california Most California counties fall short of reopening criteria as coronavirus cases climb By www.latimes.com Published On :: Fri, 8 May 2020 13:53:41 -0400 The vast majority of California isn't close to meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom's reopening requirements, a Times analysis finds. Full Article
california California voters asked to vote by mail in November due to coronavirus fears By www.latimes.com Published On :: Fri, 8 May 2020 15:32:02 -0400 Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered ballots be mailed to the state's 20.6 million voters for the November election while imposing new rules for in-person voting. Full Article
california Senior care homes source of nearly half of all California coronavirus deaths, data show By www.latimes.com Published On :: Fri, 8 May 2020 22:36:46 -0400 New data analyzed by the Los Angeles Times show that nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in the state are associated with elder care facilities. Full Article
california A politically connected firm gets an $800-million mask contract with California. Then it falls apart By www.latimes.com Published On :: Sat, 9 May 2020 08:00:08 -0400 California's deal with Bear Mountain Development Co. for coronavirus equipment was one of the state's largest. Full Article
california California governor says community spread started at nail salon By www.nbcnews.com Published On :: Sat, 09 May 2020 02:22:00 GMT He said he couldn't provide more information because of health and privacy concerns. Full Article
california California NICU disaster preparedness By feeds.nature.com Published On :: 2020-05-08 Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Optimal solar subsidy policy design and incentive pass-through evaluation: using US California as an example By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 04 Jul 2016 14:30:00 -0400 Renewable energy is an important source to tackle against climate change, as the latest IPCC report has pointed out. However, due to the existence of multiple market failures such as negative externalities of fossil fuels and knowledge spillovers of new technology, government subsidies are still needed to develop renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. In the United States, there have been various forms of subsidies for PV, varying from the federal level to the state level, and from the city level to the utility level. California, as the pioneer of solar PV development, has put forward the biggest state-level subsidy program for PV, the California Solar Initiative (CSI). The CSI has planned to spend around $2.2 Billion in 2007–2016 to install roughly 2 GW PV capacity, with the average subsidy level as high as $1.1/W. How to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and incentive pass-through of this program are the two major research questions we are pursing. Our cost-effectiveness analysis is based on a constrained optimization model that we developed, where the objective is to install as much PV capacity as possible under a fixed budget constraint. Both the analytical and computational results suggest that due to a strong peer effect and the learning-by-doing effect, one can shift subsides from later periods to early periods so that the final PV installed capacity can be increased by 8.1% (or 32 MW). However, if the decision-maker has other policy objectives or constraints in mind, such as maintaining the policy certainty, then, the optimally calculated subsidy policy would look like the CSI. As to the incentive pass-through question, we took a structural approach and in addition used the method of regression discontinuity (RD). While in general, the incentive pass-through rate depends on the curvature of the demand and supply curve and the level of market competition, our two estimations indicate that the incentive pass-through for the CSI program is almost complete. In other words, almost all of the incentive has been enjoyed by the customer, and the PV installers did not retain much. Based on the RD design, we observe that PV installers tend to consider the CSI incentive as exogenous to their pricing decision. The relative good performance of the CSI in terms of both the cost-effectiveness and the incentive pass-through aspect are tightly related to its policy design and program management. International speaking, the biggest challenge for the design of any PV subsidy program is the quick running out of the budget, and in the end, it looks like customers are rushing for the subsidy. Such rushing behavior is a clear indication of higher-than-needed incentive levels. Due to the policy rigidity and rapid PV technological change, the PV subsidy policy may lag behind the PV cost decline; and as a result, rational customers could rush for any unnecessarily high subsidy. Due to the high uncertainty and unpredictability of future PV costs, the CSI put forward a new design that links the incentive level change and the installed capacity goal fulfillment. Specifically, the CSI has designed nine steps to achieve its policy goal; at each step, there is a PV capacity goal that corresponds to an incentive level. Once the capacity goal is finished, the incentive level will decrease to the next lower level. Furthermore, to maintain the policy certainty, the CSI regulated that every step-wise change in the incentive level should not be higher than $0.45/W, nor smaller than $0.05/W, together with other three constraints. A good subsidy policy not only requires flexible policy design to respond to fast-changing environment, but also demands an efficient program management system, digitalized if possible. For the CSI, the authority has contracted out a third-party to maintain a good database system for the program. Specifically, the database has documented in detail every PV system that customers requested. Key data fields include 22 important dates during the PV installation process, customers’ zip code, city, utility and county information, and various characteristics of the PV system such as price, system size, incentive, PV module and installer. All information is publicly available, which to some extent fills in the information gap held by customers and fosters the market competition among PV installers. For customers to receive the incentive, their PV systems have to pass the inspection of the local government, and also to be interconnected to the grid. On the supply side, the CSI has also certified and created a list of PV installers that every customer can choose from. Although the CSI has ended in 2014 due to fast PV cost reduction starting from 2009, its experience has been transferred to other areas in the United States and in Europe. It is highly possible that other similar new technologies and products (e.g. the electric car and the battery) can adopt the CSI policy design, too. In summary, a good and successful policy may need to be simply, clear, credible, foreseeable, flexible, end-able, and incentive-compatible. The PV subsidy policy in China still has a long way to go when compared to the CSI. Authors Changgui Dong Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
california California Utility Opens First Sustainable Campus as Model Utility Site By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:44:45 -0500 Burbank Water & Power opens a sustainable power plant campus as a model for re-adapting industrial sites from water reclamation to solar Full Article Design
california Are environmental laws to blame for California's wildfires? By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 07 Aug 2018 13:39:43 -0400 A certain Commander in Chief says that wildfires are being made 'so much worse by the bad environmental laws.' Here's what's really happening. Full Article Business
california California Paves the Way for Lower-VOC Cleaning Products to Reduce Smog By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:14:53 -0500 Household cleaning products in the U.S. might soon be a little greener, thanks to a new rule in California that will require companies to reformulate products so they contain fewer volatile organic compounds, or Full Article Business
california California teen collects 50,000 rotting golf balls from coastal waters By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 09:55:00 -0500 Alex Weber, 18, has just published a study that analyzes how these balls enter and degrade in the water. Full Article Science
california 11 electric cars now under $27,000... in California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:43:43 -0400 There are now 11 mass-manufactured electric cars that come in under $27,000 in California... after federal and California incentives. Full Article Transportation
california A Healthy California School Lunch: Fruit, Veggies, And A Bit Of Lead By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:02:38 -0400 Vinyl man (pictured) may be disappointed. "The hundreds of thousands of lunch boxes given away by California state health officials over the last several years were designed to promote healthful habits, bearing slogans such as "Eat Fruits & Vegetables Full Article Business
california Geothermal Power Projects Abandoned in Switzerland, California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:41:54 -0500 It's like that 1965 movie Crack in the World, where drilling for geothermal energy causes all kinds of problems. There are such high hopes for real geothermal power; there is a lot of heat down there that can vaporize water and run turbines. Full Article Energy
california California Court Overturns Order to Destroy GMO Beets By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:00:00 -0500 It seems that GMOs are again steamrolling their way through our legal system. Back in December it seemed there may be a light at the end of the tunnel when a federal judge ordered that 258 acres of genetically modified sugar Full Article Living
california California gets serious in the fight against plastic microfibers By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Thu, 01 Mar 2018 14:32:00 -0500 New legislation would require polyester clothing to have a label warning about shedding in the wash. Full Article Living
california California governor signs bill legalizing hemp farming in the state By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:08:40 -0400 After making its way through the Californian legislature with bi-partisan support (!), the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act (aka SB 566) was signed by governor Jerry Brown and became state law. Full Article Science
california California, Oregon and Washington join British Columbia to create new environmental superpower By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:53:24 -0500 Last week, California joined Oregon and Washington in signing a pact with British Columbia called the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, which forms an alliance to set shared fuel standards and mandates for cutting carbon emissions. Full Article Business
california California feeds the duck with mandatory solar panels on new houses By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Thu, 10 May 2018 09:55:42 -0400 Fortunately, that's not the only change in their building regulations. Full Article Technology
california What the media missed in its coverage of California's energy code changes By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Thu, 31 May 2018 13:09:47 -0400 Mandatory solar panels are not the biggest deal here. Full Article Design
california Is wearing a face mask the new normal for Californians? By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Fri, 16 Nov 2018 10:02:25 -0500 Air quality in San Francisco is the worst in the world right now. Full Article Science
california EPA tries to throw out case for California schools contaminated with pesticides By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 09:06:15 -0500 Latino students are exposed to higher levels of pesticides. But the EPA and parents clash over what should be done. Full Article Business
california Sea otters may help combat harmful agricultural run-off in California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 09:45:00 -0400 As a keystone species, the importance of the sea otter on the health of coastal ecosystems can't be understated. A new study shows that they may even play a key role in helping coastlines cope with agricultural run-off. Full Article Science
california Paleontologists discover lost ecosystem off the coast of southern California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Fri, 09 Jun 2017 09:00:00 -0400 The ecosystem had thrived for thousands of years but collapsed less than two centuries ago. Full Article Science
california "Go Dry" Movement Spreads, As Californians Rip Up Their Grass Lawns By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:25:51 -0400 Cut the grass will you?...Are you done edging?....Time to water the Full Article Business
california In California, people without rooftop solar panels pay a $65 per year subsidy to those with them By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 11:09:06 -0400 Solar power is a wonderful thing but the benefits are not evenly distributed. Full Article Energy
california California utility offers rebates and incentives for going all-electric By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Thu, 28 Jun 2018 16:20:54 -0400 SMUD demonstrate that all-electric living is actually cheaper than gas. Full Article Energy
california California utilities will pay you to drive electric By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Fri, 28 Dec 2018 16:43:34 -0500 And why not? Full Article Transportation
california Judge allows California to require cancer warning on Monsanto's Roundup By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:08:57 -0400 A judge has ruled against Monsanto; company complains that it would drive some customers away. Unsealed documents add to drama. Full Article Business
california Yikes! California's extreme drought could last "a decade or more", 2014 driest year in a century By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 15:20:30 -0400 California has been going through a drought for about 3 years now, with 2013 being the driest year on record. Full Article Science
california 5 nuts not grown in California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 06 Apr 2015 16:16:28 -0400 National almond, walnut and pistachio crops are very thirsty, and predominantly grown in drought-stricken California; if you’re looking for alternatives, consider these. Full Article Living
california California heatwave cooks mussels in their shells By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 11:07:00 -0400 Exposed by low tide and bereft of a cooling breeze, the mollusks overheated to the point of cooking. Full Article Science
california Recycling is broken: California's rePlanet shuts all its recycling centers By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 07 Aug 2019 10:44:28 -0400 We have long called for deposits on everything. California shows that even that is not enough. Full Article Business
california New California law helps diners to bring their own containers By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 14 Aug 2019 09:00:00 -0400 It's still up to a restaurant to decide to fill them, but the law provides detailed guidelines on how to do it safely. Full Article Business
california #1 metro area in US for electric car growth is no longer in California By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 03 Mar 2014 19:32:00 -0500 If you thought the top market for electric car growth was somewhere in California, you'd be right many months out of the year, but not the 4th quarter of 2013. Full Article Transportation
california 8 Awesome Airstream Hotels, From the California Desert to the French Pyrenees By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Wed, 30 May 2012 05:51:36 -0400 A drive-in movie theater in the wilderness and an urban rooftop are just a few of the innovative spots from which stylish trailer hotels are popping up. Full Article Living
california Photo: California towhee is the picture of spring By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:00:00 -0400 Our photo of the day comes from Atascadero, California. Full Article Science
california California hotels banned from offering mini toiletries in plastic By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 08:00:00 -0400 It's part of a statewide effort to crack down on plastic waste. Full Article Business
california Car industry splits over California emissions rules. What side is your car maker on? By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 13:40:32 -0400 I was disappointed to see that Subaru, beloved of TreeHugger types, is on the wrong side of this issue. Full Article Transportation
california Pipeline that spilled 105,000 gallons of oil in California was only one in county without 'auto shut-off' By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 25 May 2015 15:53:24 -0400 Why make exceptions like this? Full Article Energy
california This is the ongoing gas leak in California that's an epic ecological disaster By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 12:23:37 -0500 Impact of greenhouse gases released since October measured over a 20-year time frame is equivalent to emissions from 7 million cars. Full Article Energy
