California

"Laura Nelson was dreading this drive. It’s bad enough seeing the mailboxes for houses that no longer exist, the dusty roads lined with the blackened skeletons of trees. But the day is also bone-dry and scorching, the smoke from a distant fire casting a too-familiar pallor over the landscape. Her car bumps over rough patches of pavement — places where the asphalt was melted by vehicles engulfed in flames."

"The city of Los Angeles is going green. On Tuesday, the City Council voted in favor of a several ordinances to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, including resolutions to stop using Styrofoam, plastic bags and other single-use plastics at city facilities."

"The first auction for wind development off the country’s Pacific coast concluded on Wednesday — raking in a total of $757.1 million after two days of fierce bidding."

"When dignitaries from 196 countries converge in Montreal next week to rub shoulders and hash out a new global agreement to save nature, money will be on the agenda."

"It’s not easy enforcing water regulations in the West. Just ask the officials in California who have been trying for almost a decade to penalize a man who took water from the river system that feeds San Francisco and bottled it for sale to stores like Starbucks."

"California water agencies that serve 27 million people will get just 5% of what they requested from the state to start 2023, water officials announced Thursday."

"The canvassers are backed by the oil industry in its quest to stop a new law that bans wells near residential areas and imposes new environmental controls. If petition circulators succeed in gathering enough signatures, the law would be blocked until the 2024 election."

"The federal government said Monday it will spend $250 million over four years on environmental cleanup and restoration work around a drying Southern California lake that’s fed by the depleted Colorado River."

"California’s last nuclear power plant received a $1.1 billion federal grant on Monday as the state seeks to extend the plant’s operations — currently set to end in 2025 — to meet electricity demand at a time of intensifying climate events."