Smog when selling a car in california

The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions -- including its mandate for electric-car sales -- in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan. The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle. The proposed revamp would also put the brakes on federal rules to boost fuel efficiency into the next decade, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the proposals before they are public. Instead it would cap federal fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level, which under federal law must be at least a 35-mile-per-gallon fleet … [Read more...] about Trump to Seek Repeal of California’s Smog-Fighting Power

By Dan Walters, CALmatters | PUBLISHED: May 3, 2018 at 6:05 am | UPDATED: May 3, 2018 at 6:13 am It’s a game of three-cushion billiards, being played not in a dingy pool hall but in Donald Trump’s Washington, Jerry Brown’s Sacramento and in the executive suites of major automakers. Trump’s administration, answering pleas of auto executives, wants to roll back more stringent fuel efficiency standards promulgated during the final days of the predecessor Obama administration – rules that, at the time, California, other like-minded states and the auto industry jointly supported. Gov. Brown and his top smog-fighter, Mary Nichols, are insisting that California will maintain its tough auto mileage/emission rules regardless of what happens in Washington, but the Trumpies may seek to eliminate the long-standing “waiver” allowing California to set its own standards. The automakers now want relief from the Obama-era rules, saying that they can’t … [Read more...] about Walters: California vs. Trump — again. Current score: 11-0

By Nathan Deuel | PUBLISHED: October 18, 2018 at 9:14 am | UPDATED: October 18, 2018 at 9:37 am In an elegantly structured and engrossing new book, “The Browns of California” (Bloomsbury, $35, 480 pages), writer Miriam Pawel argues one family in particular has helped California become  an ever-updating blueprint for all the ways America can be better. In the spring of 1848, San Francisco consisted of just 575 men, 177 women and 60 children. Fattened shortly thereafter by residents seeking gold, the city grew to 25,000 within a year. “Unburdened by tradition, open to experimentation,” Pawel writes, these new Californians “devised routines, invented machines and established lifestyles that suited their needs. They could not wait for supplies and knowledge to migrate from the East.” Ida Schuckman, the last child of German immigrant to rural California August Schuckman, fell in love with the turn-of-the-century Bay Area, marrying an Irish … [Read more...] about California is the state the Browns built, author Miriam Pawel argues

CANADA IS AWASH IN ACTION plans to address climate change, and in-house counsel are playing an important role in implementing those plans at the corporate level. After all, it’s not only power utilities, renewable energy producers, clean-tech companies and heavy-industry behemoths that require strategic and legal advice from their law departments to take climate action. Any company that owns a factory, office building or fleet of vehicles — in other words, most large companies — will be affected by the country’s growing emphasis on “greenification.”Officials of the federal and provincial governments held discussions this summer on a joint strategy for climate action, the lead-up to a planned first ministers’ summit in the fall. Mainly due to Saskatchewan’s opposition, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t achieve consensus on a pan-Canadian carbon-reduction plan at the first ministers’ conference last March, although the … [Read more...] about Green Leadership