’s decision to divert water away from the river this year and into an irrigation project in southern Oregon. U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]
