Over the past few weeks Monsanto, DuPont and other large corporations have flooded California with millions of dollars in ads against Proposition 37, which would require the labeling of food containing genetically modified ingredients. Two new polls confirm the well-funded negative campaign has managed to significantly reduce support for the ballot measure.

Brad Plumer has a decent enough explanation of why gas prices have soared in California over the past week or so. Being a California resident, perhaps I can provide a bit more insight into how this has played out on the ground. Professor James Hamilton explains that a series of refinery and pipeline shutdowns, and [...]

Southern California Edison, the operator of the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), has proposed to restart one of the facility’s two damaged reactors without repairing or replacing the parts at the root of January’s shutdown. The Thursday announcement came over eight months after a ruptured heat transfer tube leaked radioactive steam, scramming Unit 3 and taking the entire plant offline. But perhaps more tellingly, Edison’s plan–which must be reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission–was issued just weeks before the mandated start of hearings on rate cuts.

Remember those old, clunky TVs and computer monitors? The ones with Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) people threw out in favor of flat screens? Well, now electronics makers don’t want to recycle them.

This initiative is one of the few statewide ballot measures this November that could have national ramifications. If this initiative is approved, it may not be financially viable for companies to produce both national and California-specific packaging. It could indirectly force many food companies to label the presence of GM ingredients across the country. At the very least, if this initiative wins it could encourage other states to follow suit.

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the twin-reactor power plant that spread its isotopic glow across coastal communities from Los Angeles to San Diego, was declared dead last week. SONGS, as it was affectionately known, was 44, though many of its parts are considerably younger.

AFT President Randi Weingarten’s op-ed for USA Today makes the overlooked point that Chicago teachers are striking, not necessarily for better pay as it has been claimed in most of the traditional media (complete with haughty stories about those lucky duckie rich teachers), but for better schools.

I forgot to remember that we exterminated all the wolves. I am sure I must have known this at some point in my life, but it still came as a shock to be reminded of what has become of this country since the introduction of colonists and their livestock. I rediscovered that fact after reading about OR7, the “lone wolf” of California. As recently as Friday, OR7 (or “Journey” as he is known by some of the people who have been following his travels) was spotted within a mile of the Chips Fire in Northern Plumas County, just west of where I live.

In two years the voters of California will get to decide whether or not to give state regulators the right to review and reject unreasonable health insurance premium increases. The California Secretary of State recently announced that Consumer Watchdog succeeded in gathering the roughly half a million valid signatures to qualify their initiative for the November ballot in 2014.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission hit Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) with a violation for what it called a lapse in plant security, the agency announced late Thursday.

The NRC noted the violation during a four-day inspection in May. SONGS has been completely offline since January, when a radioactive leak led to the discovery of severely degraded heat exchanger tubes in both of the plant’s (nominally) operating reactors. (In July, the NRC released its report on the tube failures, saying that although plant operators had made major design changes that affected the stability of the tubes, they had not violated any laws.)
Regulators said Edison “failed to develop procedures to monitor electronic devices related to security,” but the NRC has withheld most of the details of the violation.