California - Climate Change

environmentalleader.com - October 7th, 2014 - Ilissa Ocko

California has officially entered its fourth consecutive year of drought, and is trapped in its worst water shortage situation ever.

Because we know that human-caused climate change can trigger and exacerbate drought conditions, media, public officials, California residents and scientists have all been wondering for years if rising global temperatures likely caused or contributed to the current drought in California.

The short answer: Yes, they did.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Image: Not all cows get to spend their days with soft green grass under hoof. For many, the picture isn't so pretty, according to the book Farmageddon.

npr.org - July 31, 2014 - Barbara J. King

For Philip Lymbery, head of the U.K.-based Compassion in World Farming and his co-author Isabel Oakeshott, a visit to California's Central Valley amounted to an encounter with suffering.

In Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat, Lymbery and Oakeshott write that the mega-dairies of the Central Valley are "milk factories where animals are just machines that rapidly break down and are replaced." At one huge dairy they visited, cows stood idly outdoors, some in shade and some in the sun.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

environmentalleader.com - by Erica Morehouse - June 23, 2014

Governor Brown signed a budget last week that lays out for the first time how to invest the millions from California’s landmark cap-and-trade program ($734 million so far). California has shown another way that cap-and-trade is like the Swiss army knife of environmental policies: a versatile tool known for its usefulness and adaptability.

A Multi-faceted Investment Portfolio

California will invest $850 million over the next year to reduce dangerous climate pollution, a portfolio of investments that will benefit almost every part of California’s economy, going to low-carbon and public transportation, weatherization and energy efficient buildings, water efficiency, waste diversion, and natural resources like urban forests.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

The devastating Rim Fire threatened Yosemite in August.  Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

This year has been a bloody one for firefighters on the front lines against wildfires. With climate change intensifying fires, it may be time to change the way we fight them.

time.com - by Bryan Walsh - October 4, 2013

We usually measure wildfires in acres burnt or the number of homes destroyed. But there’s a human toll to fires as well. So far this year 32 people have lost their lives fighting fires, the highest number in nearly 20 years—and the fire season isn’t done yet. More than half of those deaths occurred in a single incident, when all but one of a 20-man firefighting crew were killed during the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona in June.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)