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California Air Resources Board News Clips for January 5, 2012.  

This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office
of Communications.  You may need to sign in or register with
individual websites to view some of the following news articles.

AIR POLLUTION

Clean-air tractor saves fuel, cuts pollution. When Guillermo
Bucio climbs behind the wheel of Acquistapace Farms' new
high-tech, clean-air tractor, he's stepping into the future but
harking back to the past. The $250,000 contraption uses
satellite-based navigation to ensure straight crop rows, rides on
tank tracks to reduce soil compaction, and boasts emission
controls that bring it close to pollution levels of an old-school
horse and plow - zero. Posted.
http://syvnews.com/news/local/clean-air-tractor-saves-fuel-cuts-pollution/article_39b79b80-368e-11e1-9803-0019bb2963f4.html

CDC scientist proposes wide testing on gas drilling safety to
humans, animals, environment.  One of the government’s top
scientists says much more research is needed to determine the
possible impacts of shale gas drilling on human health and the
environment.  “Studies should include all the ways people can be
exposed, such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals,”
Dr. Christopher Portier wrote to The Associated Press in an
email.  Posted. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/environment/cdc-scientist-proposes-wide-testing-on-gas-drilling-safety-to-humans-animals-environment/2012/01/04/gIQAanL4aP_story.html

CLIMATE CHANGE

Delta, Lufthansa among first airlines raising fares to cover new
European emissions rules.  Within days of new European rules on
carbon emissions produced by passenger jets, two major airlines
say they will raise fares.  Delta Air Lines Inc. began adding $6
per round trip to the price of tickets sold in the U.S. for
travel to Europe. And Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it will raise
prices but not right away.  Posted. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/delta-lufthansa-among-first-airlines-to-signal-higher-fares-to-cover-european-emissions-rules/2012/01/04/gIQAa41caP_story.html

China calls on Europe for talks over carbon charge.  China urged
the European Union on Thursday to heed objections to its plans to
charge airlines for carbon emissions and to hold talks with
opponents.  The charges, which took effect Sunday, are aimed at
curbing emissions of climate-changing gases but airlines oppose
them as an improper tax. The ratings agency Fitch warned last
month the conflict could spiral into a global trade dispute. 
"China opposes the EU forcing through unilateral legislation,"
said a foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei. Posted. 
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_EUROPE_AIRLINES?SITE=OKTUL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

AP Newsbreak:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/china-calls-on-europe-to-heed-objections-to-airline-carbon-charge-hold-talks-with-opponents/2012/01/05/gIQAUPX5bP_story.html
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19680236?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
http://www.nctimes.com/business/china-calls-on-europe-for-talks-over-carbon-charge/article_8cc89100-ed0f-5f13-8a30-b0e622591bfa.html#ixzz1ibiyxpjd

Higher Education Can Make a Significant Impact in Combatting
Climate Change.  As this year’s 17th conference of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in
Durban, South Africa, resulted in yet another stand-off among
today’s leading nations, there are plenty of reasons to share in
the embitterment and despair shadowing the climate change
community. And while the Durban discussions did lead to a few
positive …Posted. 
http://apus-sustainability.com/tag/californias-air-resources-board/

Scientists back 'significant broadening' of climate research.
U.S. scientists want to expand research into climate change to
focus on its social effects and ways to adapt to a changing
planet, but tighter budgets may crimp those plans, the National
Academy of Sciences reported Thursday. The 10-year plan reviewed
by the academy represents a "significant broadening" of the
federal Global Change Research Program, which includes
researchers from across the U.S. government. Posted.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/05/us/climate-research/index.html

DIESEL EMISSIONS

School buses ‘go green’ after retrofit. A retrofitted school bus
is a cleaner school bus. That is the motivation behind the
Lower-Emission School Bus Program administered by the State of
California’s Air Resources Board (ARB). Kernville Union School
District Superintendent, Robin Shive, demonstrated how the
district is doing its part to comply with the program.
“California mandates that all buses be retrofitted with an
exhaust system to lower the emissions.” She continued, “KUSD
received a grant to get a head start on keeping the valley and
its residents ‘green’.” Posted.
http://www.kvsun.com/articles/2012/01/04/kv_life/education/doc4f0370ab60a89612224621.txt

L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa Celebrates Milestone in Clean Truck
Program at Port of Los Angeles. Delivering on his promise to
reduce pollution at the Port of Los Angeles and protect public
health, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today marked a major milestone
in the Clean Truck Program. The program required all trucks at
the Port of Los Angeles to meet the toughest environmental
standards in the nation by January 1, 2012.“The Clean Truck
Program has greened our port for the long haul and ensured
Angelenos will breathe cleaner air for generations to come,”
Mayor Villaraigosa said. Posted. 
http://californianewswire.com/2012/01/04/CNW10657_110258.php

Diesel spill in Huntington Harbour. Containment booms are being
use to prevent the spread of a diesel fuel spill in Huntington
Harbour. Huntington Beach fire spokesman Jeff Lopez tells City
News Service that a fuel slick the size of a football field
appeared in the harbor behind Peter's Landing on Wednesday night.
A department hazardous materials squad and the California
Department of Fish and Game have been working to contain the
spill. Posted. 
http://www.modbee.com/2012/01/05/2012494/diesel-spill-in-huntington-harbour.html

FUELS

Oil industry chief warns Obama on Canada pipeline. The oil
industry's top lobbyist warned the Obama administration Wednesday
to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline or face "huge political
consequences" in an election year. Jack Gerard, president of the
American Petroleum Institute, said it would be a "huge mistake"
for President Barack Obama to reject the 1,700-mile,
Canada-to-Texas pipeline. Obama faces a Feb. 21 deadline to
decide whether the $7 billion pipeline is in the national
interest Posted. 
http://www.modbee.com/2012/01/04/2011485/oil-industry-chief-warns-obama.html

Corn Board lauds judgment striking down California’s carbon fuel
standard. The Nebraska Corn Board celebrated the end of 2011 with
a victory when Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill struck down California’s
low carbon fuel standard. Judge O’Neill found the standard
unconstitutional by violating the Commerce Clause of the US
Constitution. 
“This is a great victory for Nebraska’s ethanol and corn
industries and Nebraska’s economy as a whole,” said Tim Scheer,
farmer director from St. Paul and vice chairman of the Nebraska
Corn Board. Posted.
http://www.imperialrepublican.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3613:corn-board-lauds-judgment-striking-down-californias-carbon-fuel-standard&catid=41:agbusiness&Itemid=53

VEHICLES

California's push for cleaner cars draws the usual squeals from
Big Oil. If California highways and parking lots look
considerably different in 2025 than today, it will probably be
because they'll contain almost 1.5 million more hybrid cars and
trucks, hydrogen-driven vehicles and plug-in hybrids that run
mostly on electricity, except on long trips. That's the vision
behind the latest set of proposed rules rolled out by the
California Air Resources Board, even as the Republican chairman
of the main investigative committee in the House of
Representatives seeks to drag it into hearings about whether it
is exceeding its mission. Posted.
http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_19678725
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19678725?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com

Report: GM wants to work on all Chevy Volts sold in U.S. for fire
danger. Detroit -- A person briefed on the matter says General
Motors will ask Volt owners to bring their electric cars into
dealers to strengthen the structure around the batteries. The
move is similar to a recall and involves the 8,000 Volts sold in
the U.S. in the past two years. The move comes after three
batteries caught fire after side-impact crash tests done by
federal safety regulators. Posted.
http://www.mercurynews.com/cars/ci_19680381

Toyota works on recycling hybrid batteries. Forget those fears
that hybrid and electric vehicles will result in landfills full
of dead batteries.  When Toyota hybrid battery packs reach the
end of their lives, every piece is recycled. And it’s all because
of a program launched a year ago by Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. and
its dealers.  Moreover, service departments can use the
battery-handling process to help sell new vehicles to used-Prius
owners. Posted.
http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com/subscriber/headlines2.html?cat=1&id=1325757572

GREEN ENERGY

Struggling Idaho solar plant fears power cutoff. A struggling
plant in southeastern Idaho that hopes to produce material for
solar panels fears Idaho Power Co. will shut off its electricity
after it missed a payment. Hoku Materials Inc., which has
survived so far with help from Chinese financiers, recently said
that Idaho's biggest utility threatened to cut off power to its
unfinished Pocatello plant after the company missed a payment. It
lodged a formal protest with Idaho Public Utilities Commission
regulators after getting a termination of service notice. Posted.
 http://www.nctimes.com/ap/business/struggling-idaho-solar-plant-fears-power-cutoff/article_16192434-f69a-5524-8362-99bef8d1834f.html

MISCELLANEOUS

Personnel Profile: David Pettit. David Pettit is a senior
attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, currently
involved with the recent litigation around California’s Low
Carbon Fuel Standard. Tell me a bit about yourself. I’ve been a
litigator for about 35 years now. I was a legal services lawyer
for a while, I was in private practice for many years following
that, and I’ve been here at the NRDC for close to five years now.
 And a lot of litigation I do has to do with air pollution and
environmental justice issues. Posted.
http://www.capitolweekly.net/features/personnelProfile.php?_c=109fb7d8whpxmc8&1=1&id=109day5zm0vlats&done=.109dorc1xln7g2z&_credir=1325789381&_c=109fb7d8whpxmc8

Man gets 12 years in prison for green energy scam. Federal
prosecutors say a Carson man has been sentenced to 12 years in
prison for getting dozens of people to invest a total of more
than $1 million in a non-existent wind energy technology
business. A judge on Wednesday also ordered 42-year-old James
Rivera to pay restitution of more than $1 million to victims in
the case. Rivera was convicted of soliciting investments in
companies that he falsely claimed would manufacture revolutionary
new wind turbines to produce electricity. Posted. 
http://www.modbee.com/2012/01/04/2012209/man-gets-12-years-in-prison-for.html
 
Pick Your Poison. State figures on pesticide use show increasing
reliance on methyl bromide alternatives. It was a good year for
strawberries in Monterey County, and also for the pesticides that
make them a nearly $1 billion crop. The quantity of pesticides
applied locally to all crops rose to nearly 9 million pounds, a
12-percent increase from 2009 to 2010, according to figures
released last week by the California Department of Pesticide
Regulation. Posted.
http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2012/jan/05/pick-your-poison/

OPINIONS

Mercury News editorial: Peer review should bury high-speed rail
How many fiscal autopsies will it take before the state buries
the corpse that is California's high-speed rail proposal? The
latest ugly conclusion comes from the high-speed rail peer review
group, which on Tuesday recommended that the Legislature not
approve the appropriation of bond proceeds for the project this
year. Amen to that. Posted.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19675945

New effort to improve cars draws usual opposition. If California
highways and parking lots of 2025 look considerably different
from today’s, it will probably be because they’ll contain almost
1.5 million more hybrid cars and trucks, hydrogen-driven vehicles
and plug-in hybrids that run mostly on electricity except on long
trips. That’s the vision behind the latest set of proposed rules
rolled out by the California Air Resources Board even as the
Republican chairman of the main investigative committee in the
House of Representatives seeks to drag it into hearings about
whether it is exceeding its mission. Posted.
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/opinion/columnists/new-effort-to-improve-cars-draws-usual-opposition/article_283b8770-34fb-11e1-9037-0019bb2963f4.html

INLAND: Golf-path dream. Money earmarked to improve air quality
should pay for projects that actually address pollution. Southern
California Air quality officials should use a new pot of money to
curb pollutants in the Coachella Valley, and not spend most of
the funds on a proposal that has at best a tenuous relationship
to cleaner air. Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit wants to
spend up to $40 million in air quality funds to pay for part of a
30-mile parkway for joggers, bicycles and golf carts. Posted.
http://www.pe.com/opinion/editorials-headlines/20120104-inland-golf-path-dream.ece

How Traffic Jams Affect Air Quality. No one will be surprised to
learn that areas with the largest number of cars on the road see
higher levels of air pollution on average. Motor vehicles are one
of the largest sources of pollution worldwide. You may be
surprised to learn, however, that slower moving traffic emits
more pollution than when cars move at freeway speeds. Traffic
jams are bad for our air. Posted.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/01/05/how-traffic-jams-affect-air-quality/

The case of the missing gas mileage.  Contrary to common
perception, the major automakers have produced large increases in
fuel efficiency through better technology in recent decades.
There’s just one catch: All those advances have barely increased
the mileage per gallon that autos actually achieve on the road. 
Sound perplexing? This situation is the result of a trend newly
quantified by MIT economist Christopher Knittel: Posted. 
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/cars-on-steroids-0104.html

BLOGS

A Photographic Blast From the Past. In January 1972, the
Environmental Protection Agency asked nearly 100 freelance
photographers to roam the country in the pursuit of a single
goal: documenting “the environmental happenings and
non-happenings” of the decade. By 1977, the photographers had
submitted more than 80,000 images for the project, known as
Documerica. About one-quarter of the photographs were shown in
public exhibitions but then filed away and largely forgotten.
Posted. 
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/a-photographic-blast-from-the-past/

California Urges Drivers to Change the Oil Less Often. A
California agency is campaigning to get car owners to change
their motor oil at a longer interval, claiming that the
time-honored practice of switching the oil every 3,000 miles is
financially wasteful, detrimental to the environment and
unwarranted. Michael Springer/Bloomberg NewsDrivers of new cars
are encouraged to change their oil at a longer interval than in
the past. Posted.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/california-urges-drivers-to-change-the-oil-less-often/

And Now, the Oil Industry Caucus. North America could be
self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel fuel in 15 years if only
the government would get out of the way, the president of the
American Petroleum Institute said on Wednesday in a “state of
American energy” address intended to raise the industry’s profile
in the presidential election. Jack N. Gerard, the president and
chief executive of the trade group, said repeatedly that his
organization would not take a position on whom to vote for.
Posted. 
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/and-now-the-oil-industry-caucus/

For Seal Pups on Thin Ice, a Short Childhood. For a mother harp
seal, timing is everything. Pups are born and nursed on seasonal
sea ice during a brief window before the spring sun melts the
ephemeral nursery. After only 12 days, the mother weans her pups
and the family slides into the ocean together. Should the ice
melt early, however, the pups will meet an early end, either
drowning in the sea or getting crushed by shifting floes. In
2010, nearly 100 percent of eastern Canadian pups are estimated
to have perished in this situation. Posted.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/a-short-childhood-for-seal-pups-on-thin-ice/

Biodiesel and the 'unconstitutional' LCFS. The LCFS excluded corn
ethanol due to its high carbon intensity, but used cooking oil
biodiesel achieved the lowest rating ever scored by CARB. So
what's the biodiesel industry's position on the finding that the
LCFS violates the U.S. constitution? Ever since it was released a
couple of years ago that corn ethanol scores poorly under the
California low carbon fuel standard…Posted.
http://biodieselmagazine.com/blog/article/2012/01/biodiesel-and-the-unconstitutional-lcfs

Residents Near Highways in LA Deserve Clean Air Too. Yesterday,
NRDC along with Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles
and Communities for a Better Environment filed a lawsuit against
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging the failure
to provide air monitoring for harmful particulate pollution near
highways in the Los Angeles region.  You can read about the
lawsuit here. Posted.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amartinez/residents_near_highways_in_la.html

Dr. Paul Anastas outlines EPA’s new research paradigm, The Path
Forward; realigning EPA research around sustainability.  In a
paper published in the ACS journal Environmental Science &
Technology, Dr. Paul Anastas, Science Advisor to the US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as the Agency’s
Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, outlines
the principles of the EPA’s new research paradigm called “The
Path Forward”, as well as the actions taken since 2010 to align
EPA’s research efforts with the goal of sustainability.  Posted. 
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/01/anastas-20120105.html

New silica-organic hybrid absorbents deliver among highest
performance yet reported for CO2 capture from air.  A team from
the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and Department of
Chemistry, University of Southern California, reports on an
improved material for capturing carbon dioxide from the
air—silica−organic hybrid adsorbents—in a paper published
in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Reported capture
values under humid conditions are among the highest reported for
CO2 adsorption from the air.  Posted. 
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/01/loker-20120104.html

First Ford Focus Electric heads to Google. This time last year,
Ford was pulling the wraps off the Focus Electric at CES in Las
Vegas. Twelve months later, Ford is slowly beginning production
of its first EV at its Michigan Assembly plant and dropped off
one early example to the crew at Google. We're not sure what the
search giant is doing with Dearborn's inaugural EV, but something
involving either Google Street View or its autonomous vehicle
program isn't out of the question. Posted. 
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/01/04/first-ford-focus-electric-heads-to-google/

Chevy Volt has best month ever, but Nissan Leaf still wins 2011
plug-in sales contest. And the numbers are in. For December, the
Chevrolet Volt sold 1,529. units, putting the plug-in car's 2011
total at 7,671. While that overall number fell well short of the
announced target of 10,000-12,000, December 2011 was the Volt's
best sales month ever and the positive trend positions the car in
a good place going into 2012. Posted. 
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/01/04/chevy-volt-has-best-month-ever-but-nissan-leaf-still-wins-2011/

Insurance payouts point to climate change. Natural disasters in
2011 exerted the costliest toll in history — a whopping $380
billion worth of losses from earthquakes, floods, tornadoes,
hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis and more. Only a third of those
costs were covered by insurance. And the tally ignores completely
any expenses associated with sickness or injuries triggered by
the disasters. Posted. 
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337368/title/Insurance_payouts_point_to_climate_change