Ecologists warn that economic growth is strangling the natural systems on which life depends, creating not just wealth, but filth on a planetary scale. Carbon pollution is changing the climate. Water shortages, deforestation, tens of millions of acres of land too polluted to plant, and other global environmental ills are increasingly viewed as strategic risks by governments and corporations around the world.
In its annual water allocation estimate, usually issued around Dec. 1, the department projects that it will be able to fill only 5 percent of the water requests it has received from the 29 water agencies it contracts with – agencies that serve about two-thirds of California’s population. Only once before – in 2010 – did the department issue a similarly low estimate of available water.
Throughout this summer and fall, California’s gasoline prices have hovered about 40 to 45 cents per gallon above the national average. The difference has sometimes reached 50 cents.
Truckers at the Port of Oakland refused to work Monday to protest what they called unfair labor practices and unsafe working conditions.
In another nod to San Francisco’s increasingly upbeat economy, the Planning Commission called Thursday for an end to a 3-year-old fee deferral program designed to prop up the then-struggling local construction industry. “The commission has seen big increases in permit activity,” said AnMarie Rodgers, manager of legislative affairs for the Planning Department. “Certainly everyone agrees that the economic situation is far better now than when the program started.”
In one of his ongoing crusades, Gov. Jerry Brown last week referred to the 1972 California Environmental Quality Act as a “land mine” that often blocks needed development, and called once more for “some reasonable changes in the law.”
Contrary to what you might’ve heard, I have nothing against California. In fact, I think it’s a beautiful state filled with creative people and a vibrant culture.
When it was first signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act represented a groundbreaking statement by Californians that our environment was important and deserved protection.