Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Water Weekly 3: So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
The Long Goodbye to the Drought
News that Gov. Brown was going to declare the drought over leaked like December’s deluges. We started hearing about it days before the formal announcement, and we figured he was waiting for the Wednesday Sierra snowpack reading. We were right – the announcement came Wednesday night, shortly after DWR reported snow levels in the Sierras were to die for. The Guv did the right thing by reminding us all to conserve, but disappointingly (not surprisingly!) said nothing about the need to fix the ongoing regulatory drought.
Read Brown’s drought-ending proclamation here
Water Weekly 3: Responding to the Disaster in Japan
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Japan’s Crumbled Water Infrastructure
Lost in the deluge of bad news following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor problems in Japan is any news on the state of water infrastructure in the country’s devastated Northeast. Finally, we’re getting some indication of the extent of damage, and as expected, it’s not good: Up to 2.5 million homes are without water, there are miles of destroyed water lines, lots of damaged facilities and no power for pumps and treatment plants. Please add all that to your prayers for Japan.
Water Weekly 3: Sweet and Stinky News of the Week
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Big News
Yeah, we’re excited the cops are finally closing in on Bat Boy, but the really big news this week is just how much good water news there’s been. Where do we start? How about the settlement agreement that will allow more water to be pumped from the Delta? Or the fact that there’s lots and lots of snow in the Sierras and it’s very, very wet? Or that the fisheries folks are predicting a banner year for California salmon, an indicator fish for Delta ecology? There’s just so much to choose from!
Read all about it! The Delta Settlement!
Water Weekly 3: Delta Plan and Generations Spanned
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Duh, Duh, Duh, Yikes
The Delta Stewardship Council released the first of four drafts of the Draft Delta Plan that, when all are published, will lay out the entire concept for environmental review. The first draft’s four points were three duhs and a yikes: California’s water is oversubscribed (duh), it’s an increasingly volatile issue (duh), there’s no emergency response plan for the Delta (duh) and even with our best efforts, some Delta species will go extinct (yikes, because that’s an opening for endless litigation to postpone solutions). Subsequent elements will be published March 17, April 21 and May 19.
Read the explanatory cover letter
Water Weekly 3: Loons, French Kissing and Al Gore
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Wet and Dry
Al Gore can smile and explain how the fierce winter storms in the Midwest and East can be blamed on global warming – but only if you call it climate change – and we really don’t care because it’s sunny and mild here. Such are the vagaries of weather. We’re also seeing that here in the West, as California enjoys a respite from drought … while the Colorado River basin struggles with too many sunny days.
Read DWR’s most recent report on the Sierra snowpack
Read The Economist: Las Vegas is the canary in the mineshaft
(more…)
California’s Universities are the Best
Finally, a survey has shown that through diligence, hard work and unending commitment, California’s universities – Berkeley in particular – are the best in the whole wide world. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Here’s why:
The University of California, Berkeley, has been crowned top … of the world’s most environmentally friendly higher education institutions.
The “UI Green Metric Ranking of World Universities” is based on several factors, including green space, electricity consumption, waste and water management and eco-sustainability policies.
Based on research and surveys conducted by the Green Metric team at the University of Indonesia on thousands of other universities around the world, University of California, Berkeley, United States scored best with a points total of 8,213 and is the greenest campus in terms of its environment policy.
Berkeley got the title, but the award really goes to the entire UC system, the UC Board of Regents and the UC faculty as a whole, because the green policies established at Berkeley are not unlike those at all the UC campuses. So it’s fair to say that California has the greenest public institutions of higher education in the world.
Now don’t get us wrong. We’re all about green space, conservation and eco-sustainable policies. Whether there’s a looming eco-catastrophe or not (we think it’s “not”), it makes sense to be good stewards of our shared resources. No, the problem we have with Berkeley’s new glory is that it’s really just the outgrowth of the deeper commitment to environmentalist brainwashing education that goes on at UC campuses. If it weren’t for Regents who have bought into environmental doctrine, a faculty that’s bought into environmental extremism, and a curriculum that ensures wave after wave of freshly minted environmentalist soldiers will be graduating every spring and going into battle for Gaea, Berkeley would not be at the top of the green university rankings.
It’s what I – Laer – refer to as California’s PEER Axis, standing for progressives, environmentalists, educators and reporters. I wrote about it a few months ago in a well-read op/ed that ran just after the mid-term election on the national news website The Daily Caller:
While the established political parties and their consultants will ignore California and pore over campaigns in other states for clues on how to capitalize on — or crush — the Tea Party’s influence, the Left will be studying what happened in California, so they can replicate it the next time around. What they will find is not so much a magic formula but a vast progressive infrastructure they will then work to replicate elsewhere.
I call this infrastructure the PEER Axis, for the progressives, environmentalists, educators and reporters who collectively run California and influence the underpinnings of America. The PEER Axis remains powerful because politicians and political movements may come and go, but government bureaucrats and regulators, environmentalists and social justice activists, and their supporters in education and the media are pretty much forever. The structure of California ensures that appropriately indoctrinated college graduates will continue to fill the personnel pipelines that run from Berkeley, UCLA and other liberal universities straight into the progressive movement.
Many end up in government offices in Sacramento, where they write policies that are parroted in other states around the nation, as evidenced by the fact that the federal government is following California’s lead in setting the next round of vehicle fuel economy standards. Others will go to work at California’s giant environmentalist organizations, social justice NGOs and activist law firms, or the powerful public employee unions. Some will stay on the campuses, turning out future generations of progressives and writing studies to reinforce and justify progressive government policies, and those who graduate into the media will publicize these efforts and belittle any contrarian thinking. Many will find jobs in California’s foremost culture-bending venture, Hollywood, where they will pummel all the world with green messages (The China Syndrome, Avatar), anti-corporate tirades (Metropolis, Wall Street), anti-war propaganda (Apocalypse Now, In the Valley of Elah) and movies challenging conventional values (Milk, Juno).
Wherever they end up, they will be greeted by like-minded alumnae ready to show them the ropes so they, too, can form and implement policy, bring lawsuits, and mold the next generation.
In my 30 years as an Orange County and California public affairs specialist (maybe even a guru, now that my hair is gray), I’ve watched the PEER Axis in action. It has transformed California from a state that spawned great private enterprises and embraced needed public infrastructure into a state that could easily win the same award Berkeley just one, if such an award were given.
Defeating the PEER Axis isn’t an option I see playing out in my lifetime, so I’ve made it my work, and my agency’s work, to win skirmishes, shine a spotlight on their activities and in so doing, dull the edge of their blade. Care to join us in the good fight?
Water Weekly 3: Arguments, Squabbles and Hissy Fits
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Is too! Is not!
The headline pretty much recaps two major PR pushes we saw this week. AlterNet, a progressive/enviro news service, published a lengthy (9 clicks!) piece, “California Can’t Have it All,” which argued there’s not enough water for both fish and farmers. And MWD put a PowerPoint online detailing its Delta Vision Strategic Plan which, more rationally, said there’s enough water for both (in most years, anyway). Both are thoughtful pieces, but we sure thought one was more thoughtful.
Read AlterNet’s “California Can’t Have It All” here
Happy New Year, You’re the Bane of the World’s Existence
The Center for Biological Depravity…er, Diversity, announced its top 11 priorities for bringing the U.S. economy to a halt in 2011. It was going to go with 12, but making sure Jerry Brown appointed an ultra-enviro to head California’s Resources Agency has already been crossed off the list.
As you’d imagine, this year’s agenda is filled with plans to protect a whole slew of species from various man-made dangers. If you’re a wolf or a bluefin tuna, this just might be your year. Humans…not so much. After taking baby steps last year, the Center hid in the middle of its list a rather Maoist priority to “Challenge the Overpopulation Paradigm.” That’s right Joe Citizen, you and your 2.3 adorable kids (and their future kids) now have big fat target on your back. As if an economic meltdown and global terrorism weren’t enough.
We’ll continue to encourage other groups to tackle overpopulation this year. We’ll distribute hundreds of thousands of condoms and ramp up the overpopulation dialogue through high-profile projects, including a study on the connection between overpopulation and diminishing water supplies in the Lower Colorado River Basin, the Center’s unique newsletter, Pop X, and targeted actions to Congress.
We’ll be interested to see their study on the Colorado River, which is facing challenges. But that’s more so from several years of drought than too many newborns from too many “What Happens in Vegas…” nights.
Maybe the Center is grabbing for headlines to boost its coffers. Maybe it’s tired of fighting on the environmental front lines and has chosen to try the back door. Maybe it just doesn’t care for chubby babies with good short games. Maybe all of the above.
Either way, it’s time to come to grips with the fact that you and your family are the bane of the world’s existence. Happy New Year!
Read the rest of the Center’s 2011 priorities here.
Water Weekly 3: Drama in California’s water news
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
The Junk-science-man Cometh
The pseudo scientists at the Environmental Working Group have been at it again, drumming up public hysteria (and funds, presumably) by publishing yet another sloppy “scientific” analysis of nasty stuff in our water. This time it’s Chromium 6, and hundreds of newspapers picked up the story, most not bothering to note that there’s no data whatsoever linking cancer to Chromium 6 in water supplies. Or that cancer levels in the famous Chromium 6 town of Hinkley CA are below normal. Still, EPA announced that based on EWG’s study, it would look into Chromium 6 in water. Sigh.
LP&A Weekly 3 – Santa Brings Water – And Coal?
What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days? Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here. You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here. This week:
Ho, Ho, HO, H2O – That was some rain!
Wow! Earlier this week, we thought Noah might be knocking on our door any minute! Our friend who sends us the Costa Mesa rain gauge read-outs is on vacation in Mammoth (which reports it now has more snow than any ski resort IN THE WORLD!), but before he left, he provided the rainfall data through Wednesday at 8 p.m.: For the rain year (July-June) OC was already at 117% of average. December’s rain was 528% of average, and year-to-date rain was 376% of average! We expect the Department of Water Resources to be announcing higher allocations soon.
News of DWR’s Dec. 20th increased allocation here
Amazing photos from Mammoth here
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