Weekly Green: February 4, 2013

In recent headlines:

• Flame retardants may leach from your walls;
• CEQA overhaul fight begins;
• White House targets oil-and-gas tax breaks;
• Hagel to divest Chevron;
• ... and much more!

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Top News

Flame retardants may leach from your walls
Couches throughout the nation have become notorious for containing flame-retardant chemicals that may do more harm than good. Now, it turns out, those chemicals may also be leaching from the walls that surround you.
http://www.sfgate.com/health...

CEQA overhaul fight begins
What could be the most contentious issue considered at the Capitol this year already has proponents and opponents hiring lobbyists and media strategists to start public campaigns - and there hasn't even been a bill introduced.
http://www.sfgate.com/news...

White House targets oil-and-gas tax breaks as part of plan to replace sequester
The White House took jabs at oil-and-gas subsidies last Wednesday, calling for an end to the incentives as part of a deal to avoid automatic spending cuts from sequestration.
http://thehill.com/blogs...

Hagel to divest Chevron
Sen. Chuck Hagel will shed hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Chevron Corp. and private equity firm McCarthy Group LLC if the Senate confirms him to be the next defense secretary, according to his financial disclosure.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire...

California News

Chevron fire: State seeks record fine
Chevron ignored potentially life-threatening dangers to workers at its Richmond refinery and should pay a record fine of nearly $1 million stemming from the fire there in August, state regulators said.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea...

Chevron reports record profits
And what will Chevron do with its gobs and gobs of money? One million dollars of it will go to pay a fine levied by the state of California. And some will go to undermining that state’s carbon-reduction rules.
http://grist.org/news...

Solar development absorbing California farmland
There's a land rush of sorts going on across the nation's most productive farming region, but these buyers don't want to grow crops. They want to plant solar farms.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com...

California sues BP and Arco, alleges violations at gas stations
California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris has filed a civil lawsuit against BP West Coast Products, BP Products North America Inc. and Atlantic Richfield Co., accusing them of violating state laws on hazardous materials and hazardous waste.
http://www.latimes.com/business...

California plans to list bisphenol A as harmful chemical
A chemical believed to affect reproduction and that is found in plastic bottles, canned food linings and other common products may soon be added to California's list of harmful chemicals under Proposition 65.
http://www.contracostatimes.com...

Jerry Brown's Prop. 30 tax campaign outspent opposition 4 to 1
Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies spent nearly $54 million passing Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, about four times the opposition, according to year-end campaign finance reports.
http://blogs.sacbee.com...

Lawmakers to hold hearing on fracking
Unlike other major oil-producing states, California does not require energy firms to disclose where they use the controversial procedure or what chemicals they inject into the ground. Regulators released draft rules for fracking last month that would mandate such disclosure but allow oil companies to keep secret the names of certain chemicals they claim to be proprietary.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com...

Sierra Nevada snowpack at 93 percent of normal
When it comes to rain and snow in California, this winter began with great promise. But hopes for a bountiful year appear to be evaporating.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science...

Ami Bera: A new doctor in the House
On the fourth floor of the Longworth House Office Building, a short distance down the white marble hallway from the elevator, Rep. Ami Bera is still unpacking things in an office that just last month was somebody else's.
http://www.sacbee.com...

National News

Chu's parting words: Success requires failure
Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced his resignation February 1st in a 3,800-word, bullet-pointed "Dear Colleague" letter. "While critics try hard to discredit the program, the truth is that only 1 percent of the companies we funded went bankrupt," Chu wrote of the Energy Department's loan program.
http://www.bloomberg.com...

The surprising connection between food and fracking
As more and more of the US natural gas supply comes from fracking, more and more of the nitrogen fertilizer farmers use will come from fracked natural gas. If Big Ag becomes hooked on cheap fracked gas to meet its fertilizer needs, then the fossil fuel industry will have gained a powerful ally in its effort to steamroll regulation and fight back opposition to fracking projects.
http://www.motherjones.com...

Koch brothers: More shady business
Who is behind major funding for the anti-science campaign undermining efforts to take on Climate Change? Surprise, surprise: Charles and David Koch are at the end of the money trail.
http://www.ecovote.org...

Judge approves BP plea agreement, record $4 billion fine
A federal judge in New Orleans Tuesday approved a $4 billion plea agreement for criminal fines and penalties against oil giant BP for the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.
http://www.cnn.com...

U.S. lags behind other industrialized nations in taxing energy use
Top economists agree a tax on fuels and the carbon they spew into the atmosphere would be the cheapest way to combat climate change. Most advanced countries rely on some variant of this tax. The question is whether the prospect of more droughts and more powerful hurricanes will push Americans to embrace it, too.
http://www.nytimes.com...

CO2 emissions from energy production drop to 1994 levels in the U.S.
Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy.
http://grist.org/news...

Seen & Shared

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Chula Vista says goodbye to a '50s-era power plant
After 14 years of wrangling, the South Bay Power Plant is imploded into history. The city has dreams of a park and resort hotel in its place on the waterfront.
Video: http://bit.ly/plantdemo

Al Gore on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
In this extended interview, former Vice President Al Gore warns of wealthy special interests subverting America's system of representative democracy and suggests the Internet will ultimately reduced the influence of wealthy special interests
Video: http://bit.ly/11Lzcla
Image: http://on.fb.me/XGPvP5

Stephen Colbert skewers the climate fatalism caucus
Australia adds new colors to the weather map for temperatures above 125 degrees, and conservatives hit the fifth stage of right-wing climate change grief: acceptance.
Video: http://bit.ly/14NI7a4

U.S. High Speed Rail System Map
From Alfred Twu and the folks behind the California Rail Map, the U.S. High Speed Rail System map is now available available for free download and print orders.
Image: http://bit.ly/11lS6o3

San Francisco a Test Case for Coping with Rising Seas
Along San Francisco’s western shore, the Ocean Beach Master Plan is a kind of test case for sea-rise planning. It calls for big changes, including a strategy known as managed retreat.
Audio: http://bit.ly/14NMzpe

Rethinking red states and blue states in 1 map
Gallup is out with its latest annual rankings of which states are the most conservative and which are the most liberal, and The Washington Post presents a heat map ranking the states according to the ratio of conservative voters to liberal voters.
Image: http://wapo.st/VFMhiS

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