Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Air pollution permits back on track in Southern California
California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working to burnish his green legacy in the Golden State. But one of his latest moves to lift a hold on air pollution permit applications is not likely to make environmentalists happy.
The governor signed a bill late Sunday that allows the agency regulating air pollution along California’s southern coast to start issuing more than 1,200 applications frozen by a state court decision in 2008.
Schwarzenegger signed the bill the same day he approved two measures benefiting the state’s solar power industry.
Environmentalists may call the governor’s actions two steps forward, one step back.
But the region’s business community cheered the move on air quality permits. The bill‘s author says it will create 60,000 jobs and $4 billion in economic activity in Southern California. The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, believes that the governor’s approval will jump-start the region’s economy.
We wanted to know what readers think about the lifting of the ban and Schwarzenegger’s moves to boost the use of energy from renewable resources. What grade would you put on the governor’s environmental report card?
Photo:Traffic passes downtown Los Angeles on the Interstate-10 freeway. Photo credit: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
On Antarctic safaris, remember to bring a microscope
Many people hope to come back from a wildlife safari with close-up pictures of lions or elephants – this picture below is my best attempt from a search for the largest land animals in Antarctica.
If you look hard you can see a reddish blob at the tip of the thumb — it’s Antarctica’s most aggressive land predator, an eight-legged mite known as Rhagidia.
Pete Convey, a biologist at the British Antarctic Survey (that’s his thumb), says that such tiny creatures evolved in Antarctica over tens of millions of years — they can freeze their bodies in winter in an extreme form of hibernation.
Penguins, seals and whales are the best known animals in Antarctica, but none live year-round on land, where the biggest creature is a flightless midge whose name is ”Belgica antarctica” and who’s about 0.5 cm long.
Global warming could mean problems for some of these tiny creatures if it keeps going — the Antarctic Peninsula where Pete showed us the creatures has warmed by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, the fastest rate in the southern hemisphere.
Some other creatures might be able to survive in a warmer climate and threaten mites like Rhagidia.
Anyone for a Baltic summer cocktail?
Sitting on a restaurant terrace overlooking the Baltic Sea on a warm June evening in Sweden, what better drink than a green summer cocktail?
Perhaps followed by a delicious-looking Baltic farmer’s soup?
And you don’t even have to pay — you can scoop up such liquids for free from the most polluted parts of the Baltic Sea – also bordered by countries including Finland, Latvia, Russia, and Germany.
Inexplicable why 5 of the 9 countries bordering the Baltic Sea were named. You missed Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark. Also, the three countries considered to be “Baltic” are Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
to me it seems that under the current economical conditions it’s not unthinkable that Schwarzenegger gives priority to boosting the market over protecting the environment.
Still, I believe that in the end protecting our environment and maintaining clean air is of more importance than the economy