Environment

Could San Onofre Nuke Demolition Cause Catastrophe?

March 12, 2020 by Michael Steinberg

Nuclear Shutdown News March 2020

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

As San Onofre nuke demolition begins Watchdogs assert it could cause a nuclear catastrophe.

On February 6, Coastal News, from Solana Beach in San Diego County, reported, “Public Watchdog, a nonprofit (San Diego-based) advocacy group filed a petition with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission” to put the kibosh on that action.

Coastal News continued “The advocacy group claims that if the facility if flooded with rain or ocean water, the proposed method of disposing of nuclear waste could lead to an explosion of a radioactive steam geyser.”

Read the full article → 1 comment

The Green Calendar for March 2020

March 6, 2020 by Staff

Provided by the Ocean Beach Green Center

Events at the Ocean Beach Green Center

Every Tuesday at 10 am – noon (or longer) March 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st. Ma’heonehoo estas, Northern Cheyenne oil painter + musician.
Every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Climate Mobilization Coalition Meeting.

March 8th Sunday 7 pm Open mic at the Ocean Beach Green Center.

March 12th Thursday 7 pm. Film Night. “Edible City”

March 28th Saturday noon to ? Come visit Ocean Beach Green Center to ignite our collaboration with Eden art garden.

Events not at the Ocean Beach Green Center

March 7th Saturday 9 am – 11 am March’s Ocean Beach Cleanup at OB Pier Ocean

March 7th Saturday 4 pm – 6:30 pm Protest Safari Club International

Read the full article → 0 comments

County Supervisors Take Step to Ban Toxic Weedkiller

February 28, 2020 by Frank Gormlie

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors looks like it is feeling the pressure from the public about government’s continued use of Roundup and other pesticides that contain glyphosate, which is a noted carcinogen.

On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the Board directed the chief administrative officer to come up with a plan that has organic alternatives to herbicides and report back to them in 120 days.

This is definitely a good step. Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who – along with Dianne Jacob – have proposed a ban of the weedkiller of Roundup. Fletcher called for killing weeds “in the most responsible way,” without using toxic chemicals.

Jacob hopes San Diego County will join the cities of Encinitas, Carlsbad, Napa and Sonoma, along with Los Angeles County, which have banned using glyphosate, because “this is the right thing to do.”

Read the full article → 0 comments

Facts We Hate

February 24, 2020 by Jim Miller

In Our Moment of Profound Ecological Crisis and Historic Economic Inequality, Sanders is Our Best Hope for a Just and Sustainable Future

By Jim Miller

Last week in the midst of Trump’s revanchist frenzy and the “centrist” anxiety attack in progress that is the Democratic Presidential primary race, a small story in the Guardian noted the release of a statement by 23 former foreign ministers calling for urgent action on the climate crisis and the dramatic loss of biodiversity now in progress.

In advance of a meeting in Rome to begin negotiations on a Paris-style agreement on preserving the natural world, these international leaders starkly observed that, “Humanity sits on the precipice of irreversible loss of biodiversity and a climate crisis that imperils the future for our grandchildren and generations to come. The world must act boldly, and it must act now.”

Read the full article → 1 comment

Recent Court Ruling Shows Need for Measure A in San Diego County

February 18, 2020 by Source

By Jerry Harmon and Stephen Houlahan / Times of San Diego / Feb. 16, 2020

A recent court ruling has brought into sharp relief the failure of our Board of Supervisors to act in the best interest of San Diego County residents over the interests of deep-pocketed developers.

Three nonprofit and community groups brought a lawsuit a year ago against the County of San Diego, arguing it had violated the General Plan in approving the Valiano and Harmony Grove Village South housing development projects. Petitioners argued the projects’ environmental analyses failed to show how the developments would prevent significant harm

Read the full article → 0 comments

Birch Aquarium Hatches Baby Weedy Seadragons – Cousin of the Sea Horse

February 14, 2020 by Source

Editordude: Birch Aquarium has successfully bred the rare weedy sea dragon, the lesser known cousin of the sea horse that resembles seaweed when floating.

By Caitlin Scully / Birch Aquarium Blog / February 13, 2020

For the first time ever, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego has bred and successfully hatched two rare Weedy Seadragons.

This is a first for Birch Aquarium, now one of the few aquariums in the world to hatch this unusual fish. The inch-long babies display the characteristic camouflaging appendages of the elaborate adult Weedy Seadragons in miniature, and have already had their first meals of tiny shrimp.

Read the full article → 1 comment

‘No on A’ Campaign Funded by Developers and Out-of-Town Interests

February 10, 2020 by Source

In Contrast “YES ON A” Campaign Relies on Local Sources, Grassroots Support

As of February 7th, the Building Industry Association’s campaign organized to defeat the Measure A citizen’s initiative has brought in more than $1.3 million in contributions.

According to data provided by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, the vast majority of these come from the real estate lobby, developers and building industry trade associations. About $400,000 came from out-of-state groups based in Chicago, Arizona, Texas and New York.

This chart demonstrates the heavy influence of industry groups in the effort to defeat Measure A:

Read the full article → 3 comments

Europe Leads the Way in Nuclear Shutdowns

February 3, 2020 by Michael Steinberg

Nuclear Shutdown News February 2020

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and beyond, and highlightss the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free world.

By Michael Steinberg

On December 30 Oil Price.com reported “Germany Aims To Close All Nuclear Plants By 2022.” It shut down its 40 year old Philipsburg nuke plant, which had started up in 1979, on the last day of 2019.

The report added that the country was “going forward with its plan to phase out its (two remaining) nuclear plants by 2022.”
In addition it announced it would be shutting down “all 84 of its coal-fired plants by 2038.”

Read the full article → 0 comments

Bees Absolutely Love Cannabis and It Could Help Restore Their Populations

January 22, 2020 by Source

By Elias Marat / TheMindUnleashed.com / Jan. 17, 2020

Bees are major fans of hemp and a recent study has found that the taller the hemp plants are the larger the number of bees that will flock to it.

The new research, spearheaded by researchers at Cornell University and published last month in Environmental Entomology, shows that humans aren’t the only fans of weed. The findings also reinforce a study published last year at Colorado State University that discovered the same thing.

The study shows how bees are highly attracted to cannabis due to the plant’s plentiful stores of pollen, and it could pave the way for scientists to figure out new ways to support their struggling population as well as floral populations.

Read the full article → 1 comment

Surfrider’s Beach Cleanup Report for San Diego County 2019

January 15, 2020 by Source

From Surfrider / Coastkeeper Report

The Surfrider Foundation San Diego County and San Diego Coastkeeper partner each year to host volunteer-powered beach cleanups across San Diego County in order to address the issue of trash on our beaches and in our oceans. In addition to hosting approximately six of these community events per month, both organizations host special cleanup events and empower individuals to host their own.

In 2019, our beach cleanups empowered 11,895 volunteers to remove 16,534 pounds of trash from our coastline. Additionally, they collected data on 237,452 separate pieces of trash.

This report, based on data from 196 separate cleanup events, provides a detailed picture of the waste we found on our beaches this year.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Urge SeaWorld to Send Orcas to Sea Sanctuaries and End Its Use of Animals

January 7, 2020 by Source

From PETA:

It’s been years since the release of the documentary Blackfish—whose “star,” Tilikum, died after 33 years in a concrete tank — but orcas at SeaWorld are still swimming in endless circles and breaking their teeth by gnawing in frustration on the concrete corners and metal bars of their cramped tanks.

Other dolphins are still being impregnated, sometimes forcibly after being drugged, and 140 of them are packed into just seven tanks. Trainers use them as surfboards, riding on their backs and standing on their faces in cruel and demeaning circus-style shows. Facing mounting criticism, SeaWorld ended its sordid orca-breeding program — but this does nothing for the 20 orcas and hundreds of other dolphins, whales, and other animals who are suffering in the company’s tanks right now.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Surfrider and Local Leaders Push for Plastic-Free California at Ocean Beach

January 6, 2020 by Frank Gormlie

The Surfrider Foundation and local San Diego political leaders held a press conference in Ocean Beach on Saturday, Jan. 4, and pushed for a plastics-free California. A beach cleanup followed the presser.

Assemblymembers Lorena Gonzalez and Todd Gloria – who is running for mayor – and County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher joined San Diego’s Surfrider is this renewed battle against single-use plastics. And they pushed for support of a new law that, if passed, would require plastic manufacturers in California to drastically reduce production over the next decade. The new bill, Senate Bill 54

Read the full article → 0 comments

Join Surfrider at Ocean Beach Rally, Press Conference and Clean-Up for a Zero Waste Calif. – Sat., Jan.4

January 3, 2020 by Source

Read the full article → 0 comments

The State of the Amazon Puts Planet at ‘Tipping Point’

December 26, 2019 by Source

By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis / Washington Post / Dec. 20, 2019

Deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday.

“The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil,

Read the full article → 0 comments

Responding to Greta in a Different Way

December 24, 2019 by Ernie McCray

By Ernie McCray

Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old Swedish girl, travels across the Atlantic Ocean to Lower Manhattan, in a sailboat, to save our world from the deadly forces of climate change.

For such a risk-taking endeavor she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

And our president, instead of offering her a High-Five, gets up at five and tweets that this wonderful girl is ridiculous and angry and needs to go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend and “Chill.”

Say what?

Read the full article → 8 comments

California Waters Are Acidifying Twice as Fast as Global Oceans

December 17, 2019 by Source

By Rosanna Xia / LA Times / Dec. 16, 2019

Waters off the California coast are acidifying twice as fast as the global average, scientists found, threatening major fisheries and sounding the alarm that the ocean can absorb only so much more of the world’s carbon emissions.

A new study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also made an unexpected connection between acidification and a climate cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — the same shifting forces that other scientists say have a played a big role in the higher and faster rates of sea level rise hitting California in recent years.

El Niño and La Niña cycles, researchers found, also add stress to these extreme changes in the ocean’s chemistry.

Read the full article → 0 comments

County Supervisor Abandons Effort to Make Developer-Friendly Updates to Official Description of Anti-Sprawl ‘SOS’ Ballot Measure

December 10, 2019 by Source

From SOS:

In a striking reversal, San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond withdrew his last-minute proposal to change the ballot question for the Safeguard Our San Diego Countryside Initiative that will appear in the March 2020 election voter guide.

The decision to withdraw the proposed changes was announced at this morning’s Board of Supervisors meeting. Supervisor Desmond’s proposed amendments closely reflected the misleading messaging of the “No on SOS” campaign, which is funded primarily by the Building Industry Association, an advocacy organization for the building industry.

Read the full article → 2 comments

Nuke Plant Millstone and Me – 2020

December 4, 2019 by Michael Steinberg

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

As a new decade approaches, I find myself reflecting on the 21st anniversary of my 1998 book, Millstone and Me: Sex, Lies and Radiation in Southeastern Connecticut.

Perhaps the story of this book began with my mother. Midge, as everyone called her, was a nurse, and long before feminism, cell phones and networking, spent significant amounts of time talking with her women friends on the phone.

In our home in the small town of Niantic in shoreline Southeastern Connecticut on Long Island Sound, there wasn’t a whole lot of privacy, and Midge’s conversations were broadcast around the house with little regard for who overheard her.

As time went on and my ears got larger and more curious, I couldn’t help but notice that the topic of cancer was becoming increasingly prominent.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Ocean Divers Can Be Ambassadors for a Healthy Blue World

November 12, 2019 by Source

Diving into an Ocean Climate Action Plan

By David Helvarg

Fifteen years ago I was in Fiji on assignment for the book Feeling the Heat, a collection of dispatches from 10 journalists who traveled the world to report on the already visible effects of climate change. In the Somosomo Strait south of Vanua Levu, I saw my first bleached coral. Millions of heat-stressed coral polyps had expelled their symbiotic algae, turning about a third of the reef wedding-cake white.

“Did you see the bleached coral?” I asked one of the other divers after climbing back onto our boat. “Really? I thought they were supposed to be white like that,” she replied before excitedly pointing to a fruit bat flying overhead. I’ve more recently witnessed bleached and dead coral in the overly warm waters of Australia, Hawaii, Florida and Cuba, including during the massive global bleaching event of 2014-2017 documented in the film Chasing Coral.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Last Summer’s ‘Mysterious’ Nuclear Explosion in Russia

November 1, 2019 by Michael Steinberg

Nuclear Shutdown News October 2019

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

Last Summer’s “Mysterious” Nuclear Explosion

As this year winds down a nuclear weapons explosion last summer still begs for our attention. What does this incident, half way around the world in another country, have to do with the nuclear power plants in this country?

Read the full article → 1 comment

Labor, Community and Environmental Activists Need to Find Common Ground for a Green New Deal

October 14, 2019 by Jim Miller

Labor and the Environment Panel – Wednesday, October 16th

By Jim Miller

In Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, she outlines precisely how challenging it will be to respond to the climate crisis in the urgent fashion called for in the last UN IPCC report:

Pulling off this high-speed pollution phaseout, the report establishes, is not possible with singular technocratic approaches like carbon taxes, though those tools must be a part. Rather it requires deliberately and immediately changing how our societies produce energy, how we grow our food, how we move ourselves around, and how our buildings are constructed.

What is needed, the report’s summary states in its first sentence, is “rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.

In the face of this daunting task, the answer to the question “What can I do as an individual?” is, Klein tells us, “nothing.”

Read the full article → 0 comments

San Clemente Greens Urge San Diegans to Attend Coastal Commission Meeting on San Onofre at Chula Vista, October 17

October 10, 2019 by Source

Locals Encouraged to Oppose Edison’s Application

The folks in the anti-nuke watchdog group just to our north, the San Clemente Greens, are urging San Diegans to attend the upcoming California Coastal Commission hearing being held in Chula Vista later this month about what’s going down at San Onofre nuke plant.

The utility and majority-owner of San Onofre, Southern California Edison has applied for a permit to destroy its spent fuel pool as part of the onshore portion of decommissioning of Units 2 and 3.

Read the full article → 0 comments

This House Design Is Completely Free to Download and Has a Net-Zero Footprint

October 4, 2019 by Source

Anyone can download the plans for this elegant three-bedroom home, which won Phoenix, Arizona’s competition aimed at jumpstarting energy-efficient construction.

By Evan Nicole Brown / Fast Company

A few years ago, city officials in Phoenix, Arizona, were looking for a way to address the need for more sustainable architecture in their hot, arid environment. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States — and as a result, has a significant environmental footprint. But in 2016, officials debuted a road map designed to transform it into a completely carbon-neutral, zero-waste city.

Read the full article → 0 comments

North County Climate Action Plans: A Tale of Two Cities With San Marcos and Carlsbad

October 2, 2019 by Source

By Richard Riehl / The Riehl World / October 1, 2019

A funeral was held last month at the site of Iceland’s Okjökull glacier. A century ago it covered nearly six square miles, measuring 164 ft. deep. Today, it’s less than one square mile, 49 feet thick. The shrinking sheet of ice can no longer be called a glacier. A tombstone plaque was placed at the site:

A Letter to the Future

This monument is to acknowledge that we know
what is happening and what needs to be done.
Only you know if we did it.
August 19, 2019

Read the full article → 0 comments

Paddle for Clean Water – OB Pier – Sunday, Oct.6

October 1, 2019 by Source

Why We Paddle

Our signature awareness event, the Paddle for Clean Water, is the largest non-competitive surf event in California.

Each year, hundreds of participants paddle their surfboards, SUPs, kayaks and other paddle craft around the 1,971 ft. pier – the longest concrete pier on the West Coast – to raise awareness and funds to protect clean water and healthy beaches in San Diego County.

Read the full article → 0 comments

The Ocean’s Plastic Problem Is Closer to Home than Scientists First Thought

September 25, 2019 by Source

By Ted Henry / The Conversation / Sept. 23, 2019

You’re probably used to hearing that the ocean is full of plastic, but scientists are puzzled by a rather different problem—there actually appears to be a lot less of it than there should be. Most large plastic debris floats, but observations of it on the sea surface offshore are far lower than what would be expected, considering that 8m metric tonnes of plastic is estimated to empty into the ocean from land each year.

Scientists assumed that the missing plastic has simply broken down into tiny microplastics and sunk to the sea floor.

Read the full article → 6 comments

Student Voices from the San Diego Climate Walkout

September 23, 2019 by Jim Miller

By Jim Miller

Last Friday – Sept.20 – , students in San Diego joined millions of people across the world and participated in the youth-led Global Climate Strike. In the face of condescending calls from many adult “leaders” for gradualist political “realism” to address the threat of mass extinction, young people are standing up to demand solutions commensurate with the problem we face.

What stands out to me about the message these young people are delivering is how clearly they see what far too many of their elders fail to recognize: that the responsibility for the climate crisis does not just fall on “all of us” equally but is disproportionately being driven by the global elite. Along with that, young people see that what we need is “systemic change” not incrementalism. Their clear-eyed analysis and urgency should inspire us all to wake up and stop failing future generations with yet more political cowardice.

Inside are two local voices

Read the full article → 2 comments

‘The Planet Is On Fire and Trump Fans the Flames’ – Global Climate Walk-Out – Sept. 20

September 19, 2019 by Source

In support of Greta Thunberg and the youth of the world, the Resister Sisters of Ocean Beach posted this message Wednesday, Sept. 18, over …..

Read the full article → 0 comments

As Trump Sucks Money From California Donors – He Tells the Rest of Californians to ‘Go Suck a Tailpipe’

September 18, 2019 by Doug Porter

The Trump administration has decided to revoke California’s power to set its own standards for vehicle emissions. There are three reasons why this is happening.

The obvious reasoning for this move by the “Environmental” Protection Agency is to encourage the consumption of dirty energy commodities. Fossil fuel producers and refiners, most of whom support Trump, have the opportunity for continued profits, even as their products shorten the time we have to stabilize the planet’s climate.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Global Climate Strike this Friday, September 20th

September 16, 2019 by Jim Miller

Find a San Diego Action to Support

By Jim Miller

It seems a day can’t go by without more dire news on the climate crisis. Last week as the President shamefully demonized climate refugees desperately fleeing the Bahamas in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, the UN warned that the climate crisis represents not just a threat to our environment but also to human rights. As the Guardian reported, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet told the human rights council that, “The world has never seen a threat to human rights of this scope.”

Why? Because, as Bachelet explained, “The economies of all nations, the institutional, political, social and cultural fabric of every state, and the rights of all your people, and future generations, will be impacted.” Only two days after that, the Washington Post reported that “Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world” causing historically warm ocean temperatures that have prompted mass die-offs of marine life.

Read the full article → 1 comment

← Older Articles