Science

California Approves a Wave of Aggressive New Climate Measures

Published

3 years ago

September 1, 2022

California Approves a Wave of Aggressive New Climate Measures

California took a few of its most aggressive steps but to battle international warming as lawmakers handed a flurry of recent local weather payments late Wednesday, together with a document $54 billion in local weather spending, a measure to stop the state’s final nuclear energy plant from closing, sharp new restrictions on oil and gasoline drilling and a mandate that California cease including carbon dioxide to the ambiance by 2045.

The payments, handed round midnight on the finish of a frenzied two-year legislative session in Sacramento, marked a victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has sought to painting himself as a local weather chief as he has raised his nationwide profile and begun drawing hypothesis a few potential White Home run.

Mr. Newsom upended the legislative session in mid-August when he urged lawmakers to move a number of main new local weather payments. In the long run, all of his proposals handed however one: a invoice to strengthen the state’s 2030 goal for slashing planet-warming greenhouse gasoline emissions, which fell brief by 4 votes within the State Meeting.

“Along with the Legislature’s management, the progress we make on the local weather disaster this yr will likely be felt for generations and the affect will unfold far past our borders,” Mr. Newsom stated in a press release.

The brand new actions by California, the world’s fifth-largest economic system, add momentum to rising efforts nationwide to rein in greenhouse gasoline emissions from the combustion of oil, gasoline and coal which might be overheating the planet.

In August, President Biden signed an expansive local weather legislation that will make investments $370 billion over the following decade in low-emissions vitality sources akin to wind, photo voltaic and nuclear energy. However that legislation alone received’t be sufficient to remove U.S. greenhouse gases by 2050, a goal that local weather scientists say the world as an entire should attain to keep away from essentially the most catastrophic results of local weather change. To assist shut the hole, White Home officers have stated that states additionally have to take extra forceful motion.

California already has a number of the nation’s most stringent insurance policies to advertise renewable vitality and shift away from fossil fuels. Final month, state regulators finalized a plan to ban the sale of recent gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, a coverage that could possibly be adopted by different states and is extensively anticipated to speed up the worldwide transition towards cleaner electrical automobiles.

However as record-breaking warmth waves, droughts and wildfires have battered the state, Mr. Newsom has confronted growing strain from environmentalists to do extra. As lawmakers voted in Sacramento, the Nationwide Climate Service warned {that a} “very harmful” warmth wave would grip the state via Labor Day weekend.

The brand new payments intention to bolster California’s plans to chop emissions, although specialists stated that state regulators would now have to do the tough work of attaining these targets.

State lawmakers had beforehand set a legally binding aim for California to slash its greenhouse gasoline emissions 40 p.c beneath 1990 ranges by 2030. Beneath new laws handed Wednesday, the state will now have to chop emissions at the very least 85 p.c by 2045 whereas offsetting any remaining emissions by planting extra timber or utilizing still-unproven applied sciences like direct air seize, which collects gasses after they’ve already been discharged into the ambiance.

Nonetheless, setting an bold aim is just step one. For now, the state isn’t even on monitor to fulfill its 2030 targets, stated Danny Cullenward, coverage director at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit group that evaluates local weather packages. He argued that California regulators have been nonetheless placing an excessive amount of religion in a cap-and-trade program that imposes a ceiling on emissions from giant polluters however that has come underneath criticism for being too lenient.

“If these new targets pressure state regulators to return to the drafting board and give you a reputable new plan to chop emissions, that’s nice,” Mr. Cullenward stated. “However for my part they nonetheless don’t have a practical plan for implementation, and that’s an important half.”

Different payments handed by the legislature would take extra concrete steps.

Lawmakers permitted a funds laid out by Mr. Newsom that will spend a document $54 billion over 5 years on local weather packages. That features $6.1 billion for electrical automobiles, together with cash to purchase new battery-powered faculty buses, $14.8 billion for transit and rail initiatives, greater than $8 billion to wash up the electrical grid, $2.7 billion to battle wildfires and $2.8 billion in water packages to assist the state cope with drought.

As a part of that spending bundle, legislators endorsed a plan to maintain open the Diablo Canyon Energy Plant, a pair of nuclear reactors that present 9 p.c of California’s electrical energy with out producing any emissions.

These reactors have been initially scheduled to shut in 2024 and 2025, however the brand new plan extends these deadlines to 2029 and 2030 whereas offering a $1.4 billion mortgage to Pacific Fuel & Electrical, the utility that operates the plant. PG&E can be anticipated to use for cash from a brand new $6 billion federal program designed to maintain open present nuclear crops.

Mr. Newsom had as soon as been a agency believer that Diablo Canyon ought to shut down. However as California has confronted more and more extreme warmth waves that drive up demand for electrical energy and pressure the grid, the state has struggled to maintain the lights on. So, this summer time, Mr. Newsom reversed course and urged lawmakers to maintain the plant open.

Some environmentalists criticized the transfer, arguing that the cash could be higher spent on different clear vitality assets like photo voltaic and wind energy and batteries. However proponents of protecting the plant open warned that California badly wanted the electrical energy, and if the plant closed, it will get replaced with extra polluting sources like pure gasoline.

In a letter to the Meeting on Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, urged state lawmakers to behave. “The choice to the closure of the reactors at Diablo Canyon will most certainly be extra pure gasoline era, which might reverse progress on emissions reductions and worsen air high quality,” she wrote.

Probably the most contentious measures handed by the legislature is a requirement that new oil and gasoline wells be set again at the very least 3,200 toes from houses, faculties and hospitals, whereas imposing strict air pollution controls on present wells inside that distance.

California is the nation’s seventh-largest producer of oil, however has by no means earlier than enforced buffer zones round wells the best way states like Colorado and Pennsylvania do. Backers of the brand new buffer zones estimated that 2.7 million Californians stay inside 3,200 toes of oil and gasoline wells, and a state well being panel concluded final yr that dwelling close to lively wells will increase the danger of bronchial asthma, coronary heart assaults and untimely births.

For years, environmentalists had pressed for brand new setback necessities, however payments to take action had twice died within the State Senate after fierce lobbying from oil and gasoline teams, which argued that the necessities would cripple vitality manufacturing and drive up gasoline prices.

However this time, Mr. Newsom threw his weight behind the setback invoice and it handed.

The payments additionally order regulators to determine new tips for using carbon seize and storage, which includes trapping carbon dioxide from polluting industrial services and burying it underground. Mr. Newsom has stated the expertise, which has struggled to realize traction due to excessive prices, is required for the state to fulfill its local weather targets, although some local weather activists oppose it as a result of it will enable industries to maintain burning fossil fuels. Notably, the laws would ban using captured carbon dioxide for extracting extra crude oil.

Earlier within the week, lawmakers additionally permitted a number of new payments to encourage denser housing in cities and to carry necessities that new houses constructed close to bus or practice stops embody parking spots. Whereas these measures have been primarily supposed to alleviate the state’s housing disaster, specialists stated they might very probably assist cut back emissions as effectively by lowering Californians’ dependency on driving.

“Housing coverage usually will get misplaced in local weather discussions, however that is really the most effective ways in which we are able to cut back emissions,” stated Ethan Elkind, a legislation professor and local weather knowledgeable on the College of California, Berkeley. “If we might help extra individuals stay close to transit and in locations the place they don’t want a automotive, then who cares if they’ve an electrical automobile?”

Some coverage specialists credited the governor with serving to to interrupt the logjam round local weather coverage in California. Lots of the legislature’s local weather payments gave the impression to be languishing till Mr. Newsom intervened in early August, laying out a five-point plan and urging lawmakers to ship payments to his desk.

“For the previous few years, the Senate has been the place the place local weather coverage goes to die,” stated David Weiskopf, a senior coverage adviser at NextGen Coverage, a local weather advocacy group. “However then Newsom confirmed up and stated let’s get local weather accomplished. He’d by no means accomplished that earlier than.”

Enterprise teams had criticized the last-minute policymaking drive.

“Dashing insurance policies that may affect each side of California’s trillion-dollar economic system via the legislature on the finish of session and with out time for a radical debate addressing reliability, affordability and fairness is the mistaken strategy,” stated a press release from a coalition of enterprise teams, which embody the California Enterprise Roundtable and California Chamber of Commerce.

Others questioned if Gov. Newsom’s political ambitions have been in play. The governor is on the poll in November, and is closely favored to win re-election after beating again a recall try final yr. And in latest months, he has sought to boost his profile on the nationwide stage, drawing presidential hypothesis after he bought adverts in Florida and Texas criticizing Republican governors over legal guidelines associated to weapons and abortion.

“He’s been doing lots to get the nationwide press speaking about him,” stated Thad Kousser, a professor of political science on the College of California San Diego. “However now he’s targeted on delivering some clear wins.”

Mr. Newsom has beforehand stated he has “subzero curiosity” in operating for president in 2024. But when he does mount a bid sooner or later, political analysts stated, local weather could possibly be a potent situation.

“If you concentrate on 2028, there’s going to be a dramatic demographic shift, the place younger voters who’re very climate-oriented right this moment are going to be middle-aged and dominate the election,” stated Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist. “So it’s excellent positioning.”

Ivan Penn contributed reporting.

Science

Behind a Museum Door, These Beetles Are Eating Flesh for Science

Published

13 hours ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

Behind a Museum Door, These Beetles Are Eating Flesh for Science

Deep in the labyrinth of the American Museum of Natural History, past the giant suspended blue whale and the first floor’s Alaska brown bears, is an unobtrusive locked door. On it, there is a small sign.

“Bug Colony.”

Behind the door, accessible only to a handful of museum employees, thousands of flesh-eating dermestid beetles toil around the clock handling a task of specimen preparation that even the museum’s best trained specialists cannot.

They eat the meat off animal skeletons, leaving only clean bones behind.

Since many skeletons are too fine to be cleaned by human hands, the museum’s osteological preparation team turns to the six-legged staffers to prepare them for research and display.

The work is carried out in three gray wooden boxes the size of footlockers that house the colony. They are lined with stainless steel and their flip-up tops reveal beetles swarming the earthly remains of various small animals, mostly birds. They feast upon the gobbets of flesh clinging to the carcasses.

The room is pervaded by the soft, crackling sound of gnawing. “It sounds like something frying, or Rice Krispies when you add milk,” said Rob Pascocello, the colony’s tender.

The beetles are tiny enough — just a few millimeters long — to crawl into the recesses of the smallest animals and nibble away without affecting delicate skeletal structures, said Scott Schaefer, who oversees the museum’s collection of more than 30 million specimens and objects.

“They do the fine, detailed work that cannot be done by hand, because it’s so delicate,” Mr. Schaefer said. “It’s gentler than boiling a specimen or soaking it in chemicals or acid.”

Museum officials say the ravenous colony has processed most of the bird collections’ more than 30,000 skeleton specimens over the decades, plus countless other forms of carrion. “They get into the small crevices and, if left unchecked, keep eating until there’s nothing left to eat,” Mr. Schaefer said.

On a recent weekday, Paul Sweet, collection manager for the ornithology department, stood in the Bug Room, and in the interest of scientific precision pointed out that its name was imprecise.

True bugs, known to their fans as the Hemiptera order, have mouthparts that pierce and suck. Beetles — Coleoptera — are typically cylindrical and have mouthparts that chew.

The colony had gone to town with those mouthparts to reduce a once-lustrous pink flamingo to a humble bone bundle. A regal snowy owl was similarly picked clean. Then there was the small skeleton in a canister, with bones tinier than toothpicks.

“That’s a songbird,” said Mr. Pascocello.

Dermestid beetles are scavengers often found in the wild on animal carcasses, and in the nests, webs and burrows of animals.

Museum officials told The New York Times in 1979 that their dermestid colony had remained self-sustaining since being brought over from Africa in the 1930s. Mr. Sweet said the current group has been around for his entire 35 years at the museum, but could not say for sure if they were the original colony’s descendants.

Either way, since a beetle’s life is only about six months, “they’re all kissing cousins,” said Mr. Pascocello. He said that while the museum was closed during the coronavirus pandemic, he “kept a backup colony in my bedroom.”

On this day, Mr. Sweet was looking to skeletonize a northern gannet, a sea bird recovered from Midland Beach on Staten Island. It had been skinned, dried, and trimmed of most of its flesh by researchers before it was handed over to the colony for finishing work.

Within minutes, the carcass was swarmed. The beetles can pick clean a small bird within a couple of days, but may need two weeks for larger skeletons like the gannet.

Mr. Pascocello once served the beetles an orangutan; Mr. Sweet once gave them an emu. But the size of the beetles’ boxes is a factor. Larger specimens must be served piecemeal, like the carcass of a feisty Cuban crocodile known as Fidel, obtained from the Bronx Zoo in 2005.

Before the pristine skeletons are boxed and cataloged, they are soaked in water and frozen for days to kill remaining beetles or eggs.

The beetles are not a threat to humans, but an infestation of the museum’s specimen collection would be disastrous. Keeping the beetles well fed discourages them from wandering away, as does a strip of Vaseline toward the top of their boxes and a sticky floor section across the room’s doorway.

If the supply of specimens should stall, Mr. Pascocello keeps some chicken around as emergency food. Mr. Sweet said he offered the colony pigs’ feet during the pandemic because it was the cheapest bone meat at the supermarket.

The gourmandising of the beetles is a reminder that important science is not always conducted in gleaming, hygienic laboratories. On the door, under the “Bug Colony” sign, is a handwritten addendum:

“Bad odors emanating from behind this door is normal.”

Science

Researchers find drinking water is safe in Eaton, Palisades burn areas as utilities lift last 'do not drink' order

Published

15 hours ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

Researchers find drinking water is safe in Eaton, Palisades burn areas as utilities lift last 'do not drink' order

Scientists have released some of the first independent test results confirming that drinking water in fire-affected areas around Altadena and the Pacific Palisades is largely free of harmful contaminants, as an Altadena utility lifted the last “do not drink” notice left in the burn zones.

Researchers with the LA Fire HEALTH Study released results on Friday from 53 homes spread across the burn areas and the more than three miles surrounding them. They found only one with a toxic substance at dangerous levels: at one home, the water contained benzene, a known carcinogen, at concentrations slightly above the state’s allowable level of 1 part per billion.

The findings add to mounting evidence that the affected area’s drinking water is safe. In March, Caltech professor Francois Tissot’s team found no lead levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limit in the tap water of the 43 homes they tested in Altadena and surrounding communities. Separately, UCLA professor Sanjay Mohanty’s group found no concerning levels of heavy metals or potentially harmful “forever” chemicals in 45 homes tested in the Palisades.

Experts noted that LA Fire HEALTH Study’s elevated benzene level — at 1.6 ppb — remains below the federal limit of 5 ppb and would likely drop below 1 ppb once the homeowner follows the utilities’ recommendation to run all faucets in the entire house for at least five minutes to flush contaminants out of the lines before using the tap water.

The state’s limit of 1 ppb equates to no more than a two-in-one-million chance of a resident developing cancer from a lifetime exposure to the contaminant at that level, according to the State Water Resources Control Board. For higher, short-term exposures to benzene, the U.S. EPA says exposure to over 200 ppb for more than a day could have negative, non-cancer health consequences for children.

“I’m optimistic from these results,” said Chris Olivares, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, who has led the tap water-testing part of the LA Fire HEALTH Study. “The major takeaway, I think, is the importance of flushing.”

Andrew Whelton — a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Purdue University and a pioneer in the field of post-fire water contamination and remediation — attributes the quick and successful restoration of safe drinking water to the hard work of local utilities and state regulators, which followed a post-fire playbook Whelton and others developed in the wake of the 2017 Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa, 2018 Camp fire in Paradise, and subsequent fires throughout Colorado in 2021 and Hawaii in 2023.

The way dangerous volatile organic compounds, like benzene, could contaminate water supplies after a wildfire wasn’t well known or studied until a Santa Rosa resident reported a strong smell of gasoline — a signature indicator of benzene — when turning on their kitchen faucet for the first time after the 2017 fire.

Scientists and public health officials raced to understand and solve the problem. They found benzene levels as high as 40,000 ppb, and it took a year to restore safe water.

After the Camp fire, scientists found levels over 900 ppb, which took eight months to remediate.

After the L.A. County fires, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power found one instance of benzene at 71.3 ppb. The utility worked around the clock to restore safe water, first by closing roughly 4,800 open connections at fire hydrants and destroyed homes to restore water pressure, then continuously flushing water out of the system to push out contaminants. As they went, they tested and retested until benzene levels dropped to near-zero.

LADWP — with the approval of the State Water Resources Control Board — lifted its “do not drink” notice on March 7, exactly two months after the Palisades fire broke out. Two of the three smaller customer-owned utilities in Altadena, Lincoln Avenue Water Co. and Rubio Cañon Land and Water Assn. — which also detected benzene in their systems after the fires — quickly followed. The third, Las Flores Water Co., lifted the last “do not drink” notice on May 9.

Las Flores had registered the highest benzene levels of all the utilities: 440 ppb from a sample collected on April 10.

The LA Fire HEALTH Study team tested roughly eight homes within each burn area and over a dozen in adjacent communities between February and April while the testing and flushing process was ongoing.

The results are some of the first from the LA Fire HEALTH Study’s broad-ranging, privately funded effort between nearly a dozen academic and medical institutions, to understand the health consequences of the L.A. County fires over the course of 10 years.

Outside the burn areas, no homes the team sampled exceeded the state’s allowable limit for benzene or any of the other two dozen volatile organic compounds for which the group tested. And inside the burn areas, benzene was the only contaminant that exceeded the state’s allowable limits.

Although the utilities have worked for months to flush contaminants out of the labyrinth of pipes shuttling water from reservoirs to private properties, it’s homeowners who are responsible for finishing out the job and flushing the pipes on their own properties.

The researchers stressed that the one benzene exceedance — found in Lincoln Avenue’s service area one week after the utility’s “do not drink” notice was lifted — is a reminder that residents should follow the utilities’ guidance for safe water use once returning home.

“Lincoln Avenue Water Company’s top priority is to provide safe and reliable drinking water to the community. Through extensive testing, we have established that our system is in compliance with all state and federal water quality standards,” said Lincoln Avenue general manager Jennifer Betancourt Torres, in a statement to The Times.

“It’s important to emphasize that samples taken from inside the home are considered a representation of the residential plumbing and not the water being delivered,” she said.

The utilities and water safety experts say residents should first flush all of their lines — every faucet and spigot, both hot and cold, for at least five minutes. They should also run all appliances and fixtures, like dishwashers and washing machines, once with hot water before using. Two batches of ice from a fridge icemaker should be discarded.

Each utility is providing detailed, up-to-date guidance for their customers on their respective websites, including LADWP, Rubio Cañon, Lincoln Avenue and Las Flores.

Staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.

Science

An L.A. Doctor’s House Burned. Now He Treats the Fires’ Effects in Neighbors.

Published

1 day ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

An L.A. Doctor’s House Burned. Now He Treats the Fires’ Effects in Neighbors.

Another long-term concern is pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive disease in which scarring thickens and hardens lung tissue, making it difficult for oxygen to move into the bloodstream. Dr. Elsayegh describes a lung with pulmonary fibrosis as “a stiff balloon from the party store” — your face flushes as you try to force air inside, but it simply refuses to inflate.

As a former Palisades resident intent on returning to the neighborhood, Dr. Elsayegh is also doubling as a trusted confidant, drawing on his personal experience to help his patients face uncertainties and find solutions — or next steps, at least.

“In an ideal world, I would go in there and say, ‘Everyone that lives in the Palisades and in L.A. County, let’s all move. Let’s all go somewhere else and we don’t have to worry about this,’ ” he said. “That’s not reality. I’m trying to find this unbelievably difficult balance of helping us return to normalcy or return to our life, but doing it as safely as possible.”

In early February, Dr. Elsayegh pulled up a chair next to Dana Michels, a cybersecurity lawyer and healthy mother of three who had gone to check the damage at her house and now could not shake a cough.

“Sweetheart, you’re not moving air at all,” Dr. Elsayegh said, listening to her lungs through a stethoscope and quickly ordering a breathing test and a nebulizer, to start. A pulmonary student asked to take a listen, then glanced up at Dr. Elsayegh, looking confused.

“I’m not hearing anything,” the student said. Dr. Elsayegh gave a single nod.

After years of renting, Ms. Michels and her husband got their first mortgage almost four years ago; it was a family milestone. Now, with their Palisades home smoked through, the family is split between two rental apartments in Marina del Rey — one for boys, one for girls — and they are navigating a new school, new insurance paperwork and new prescriptions to manage the wheezing.