Environment

No sooner had the PUC and oil regulators greenlighted resumed natural gas injections at Aliso Canyon last week, than Los Angeles County sued to block it.

LA County is suing Southern California Gas for failing to conduct required safety and environmental studies on its natural gas storage facillity and to turn over public documents before it is reopened. As well the County should.

While in Beijing last month, Gov. Jerry Brown publicly promoted the fight against climate change. Just as important was the quiet attendance of AES, a major builder of fossil-fuel power plants in California.

Was the governor making plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, or was he making deals to build more climate-warming natural gas plants? Unfortunately, California’s transparency laws don’t ensure the disclosure of such backroom conversations.

Documents obtained by Capitol Watchdog reveal that Governor Jerry Brown is shopping cap and trade bill language directly from Big Oil's Power Point playbook to exempt refineries from air pollution regulation.

Brown has handed Big Oil a pen to rewrite the law so that it protects refiners from making deep cuts to climate-warming emissions. The legislation blocks powerful Air Districts in the Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin from setting tough limits on emissions, like requiring refineries to install pollution control equipment.