"Air quality regulators have lifted the limits on the number of cremations that can be performed in Los Angeles county, citing a death rate that is more than double the pre-pandemic norm and an unmanageable backlog of dead bodies."
Key picks for President Biden’s environment and energy team suggest top priorities, among them an aggressive, whole-government climate change agenda. The latest Backgrounder assesses choices to pursue Biden’s international and domestic climate policies, as well as historic selections for EPA and Interior, and more. Plus, dive into SEJournal’s expanding “2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment” special report.
"California’s salmon populations have been dangerously close to extinction for decades. A new partnership may help tip the scales toward recovery."
"President Trump on Friday vetoed a bill that would gradually eliminate the use of large-scale driftnet fishing in federal waters off the coast of California."
"Maddie Cole in eighth grade stopped running cross country. She’d competed the year before, but the air quality in her native Sacramento was so bad that she got sick during a race; she soon learned she had asthma."
"When COVID-19 blew a hole in California’s spending plans last spring, one of the things state budget-cutters took an axe to was wildfire prevention."
"Oil and gas leases on federal public lands in California were put up for auction for the first time in eight years on Thursday, drawing protests from environmental organizations on grounds including threats to climate, human health and wildlife."
"California Gov. Gavin Newsom tapped a veteran regulator Wednesday as the next chair of the powerful Air Resources Board, which implements the state’s ambitious climate change goals. Liane Randolph, 55, will begin the job in January."
A graduate field scientist-cum-multimedia storyteller trains her eye on the confounding challenges of western water, with award-winning student reporting on three family farms that face the draining of critical groundwater basins. Could land that drought makes untenable for farming be restored as habitat for endangered species? That, plus how the “ladder of abstraction” helped her tell the tale. The most recent entry in EJ Academy.
"Acquiring home insurance has long been a mundane but necessary chore. In California, for hundreds of thousands of residents, it’s turned into a labyrinthine quest that leaves people with expensive, bare-bones coverage. That’s because an increasing amount of Californians have been dropped by their regular insurers after years of devastating wildfires that cost billions of dollars and upended the market."
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