“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday unveiled proposals to slash diesel soot from freight trains and marine vessels by 90% by 2030, winning guarded praise from environmentalists, but a scathing rebuke from Southern California’s top air quality regulator… South Coast Air Quality Management District Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein said the region was “being thrown table scraps” with rules designed to benefit industry, which will allow thousands of Californians to continue to die prematurely for decades. Greater Los Angeles is exposed to pollution from diesel engines more than anywhere in the nation, with 40% of all goods shipped to the U.S. funneled through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on diesel-powered ships and trains. The air that Southern Californians breathe contains more than half of all the diesel particulate emitted in the U.S. each year.”

“A new hybrid tug boat proposed by Seattle-based Foss Maritime Company, and funded in part by the Port of Los Angeles, will be substantially less polluting, more fuel efficient and even quieter than today’s modern tug boats. Through a Technology Advancement Program (TAP) established as part of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, the Port of Los Angeles will co-fund the ‘green’ tug initiative, contributing $850,000. The Technology Advancement Program seeks to fund projects aimed at developing less polluting technology for harbor craft operating within the L.A.-Long Beach port complex through prototype projects like the Foss hybrid tug.”

“As part of United Nations efforts to combat global warming, the world body launched a unique partnership today with the United States’ City of San Francisco, the Bay Area Council and a wide array of businesses in the region, aimed at providing a model for actions that businesses and cities around the world can take to combat global warming… More than 20 companies from a variety of sectors – including Gap Inc., Google and Shaklee – officially endorsed the Principles and also announced the Business Council on Climate Change (“BC3) at a special event in San Francisco – the city that gave birth to the UN with the signing of the Charter in 1945.”

Paul Krugman, economist and columnist for the New York Times, has written a editorial praising California’s leadership role in energy conservation:

Colorless Green Ideas, by Paul Krugman,

The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.

Aside from a few dead-enders on the political right, climate change skeptics seem to be making a seamless transition from denial to fatalism. In the past, they rejected the science. Now, with the scientific evidence pretty much irrefutable, they insist that it doesn’t matter because any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible.

Behind this claim lies the assumption, … that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live. To be fair, some people in the conservation movement seem to share that assumption.

But the assumption is false. Let me tell you about … an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

There’s nothing heroic about California’s energy policy… [T]he state has adopted … conservation measures that are … the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive…

The energy divergence between California and the rest of the United States dates from the 1970s. Both the nation and the state initially engaged in significant energy conservation after that decade’s energy crisis. But conservation in most of America soon stalled…

In California, by contrast, the state continued to push policies designed to encourage conservation, especially of electricity. And these policies worked.

People in California have always used a bit less energy … because of the mild climate. But the difference has grown much larger since the 1970s. Today, the average Californian uses about a third less total energy than the average American, uses less than 60 percent as much electricity, and … emit[s] only about 55 percent as much carbon dioxide.

How did the state do it? In some cases conservation was mandated directly, through energy efficiency standards for appliances and rules governing new construction. Also, regulated power companies were given new incentives to promote conservation…

And yes, a variety of state actions had the effect of raising energy prices. In the early 1970s, the price of electricity in California was close to the national average. Today, it’s about 50 percent higher. … As the higher price of power indicates, conservation didn’t come free. Still, it’s striking how invisible California’s energy policy remains…

So is California a role model for climate policy? No and yes. Even if America as a whole had matched California…, we’d still be emitting about as much carbon dioxide now as we were in 1990. That’s too much.

But California’s experience shows that serious conservation is a lot less disruptive, imposes much less of a burden, than the skeptics would have it. And the fact that a state government, with far more limited powers than those at Washington’s disposal, has been able to achieve so much is a good omen for our ability to do a lot to limit climate change, if and when we find the political will.

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“Kazakhstan threatened Wednesday to suspend Chevron Corp.’s license for operations at a giant Caspian Sea oil field and gave the U.S. energy giant a month to come up with a plan to remove hazardous waste. Environmental Minister Nurlan Iskakov said in televised remarks that the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil consortium developing the Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan has stockpiled nearly 10 U.S. tons of sulfur extracted from the crude… Iskakov gave Chevron a month to present an action plan to remove the hazardous sulfur waste, or face suspension of operations.”

“Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo Inc., and his wife will donate $75 million to Stanford University, according to reports Friday. The Associated Press reported that Stanford plans to spend $50 million of the donation on a new environmental studies center it hopes to finish by December, and $5 million on a 120,000-square-foot center for training doctors. It hasn’t decided yet how to spend the rest. Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, met in 1992 while studying at a Stanford program in Japan, then graduated from the university in 1990.”

“ANDALAS, the first Sumatran rhinoceros born in captivity in over 100 years will leave his Los Angeles Zoo home of three years later this week to go to Indonesia. Andalas will become the first Sumatran rhino ever to be transported from the United States to Indonesia as part of an international breeding program. He will join two female rhinos, at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in the Way Kambas National Park on the Island of Sumatra.”

“The Navy has rejected additional safeguards to protect whales from high-power sonar during war games in Southern California waters, saying that state officials who asked for extra precautions have no authority to tell the U.S. Navy what to do.”

“State Attorney General Jerry Brown’s invitation to major automakers to try to resolve a pair of dueling lawsuits over vehicle emissions and global warming got a cold shoulder from the companies. Their response, in a letter to Brown: We’d be happy to talk about dismissing the state’s damage suit against us, but don’t bother bringing up our suit to overturn California’s global-warming law… Brown was undaunted. ‘I’m very pleased that they are willing to engage in conversation,’ he said today. ‘I’d be prepared to talk with the lawyers about their lawsuits along with ours. I still intend to meet with the CEOs. I don’t think they will wish to refrain from having an honest dialogue, because the issue is too important.’ “

“California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Thursday he will move ahead with a lawsuit that accuses the six largest American and Japanese automakers of damaging the environment by producing vehicles that contribute to global warming. ‘We think we have a solid case, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously’, said Brown, who had expressed ambivalence about the suit when he campaigned for attorney general last year. ‘The ultimate objective is … to prevent the catastrophic consequences of this global warming problem.’ At the same time, Brown offered to meet with the automakers — Chrysler Motors Corp., General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America Inc., American Honda Motor Co. and Nissan North America Inc. — to discuss ways to resolve the lawsuit and address climate change.”