 >> The fight over the Expo line, continued. Steve Hymon writes about his chat with Rick Thorpe, chief executive of the Expo Line Construction Authority, who provides a counterpoint to Damien Goodmon's concerns that some at-grade crossings are unsafe. "If the project must build over- or under-crossings, [Thorpe] said the line would likely be delayed at least two years, presuming money could be found to build those structures."
>> The fight over the L.A.-to-S.F. bullet train. Union Pacific railroad says it doesn't want to share its rail lines with the proposed 200-mph bullet train rail line -- about which voters will vote in November. "Critics question why the California High Speed Rail Authority didn't negotiate a deal long ago with Union Pacific."
>> Schwarzenegger proclaimed California is in a drought and "issued an executive order intended to speed transfers of water to areas experiencing the most severe shortages, help local water districts boost conservation efforts, identify risks to the state's water supply and assist farmers." Earlier: LADWP's "Drought Busters" plan.
>> How to plant a green roof. Re-Nest has an illustrated explanation, thanks to a Park Slope resident who showed New Yorkers the process.
>> Organic wines, explained and reviewed by Roz Cummins of Grist -- who ends her article with a yummy recipe for Syllabub, a rich, wine-flavored dessert.
>> Seven endangered California condors got lead poisoning in the last month, which has U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials in "crisis mode." A state ban on hunting with lead bullets in condor habitat goes into effect July 1.
Image courtesy of metro.net
>> 21 (Eco)Visualizations for Energy Consumption Awareness. Check out these visuals, applications, and devices that can motivate you to conserve by making you see more clearly the environmental impacts of your (or our collective) actions. Above is one of the 21: the USA National GAS Temperature Map (h/t groby)
>> Re-visualizing trees. Artist Rob Kesseler's created strange but pretty electron microscope images of tree bits for his exhibition "Canopy" at Kew Gardens, London. According to New Scientist, "Kesseler's images are intended to show trees on a scale you have never seen before, through artistic manipulation of high-powered microscope technology."
>> Local enviro-group TreePeople will launch a comprehensive California Wildfire Restoration Initiative that will help restore forests that won’t recover on their own. The initiative will include a volunteer mobilization campaign; about 7,500 volunteers are needed to help cover about 10,000 acres over a period of 3-5 years. The effort will be funded by a $1 million grant from the Boeing Co.
>> Girl drives under speed limit, sees 14% gain in fuel efficiency. Writes Karina at Tiny Choices: "I will add ... I did my best to drive the speed limit but I was generally driving within 5 miles of the speed limit, and that there were at least 1 or 2 trips that were a little faster than originally planned because I was in a big hurry."
>> A biodiesel boat trying to circle the globe in record time bumped into an unknown object and is now "limping across the Pacific," reports Wired's Autopia. "Earthrace was on pace to beat the record, set in 1998 by Cable & Wireless Adventurer, by 15 days before the collision. With that kind of cushion, Earthrace might still pull it off, but only if nothing else goes wrong."
>> A new report, Stop Trashing the Climate shows that aiming for zero waste by reducing waste and encouraging the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra "is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies available for combating climate change." Get involved with L.A.'s Zero Waste Plan!
>> Dwell on Design begins today! The exhibition portion doesn't start until Saturday, so you still have time to use the coupon code for free admission and see what the event's all about.
Image courtesy of gasbuddy.com
 >> L.A. city offices aren't installing CFLs fast enough, says city controller Laura Chick, who found only 102 out of 958 buildings managed by the city's General Services Department have installed energy-efficient fluorescent lighting. Installing just those bulbs costs about $5 million -- and saved the city $1.5 million off the city's annual electricity bill. Earlier: Energy Week: Roundup of savings
>> Why're people still fighting over the Expo line? Steve Hymon writes about his chat with Damien Goodmon, who's leading a group trying to force a chunk of the Expo to be built underground instead of at grade. "I asked Goodmon why he thinks high school students –- many presumably pretty smart kids –- will get hit by the train at Farmdale when there will be crossing gates.... He rejected the comparison to Blair [High School, located 2 blocks from the Gold Line light rail] -– saying many more students will cross tracks at Dorsey. He also rejected my assertion that his own argument over environmental justice and racism has a sour tinge -- that perhaps he's suggesting that Dorsey students, many of whom are minorities, aren’t smart enough to stay off active railroad tracks."
>> More solar for SoCal. Southern California Edison plans to buy 245 megawatts of power -- enough electricity for about 160,000 homes -- from solar plants to be built in the Antelope Valley by ESolar Inc. The plants are expected to begin operating in 2011.
>> No, nuclear isn't cheap, clean energy, writes Joseph Romm in Salon. "Nuclear power still has so many problems that unless the federal government shovels tens of billions of dollars more in subsidies to the industry, and then shoves it down the throat of U.S. utilities and the public with mandates, it is unlikely to see a significant renaissance in this country. Nor is nuclear power likely to make up even 10 percent of the solution to the climate problem globally."
>> Discovery's new green channel Planet Green debuts at 6 tonight. Check out the lineup, including Alter Eco, "an eco lifestyle and makeover series" presented by a very grizzly-looking Adrian Grenier.
>> Going on a carbon emissions diet? Umbra of Grist recommends a few carbon footprint calculators to get you started.
Photo by Adam via Flickr
>> "Skyrocketing gasoline prices force changes," notes the L.A. Times. One change: "GM closing 4 truck and SUV plants in North America." That move will cut the production of SUVs by about 35%.
>> The Hollywood Bowl needs bigger sidewalks leading up to it and more frequent trains running post-shows, Steve Hymon notes in a post titled "How to prevent people from taking mass transit, Part 1" on the Bottleneck Blog. Interestingly, drivers seem to have an even worse deal, with 2-hour commutes that force them to leave shows early before the best songs.
>> Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's commission will vote on the "Drought Busters" plan today, putting in tougher regulations and imposing fines for new and existing rules. The proposed rules:
- No hosing down sidewalks or driveways
- Automated sprinkler use limited to 15 minutes per day
- No lawn watering (except drip irrigation) between 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. or when it rains
- Double water-usage fines for residential customers; quadruple for businesses and apartment building owners
The DWP wants the L.A. City Council to ratify this plan within weeks; until then, about a dozen DWP inspectors would issue warnings, but not fines. If the above rules don't reduce water consumption, DWP could move to Phase II of the plan, banning irrigation four days a week.
>> The U.S. Senate's started debating the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Many don't expect the legislation to pass, including Alexis Madrigal at Wired who calls the debate "largely symbolic."
>> Six green baby books, reviewed by Katharine Wroth at Grist. "Healthy Child Healthy World," which I reviewed here, gets top marks along with "Raising Baby Green."
Photo by David McNew / Getty Images
>> You already know we've got a big garbage patch in the ocean -- but apparently, we've got a whole bunch of "illegal dump sites across about 800 square miles of the Antelope Valley" too, created by people who don't want to pay to send junk to the landfill -- or who are too lazy to investigate some of the free trash disposal options out there.
>> A bill to reduce greenhouse gases to 66% below 2005 levels will hit the Senate floor this week. Richard Simon of the L.A. Times reports that the argument surrounding the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act has become largely about money, rather than climate change.
>> Kate Sheppard of Grist has the nitty-gritty details of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. "It's not as strong as most activists and climate scientists would like, but strong enough that many of them are cheering it as a big step forward," Sheppard writes.
>> Watch the “kelp cutting” ceremony for Año Nuevo State Reserve's new Marine Education Center via live webcast here from noon – 12:30 p.m. today tomorrow. The center was created through a public/private partnership; the Reserve's also launching a new 24-hour high-tech Web cam that'll let anyone get an "intimate view of elephant seal breeding colony" whenever, wherever.
>> Bicycles are eco, even if you buy them new. Writes Umbra at Grist: "your bike is already far less of a carbon source than your car when it comes off the assembly line -- and that's not even touching tailpipe emissions, the impacts of gas exploration, and so forth."
Photo by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
 >> Water: The new dwindling resource. Writes Mark Clayton in the Christian Science Monitor: "Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report. But governments pushing to privatize costly-to-maintain public water systems are colliding with a global “water is a human right” movement." Earlier: Water Week.
>> L.A. River: May lose federal protections. "The city's river can't even float enough boats to qualify as a full-fledged navigable waterway, according to the Army Corps of Engineers." Earlier: June 8: A popular day for touring the L.A. River.
>> Nuclear: Not attracting investors. "Capitalists instead favor climate-protecting competitors with less cost, construction time, and financial risk. The nuclear industry claims it has no serious rivals, let alone those competitors — which, however, already outproduce nuclear power worldwide and are growing enormously faster." (via grist)
>> BioBlitz: Biodiversity, measured in the Santa Monica mountains. "More than just a species count, it aims to connect scientists who might not typically work together and to give non-scientists a firsthand look at what biodiversity -- the wealth of different life forms that exist on the planet -- is all about."
>> Coral reefs: Biodiversity, disappearing. "The culprit here is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is responsible for global warming and that also is turning our oceans into an acid bath," writes Margaret Wertheim, co-creator of the Crochet Coral Reef Project, in an op-ed.
>> Debunked: Some gas saving myths. Neither filling up in the morning nor changing your air filter will improve your gas mileage.
Photo by Third Eye via Flickr
>> Fuel: Still getting stolen -- except this time, it's old fryer grease from restaurants. "Processed fryer oil, which is called yellow grease, is actually not trash... Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks." Earlier: Thieves drilling into fuel tanks to get vehicles' gas.
>> "An Inconvenient Truth": Still inspiring -- so much so that the film's becoming an Italian opera. Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera based on the film for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house La Scala. (via Treehugger)
>> Man-made global warming: Still not good for Earth -- which is news to no one except the Bush administration, which finally admitted global warming is "very likely" due to man-made activity in a court-ordered climate report that was finally released -- four years late. (via grist)
>> Lead: Still not good for kids. A new study shows "even relatively low levels of lead permanently damage the brain and are linked to higher numbers of arrests, particularly for violent crime."
>> Dow Chemical: Still not cleaning up its dioxin pollution. After firing an EPA official for allegedly being too tough on Dow Chemical, federal officials have finally told Dow Chemical to clean up the dioxin contamination in the Saginaw, Mich., neighborhood. The company says it'll comply but is still dragging its feet, this time by disagreeing with government officials about how the cleanup should be carried out. (via grist)
 >> L.A.'s greener than San Francisco and New York City, according to a study by think tank Brookings Institution. But Margot Roosevelt delves through the fuzzy math: "The calculations did not account for the fact that half the city's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. Instead, Brookings used a state-wide average that included the hydroelectric and nuclear plants in Northern California. Omitted from the data are emissions from industries and commercial buildings, and from local roads apart from federal highways." Also omitted were CO2 emissions from long-distance commuters.
>> The L.A. River's getting revitalized -- and also getting tagged a lot. L.A. Times describes the graffiti as "tagging on steroids, with monikers big and bold, containing letters that often are as big as garage doors." Earlier: L.A. River, now with its own controversial mural.
>> Your own private L.A. traffic island. Guerrilla gardeners are taking over unkempt public spaces, bringing greenery to urban blights. "One of a slew of DIY gardening currents, such as permaculture (design of highly sustainable ecosystems), urban homesteading, composting and free fruit movement, guerrilla gardening is a response to dwindling green space, limited land and suspicions about food sources, say experts."
>> Go species scoping in the Santa Monica Mountains. BioBlitz 2008 starts at noon to end 24 hours later! Join scientists, naturalists, and fellow Angelenos to observe and record as many species as possible in a 4-hour-shift. Register on-site at one of the stations (PDF).
>> An organic burger-n-hot dog joint called O!Burger opens in WeHo this Saturday (via LAist).
Photo by Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
>> Above is the USA National GAS Temperature Map as of 10 this morning. The redder an area, the more expensive gas is -- and California's quite reddish.
>> Why gas is more expensive in Cali than in other places, and how the federal government could fix the problem with the stroke of a pen. "California's strict air quality regulations require a special blend of gasoline that only a few refineries outside of California are capable of producing. So when demand spikes in California, or a disaster (or simple maintenance overhaul) takes out even just one refinery complex for any extended period of time, prices rise quickly across the state because supply can't easily be found to replace the lost production." At the end of the article is the answer to how YOU can handle this problem.
>> Idling: Bad for your wallet and the planet. "If you're going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds, it's best to shut off your engine. The one exception is when you're stopped in street traffic — it's illegal to kill the engine in many states."
>> Driving fans are the ungreenest component at concerts. Radiohead commissioned an enviro-study of their last two North American tours. "The report revealed that 97 percent of the environmental damage done by the group's 2003 tour — nearly 10,000 tons of CO2, the equivalent of 4,000 trans-Atlantic flights — was fan-related." Stop driving to the Hollywood Bowl, people.
>> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's getting sued all over the place:
- California joined 10 other states to sue the EPA in an effort to overturn weak ozone standards, which are said to be too weak even according to the EPA's own science advisory board. Health and environmental organizations led by Earthjustice filed a parallel lawsuit.
- A coalition of environmental groups plans to sue the EPA today to "force it to overturn motor vehicle emissions limits for Southern California, charging that the targets fail to address hazardous pollution faced by 1.5 million people who live next to freeways."
Image courtesy of gasbuddy.com
 >> Oil companies are hardly going green, writes Edward Silver in Money & Co. "In February, BP said it would regard its impressive solar and wind operations strictly for their equity value and might spin them off. So much for Beyond Petroleum. More recently, Royal Dutch Shell withdrew from a landmark wind project in Britain and in 2006 sold the lion’s share of its solar interests to a German firm."
>> Exxon didn't pass any green proposals considered at the shareholder meeting yesterday. "All were opposed by Exxon's board of directors," and the directors prevailed. Earlier: Exxon good at making money, not good at embracing change.
>> Chevron paid to have me shot in Nigeria, writes Larry Bowoto in an op-ed about his federal lawsuit against Chevron Corp.
>> Signs of green energy growth: Junk mail goes eco, moving beyond oil schemes to “Renewable Energy Technology System” schemes. (via Grist)
>> Real new green energy coming down the pipeline: "green crude" made from algae that could be used for fuel.
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>> The fight over the Expo line, continued. Steve Hymon writes about his chat with Rick Thorpe, chief executive of the Expo Line Construction Authority, who provides a counterpoint to Damien Goodmon's concerns that some at-grade crossings are unsafe. "If the project must build over- or under-crossings, [Thorpe] said the line would likely be delayed at least two years, presuming money could be found to build those structures." 
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