[Source: California Air Resources Board] The California Air Resources Board’s report on the state of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program for the compliance year 2015 indicates a compliance rate of 98 percent, with a total of 5.49 million credits generated in the year. These credits are roughly the same as removing 1 million Read More…
Newsroom
Latest draft Prop. 65 warning regulations take several steps backwards
[Source: California Chamber of Commerce] The latest proposed revisions to the state’s Proposition 65 warning regulations are problematic and unworkable, the California Chamber of Commerce and a broad coalition explain in a letter to the agency leading the rule drafting. The revisions proposed by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) take several steps Read More…
California suburbs are growing, despite lack of housing
[Source: Los Angeles Daily News] Big cities are growing, but so are the suburbs, where the region’s population is flocking for a slim supply of available housing, according to an annual state report released Monday. The Golden State’s population expanded to 39.3 million residents, an increase of just less than 1 percent with Los Angeles, Read More…
How good environmental legislation goes wrong
[Source: Los Angels Times Op-Ed] The California Environmental Quality Act is a valuable protector of this state’s resources. It guides planning by forcing agencies to consider the environmental implications of proposed projects. CEQA is also a woefully blunt instrument that thwarts economic growth and, perversely, can actually harm the environment. That’s exactly what’s happening with Read More…
Ahead of $15 minimum wage, one company leaves California for Texas
[Source: 89.3KPCC-So Cal Public Radio] California’s $15 minimum wage does not go into effect until 2022, but one Santa Fe Springs-based manufacturing company has already decided to leave the state this year to take advantage of cheaper wages in Texas. “This is the last thing I want to do, but I don’t see that I Read More…
The cumulative cost of regulations
[Source: Mercatus Center- George Mason University] The impact of regulation on economic growth has been widely studied, but most research has focused on a narrow set of regulations, industries, or both. These studies typically rely on regulatory indexes that measure subsets of all regulation, on country-to-country comparisons, on short time spans, or on surveys in Read More…
Don’t put AQMD under CARB’s thumb
[Source: Orange County Register] A 20-year study released last week by the USC Environmental Health Centers found “that millennial children in Southern California breathe easier than ones who came of age in the ’90s, for a reason as clear as the air in Los Angeles today,” in the school’s summary. It’s a major achievement for Read More…
Environmental groups sue over Four Corners power plant, mine
[Source: San Francisco Chronicle] Environmental groups are suing the federal government over its decision to extend operations at the coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant and the Navajo Mine in northwestern New Mexico. The suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and other federal agencies was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Arizona, the Read More…
Can fresh air blow away the case against Obama’s climate policy?
[Source: Bloomberg] The U.S. has already broken the link between emissions and economic growth. Any regulation proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency follows a decades-long pattern. The activists squabble with the industrialists, pitting questions of business health against questions of public health. The squabbling plays out in newspapers and private lobbying meetings while the rules are drafted, and then it continues in court until Read More…