CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 25, 2011 | By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
The California Air Resources Board voted to reaffirm its cap-and-trade plan Wednesday, a decision that puts the nation's first-ever state carbon trading program back on track, for now. The on-again, off-again rules have been years in the making and are meant to complement AB 32, California's landmark climate change law that mandates a reduction in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020. The air board adopted a preliminary carbon trading plan in late 2008 but was sued by environmental justice groups in 2009.
BUSINESS
September 23, 2010 | By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times
A state agency is expected to approve regulations Thursday that could break an impasse in a long-sought goal to require utilities in California to obtain a third of their power from solar and other renewable sources by 2020. The vote by the California Air Resources Board is being watched closely by clean-tech companies, many of which have curtailed expansion of their operations in the state because of the regulatory deadlock. But critics said the regulations, which would also include a streamlined permitting process for renewable energy projects, could face an uphill battle with an unsympathetic new governor and could be overturned by a ballot initiative.
OPINION
April 2, 2010 | By Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang
Two federal agencies, working with California, have taken the biggest step in the nation's history to reduce the United States' global warming footprint. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced specific rules that require automakers to build cars, SUVs and minivans that will average 35.5 mpg by 2016 and cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, thereby saving an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil. It's been a long haul.
OPINION
March 11, 2010
Will cutting carbon kill jobs in California? That's the premise of a November ballot initiative proposed by Republican lawmakers, whose cause got a boost this week from a report by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office that concluded the state's landmark global warming law might hurt employment. The report made headlines because it contrasts sharply with an earlier analysis by the California Air Resources Board, which concluded that the law, AB 32, would actually create 120,000 jobs by 2020.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 1, 2009 | Margot Roosevelt
James Hosmanek, an ex-Marine, has operated his San Bernardino Chevron station for 21 years, patiently installing equipment to control gasoline emissions, even as the region's air grew smoggier. Now he says he can't, and won't, obey the latest mandate: a state order to buy sophisticated nozzles and hoses to capture more of the vapors that cause respiratory disease and cancer. "It may be necessary to protect public health," he says. "But it's unaffordable."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 11, 2008 | Margot Roosevelt, Roosevelt is a Times staff writer.
Two decades ago, Rosa Vielmas, young and hopeful, moved to Riverside County for cleaner air. Goodbye to smoggy East Los Angeles. Hello to Mira Loma, an unincorporated speck of a village, and a one-story stucco bungalow with a yard. "We could see the stars," she recalled. But that was before Mira Loma became one of Southern California's "diesel death zones," as activists call the truck-choked freeways and distribution hubs that fan out from the massive ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.