Issue #226: Earth Day edition
California leads on the environment despite Trump
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FOCUS ON THE EARTH
Earth Day: How Trump’s environmental decisions are affecting California
Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
Over the past 55 years since the first Earth Day in 1970, the state has passed its own state Endangered Species Act, its own clean air laws, clean water laws, recycling laws, renewable energy standards and coastal protections — often leading the way nationally. Those are not affected by rollbacks by Trump and from Republicans in Congress.
“It’s certainly not hopeless,” said Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at UC Berkeley. “California has built up a strong set of laws. California has a thick defense mechanism. And California is on the offense in the sense that we partner with other states and countries. All that said, California’s commitment to this area is only as strong as its state budget.”
Lawsuits and state laws largely blocked Trump from making major environmental changes in California during his first term, such as new oil drilling off the California coast, which he supported, but which never happened.
“California stood strong,” Crowfoot said. “We maintained our policies. We defended them in court. The four years came without significant erosions. We are ready to do it again.”
Judge rejects restraining order against company in Santa Barbara County oil pipeline controversy
Lance Orozco, KCLU Santa Barbara
Thursday was a big day in the battle over an oil company’s efforts to repair and restart the Santa Barbara County oil pipeline, which ruptured in 2015, causing a massive oil spill.
A Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge denied the State Coastal Commission’s request for a temporary restraining order to halt Sable Offshore Corporation’s work on the project.
The Commission contends that new permits are needed. Sable argues that the work is covered by existing permits issued by Santa Barbara County and the Commission. The Coastal Commission has issued multiple cease-and-desist orders against Sable and last week hit the company with what could be an $18 million fine.
Sable Offshore lands in hot water with regional water board
Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara Independent
Sable Offshore Corporation has gotten so seriously sideways with the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board — the Central Coast regional branch — over the protracted game of cat-and-mouse the water boardmembers contend Sable has been playing over unpermitted repair work on the company’s oil pipeline that the water board voted unanimously to refer the matter to Attorney General Rob Bonta for judicial prosecution. Bonta, the board was told, enjoys more expansive legal authority to order a stop to the unpermitted work on the pipeline — which traverses three rivers and multiple creeks and streams and caused 2015’s Refugio Oil Spill — and can also impose stiffer fines than the administrative fine remedies readily available to the regional board.
The water board has permit authority over all streams, rivers — whether ephemeral or not — and any waters that belong to the State of California or the United States. Sable is in a red-hot hurry to get the heavily corroded pipeline it bought from Exxon last February repaired and rehabilitated. If the company is not up and operating by the first quarter of 2026, Exxon is reportedly contractually entitled to repossess the totality of what’s known as the Santa Ynez Unit, which encompasses not just the pipeline, but three offshore oil platforms, and the massive oil and gas plant located near Refugio. Getting the pipeline repaired in a timely manner appears to be the company’s primary obstacle in getting the old Exxon plant restarted.
Commercial salmon season is shut down — again. Will California’s iconic fish ever recover?
Alastair Bland, CalMatters
“From a salmon standpoint, it’s an environmental disaster. For the fishing industry, it’s a human tragedy, and it’s also an economic disaster,” said Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, an industry organization that has lobbied for river restoration and improved hatchery programs.
Some experts fear the conditions in California have been so poor for so long that Chinook may never rebound to fishable levels. Others remain hopeful for major recovery if the amounts of water diverted to farms and cities are reduced and wetlands kept dry by flood-control levees are restored.
Cluster of whale deaths in California raise concerns
The Alameda whale marks the fourth gray whale to wash up in San Francisco Bay this year
Caelyn Pender, San Jose Mercury News
A dead gray whale was found rolling in the surf off Alameda South Shore Beach, according to the Marine Mammal Center and the California Academy of Sciences.
The whale marks the fourth gray whale to wash up in San Francisco Bay this year. It comes less than two weeks after four whales washed up in the San Francisco Bay in a week-and-a-half span, an occurrence that scientists deemed unusual.
The gray whale drifted overnight from the surf near Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, where it was spotted by the U.S. Coast Guard, to a different location off Alameda on Monday, said Giancarlo Rulli, the associate director of public relations for the Marine Mammal Center.
Environment California settles Clean Water Act lawsuit over Port of Los Angeles pollution
Laura Deehan, Environment California
The Port of Los Angeles, also known as the Los Angeles Harbor Department, is a department of the City of Los Angeles. Environment California’s lawsuit, filed on July 23, 2024, in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleged more than 2,000 illegal discharges of pollution within just the previous five years. That pollution stems from bacteria-laden stormwater and contaminated groundwater that accumulates in a 53-acre area of the port and is discharged into the harbor.
If approved by U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall after a 45-day waiting period, the settlement will require the Port to significantly improve its management of stormwater and groundwater. The city will need to treat stormwater to ensure that fecal bacteria stay out of the harbor, and redirect groundwater contaminated with toxic pollutants to the Terminal Island Water Reclamation Plant, where the water can be beneficially reused after treatment.
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Earthjustice president describes a “fundamentally different” era of hostility toward environmentalists
The treatment of people who fight pollution has palpably changed in recent months
Sharon Lerner, Propublica
Nonprofit environmental groups are facing attacks from the Trump administration, subpoenas from criminal investigations, online harassment and industry lawsuits they say are designed to intimidate them into silence. In recent weeks, fears have grown that the administration will seek to revoke the nonprofit status of at least some groups.
Today, on Earth Day, ProPublica is publishing an interview with Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, the country’s biggest public interest environmental firm, about the escalating hostility environmentalists face. Over the past five decades, Earthjustice’s lawyers have helped to establish the first federal limits on mercury and other chemicals emitted by power plants, successfully pushed for bans on toxic pesticides and fought to protect hundreds of endangered species.
But the future of the environmental movement is in peril. The shift has been led in no small part by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with protecting the public’s air and water. President Donald Trump’s head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, has defunded and sharply criticized some environmental organizations. For eight nonprofit groups that received $20 billion in federal money aimed at promoting clean energy, Zeldin has gone further, working with the FBI on a criminal investigation into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the grant program that funds them.
Lawmakers are ready to get down and dirty with cap and trade
Blanca Begert and Debra Kahn, Politico
“We’ve had a lot of folks with anxiety coming in and saying, ‘We just want a clean reauthorization,’” Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin said at a panel moderated by Debra at the Climate Center’s California Climate Policy Summit. “But I think it’s really up to the Legislature to take a good look at what’s working and what could be improved upon.”
“We’re going to be looking at making sure that you really have offsets that are robust at doing what they are supposed to do,” Irwin said.
That’s in addition to the affordability moves they already wanted to make using the proceeds from the quarterly emissions auctions, where Irwin said she’d like to look at using the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to pay for utility spending on programs whose costs are borne by ratepayers.
The news should succor environmental groups, who put out a call Monday for the Legislature to strengthen the program through things like reducing free allowances to industry and making sure the offsets companies buy represent real, permanent and verifiable emissions reductions.
How labor killed a bill to let California wildfire victims sue Big Oil for climate change
Ryan Sabalow, CalMatters
Big Oil’s most influential allies in California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature – the unions that represent oil industry workers – led the opposition. They successfully persuaded a committee made up of pro-labor Democrats to kill the measure, which had support from nearly every California environmental organization.
Despite California’s reputation for taking the lead on climate change, the death of Senate Bill 222 is the latest example of how environmentalists’ most aggressive policies regularly fizzle out when Big Labor works on behalf of Big Oil.
What a view! Famous Bay Area nude beach preserved in $10 million deal
Paul Rogers, Monterey Herald
The land trust’s leaders want to preserve the land for wildlife, like the badgers, red-winged blackbirds and shorebirds that live there. They also want to continue public access. Clark said the group plans to work with California’s state parks department to try to add the property to San Gregorio State Beach, an adjacent, popular state park that touches its southern border.
What that means for the nude sunbathers is not entirely clear.
Why California is still worth fighting for
California has always been a land of trials and triumphs
Michael A. Reinstein, Sunset Magazine
In recent years, we’ve faced raging wildfires, droughts, earthquakes, incessant crime, and rolling blackouts. I have watched friends and family pack up and leave, driven away by high costs and a sense of uncertainty. Each challenge leaves scars: burned landscapes, homes lost, communities tested. But each time, we band together. Neighbors offer shelter to evacuees, volunteers bring food and water to those in need, and entire communities rebuild from ashes. This resilience is woven into California’s identity. Like the ancient redwoods that withstand storms, Californians bend but do not break.
California’s true gold, however, is in its people and culture. For generations, California has been the land of dreams, the place where fortunes are made and remade, and where reinvention is not just possible but expected. From the Gold Rush pioneers to Hollywood storytellers, from the tech innovators of Silicon Valley to artists seeking inspiration in desert landscapes, California has always been a magnet for those seeking something more—something bigger, something brighter.
Fight intensifies over bill by former Edison executive to gut rooftop solar credits
Melody Petersen, LA Times
Calderon’s AB 942 would limit the energy credits provided to those who purchased the systems to 10 years — half the 20-year period the state had told rooftop owners they would receive.
Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit utilities have long tried to reduce the energy credits that incentivized Californians to invest in the solar panels.
A bill to sharply reduce the energy credits given to homeowners with rooftop solar panels is pitting union electrical workers and the state’s big utilities against people who benefit from the solar credits.
Commentary: Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies program yields big environmental gains
Ali Reza Ghasemi, Pacific Coast Business Times
The 10th season of the Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies (BWBS) Program in 2024 achieved impressive environmental results: It reduced the risk of deadly ship strikes to endangered whales by 50%, underwater noise by 38%, smog-forming pollution by 1,400 tons and greenhouse gases by nearly 50,000 metric tons along the California coast.
After the 2024 May-through-December Vessel Speed Reduction (VSR) Season concluded, BWBS analyzed ship Automatic Identification System data to determine enrolled fleets’ cooperation levels, and researchers calculated the environmental impact associated with the reduction in speed.
One of L.A.’s largest ‘open spaces’ is only open one day each year
Marc Sternfield, KTLA5
The Chatsworth Nature Preserve, surprisingly the city’s only preserve, spans over 1,300 acres between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle boulevards near the Santa Susana Pass. The area is home to more than 200 species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and is the largest undeveloped private property in Los Angeles County.
Officials also determined the preserve would be closed to the public except for one day each year, typically around Earth Day. This year, the public open house is on June 21, celebrating the Summer Solstice. A small crowd also gathers annually for a sunrise winter solstice ceremony.
For the rest of the year, however, the diverse population of mountain lions, bobcats, roadrunners, salamanders, falcons, snakes, and other wildlife have the land all to themselves.
Conservationists like Carla Bollinger hope it stays that way.
“We have to protect it from invasion,” says Bollinger, one of the leaders of the Chatsworth Nature Preserve Coalition. “It’s exclusive for the wildlife. Unfortunately, modern humans don’t have a good history.”
AND IN THE ECONOMY
California overtakes Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world
Shane Croucher and Hugh Cameron, Newsweek
That is according to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), a fact highlighted by the California governor's office as it battles President Donald Trump's trade policies.
The IMF put Japan's GDP at $4.02 trillion in 2024. That compares to California's GDP of $4.1 trillion for the same year, according to the BEA's figures. It places the state behind only the United States, China, and Germany in global rankings.
"California isn't just keeping pace with the world—we're setting the pace," Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement released Wednesday.
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