18+ hour, 59+ min ago (649+ words) Thousands of people are expected to converge in downtown L.A. as this year's Los Angeles Auto Show wraps up on Sunday. The event at the Los Angeles Convention Center is one of the oldest and largest auto exhibitions in the nation and features hundreds of new vehicles and concept cars, including the latest in EVs. Among the EVs exhibited this year are the 2026 version of the Nissan Leaf, which now offers an estimated 303 miles of range on a charge, and the Chevy Bolt, which offers an estimated 255 miles of range. The Bolt is returning due to "popular demand," after being discontinued in 2023, company officials said. The starting retail price for both cars is around $29,000. The auto show also saw new models debut, including the 2026 Jeep Recon " a Wrangler-style EV advertised by the company as "the only fully electric Trail Rated SUV…...

1+ day, 30+ min ago (316+ words) Southern California air pollution officials have issued an alert banning all types of burning through midnight Saturday due to poor air quality. Burning wood, pellets or manufactured fire logs is prohibited "in any indoor or outdoor wood-burning device," and charcoal can only be used for cooking in a grill or other "cooking device," said the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The alert covers the South Coast air basin, including large areas of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties but not the high desert, Coachella Valley or areas above 3,000 feet in elevation. Homes that rely on wood as a sole source of heat and those without natural gas are exempt from the ban. Burning creates particle pollution, both large and small pieces of soot that are unhealthy to breathe and can be dangerous for people with a range…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago (392+ words) A modern windmill " or wind turbine, to be exact " is not so much a construction that invites affection or radiates pastoral comfort. Rather, it is something built out of an urgent necessity " a need for a better means of generating electricity, an invention made to wean society away from polluting ourselves into oblivion. It is a device that triggers in the public mind a certain degree of apprehension, being a stern reminder of how we had all better shape up, or else. If Cervantes was right and 17th century Spaniards did think of such mills as icons of menace, then some of us feel similarly today, except that the stakes " our very existence " are considerably higher. It is more than a little surprising that the wind-powered electricity generator took so long to invent. To the wealthy owners of Scottish coal mines,…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (642+ words) California wildlife officials have confirmed there's a new wolf pack in the northern part of the state, as the population of the endangered candids " and the number of livestock they have preyed on " continues to rise. The freshly minted Grizzly pack is roaming southern Plumas County and consists of at least two adults and a pup, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported this week. The news comes on the heels of the Beyem Seyo pack's demise last month, when the Fish and Wildlife Department euthanized four wolves that had killed a large number of cattle in the Sierra Valley " marking the first time in about a century that state officials had taken lethal action against the animals. "As difficult of a decision as that was to make, from a conservation point of view, the population data that we're…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (475+ words) Health officials say a person in the state of Washington has a presumed case of bird flu virus and they do not know how the person was infected. Epidemiologists and virologists worry that avian flu could become a pandemic if allowed to spread and mutate. The virus circulating in dairy cattle in North America is one mutation away from being able spread easily between people. The new case involves a person who lives in Grays Harbor County on the Olympic Peninsula. Their illness became severe enough that they were transferred to a hospital in more populous Thurston County and then to King County, where Seattle is located. According to a press release from county health officials, the person is "older" and has underlying health conditions. Their symptoms included a high fever, confusion and trouble breathing. The person has been hospitalized…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (705+ words) At the 2025 Future Green Leaders Summit, middle school students designed fire-resistant homes using AI, learned about jobs that support the climate and environment, and cheered on superheroes dressed as "Wind," "Solar," "Ethanol" and other energy sources as they squared off in a rap and dance battle. The day-long event, held at San Bernardino's Historic Enterprise Building on Wednesday, was organized by the Southern California Regional Energy Network, which is administered by Los Angeles County and paid for by California Public Utility ratepayers. Organizers said the event was in part intended to confront a disconnect in the green economy. Although students from poor households and families of color are more vulnerable to the effects of rising global temperatures, pollution, and food and energy scarcity, people from their communities are less likely to be employed in green industries. Women are underrepresented too....

2+ week, 4+ day ago (1308+ words) Chuckwalla National Monument is more than an epic expanse of towering rocks, hidden canyons, ghost flowers, smoke trees and its namesake lizard. One of America's newest protected public lands is a birthplace, a crossroads, a beloved relative and a historical document to the tribes of the California desert. Stretching across 624,000 acres from the Coachella Valley to the Colorado River at the state's border with Arizona, this landscape possesses a spirit and energy that flow through every object, every living thing and every molecule of air within it, according to tribal members. When an ecosystem is so ingrained in your psyche, so essential to your culture and so central to the stories you tell about your reason for being, you have no choice but to safeguard it. This is the galvanizing sentiment behind the recent creation of an unprecedented commission for…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago (1176+ words) BEL'M, Brazil'The expansive halls of the Amazon's newly built climate summit hub echoed with the hum of air conditioners and the footsteps of delegates from around the world scientists, diplomats, Indigenous leaders and energy executives, all converging for two frenetic weeks of negotiations. Then Gov. Gavin Newsom rounded the corner, flanked by staff and security. They moved in tandem through the corridors on Tuesday as media swarmed and cellphone cameras rose into the air. "Hero!" one woman shouted. "Stay safe we need you," another attendee said. Others didn't hide their confusion at who the man with slicked-back graying hair causing such a commotion was. "I'm here because I don't want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference," Newsom said when he reached a packed news conference on his first day at the United Nations climate…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (213+ words) Perhaps tellingly, most of the farmers would seem to be Trump supporters; many of the tribal members are not. The arrival of salmon in upper basin tributaries confirms what is obvious to all but a stalwart cluster of pro-dam advocates who maintain despite abundant documentary and scientific evidence of salmons" historic presence in the tributaries that no salmon ever inhabited the upper basin. They claim that the salmon found there in recent weeks were trucked in" by pro-salmon activists. Asked about this assertion, William Ray, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, whose members live in the region that the salmon have reached, responded wryly", "That"d be an awful big truck." More disturbing still, in May the Trump administration issued a memo" stating that it doesn"t intend to follow provisions of the 1973 Endangered Species Act that require it to provide…...

3+ week, 6+ day ago (1002+ words) Late last month, California fire officials made a courtesy call to Los Angeles. The state's proposed Zone Zero regulations that would force homeowners to create an ember-resistant zone around their houses " initially planned to take effect nearly three years ago " had caused an uproar in the region. It was time for damage control. Officials from both Cal Fire and the state's Board of Forestry and Fire Protection visited Brentwood, the epicenter of the outrage, and Altadena, where homeowners are trying to figure out how best to rebuild, but did little to assuage the concerns of the Zone Zero proposals' most vocal critics. It was an example of what's become an interminable debate about what should be required of homeowners in L.A.'s fire-prone areas to limit the destruction of future conflagrations. Initial attempts by the board to create Zone Zero regulations,…...