The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.
Forget the first 220 failures to split California. This developer has a new plan to secede – The man who would finally break up California is a real estate developer from Rancho Cucamonga.
Jeff Burum knows this may sound crazy. He heard that response two years ago, before he persuaded politicians and voters in San Bernardino County to study the possibility of seceding.
But leaders, Burum points out, are often considered crazy when they try to do something that no one has ever done. And he is trying to do something that others have failed at many, many, many times before.
Burum has a plan to win independence for San Bernardino County — yes, a new state of “Empire” in the diverse, working-class community of 2.2 million. Driven by civic pride in a growing region that has been looked down upon by many Californians and by frustration that the state has held it back from reaching its full potential, he envisions secession as a declaration of the county’s dignity and an opportunity to reimagine a broken political system.
The county government is planning to publish a key report evaluating the feasibility and financial implications of the proposal by June 11. Read More > at CalMatters
With deadline nearing, Newsom and lawmakers disagree over solutions to California budget crisis – With a deadline looming, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats in the state Legislature are working to settle their differences over access to public healthcare services, delaying minimum wage increases for workers and pausing tax credits for businesses as they cut their way out of California’s $45-billion budget deficit.
The governor’s proposal takes $12.2 billion from the state’s rainy day reserves to help cover the shortfall over the next two years and reduces funding to address climate change, provide broadband internet and increase subsidized child care, among dozens of other cuts.
Lawmakers responded last week with their own plan, which largely aligns with the governor’s strategy but pushes back on some of his proposals to reduce funding for homelessness and housing. Democrats in the Legislature called for substantially deeper cuts to climate change programs and the state prison system.
Assembly Budget Chair Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) said the Legislature’s budget pitch restores “many of the most painful cuts to safety net programs, housing and health, including rate increases for health providers” proposed by the governor. Lawmakers have targeted some of Newsom’s marquee programs, such as decreasing grants to curtail homeless encampments and money to support behavioral health.
California is experiencing a deficit largely because tax revenues came in lower than expected, which Newsom has described as a return to normal after the economic boom brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and billions of dollars in federal stimulus payments and business loans. Overspending, due to poor revenue forecasts, has also worsened the state’s financial troubles. Read More > in the Los Angeles Times
This Bay Area county is eager to put autonomous vehicles on the road. Here’s why – The rapid expansion of driverless robotaxis has drawn considerable pushback from officials in San Francisco and the Peninsula who argue that the self-driving technology hasn’t proven to be ready for mass deployment.
Across the bay, however, one county is striking a different tone on autonomous vehicles and is eager to put them on local roads.
If Contra Costa County officials’ vision for the future becomes reality, on-demand, autonomous vehicles would share public roads with private cars and public transit, transporting elderly residents to their local grocery store.
Driverless shuttles would carry residents living in the county’s remote corners to BART’s Antioch Station. And residents who use wheelchairs would be able to hail an accessible driverless vehicle with a human attendant available for assistance to commute to hospital appointments.
Contra Costa County officials’ enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles comes at a time when leaders in other cities and counties in the Bay Area have grown wary of the technology.
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But officials in Contra Costa, for years, have been planning to deploy their own autonomous vehicles to solve an endemic issue for the suburban county, where many trips are less than two miles and often require driving a private vehicle — even to use public transit.
“We have a first- and last-mile problem,” said Tim Haile, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. “We feel we can really address a lot of use cases and gaps in the current transportation network with shared autonomous vehicles, so that led us to really investing in better understanding this technology and how to use it in a safe way.”
The county’s AV deployment began last year with the launch of two autonomous shuttles that operate a fixed-route across sprawling Bishop Ranch, a 600-acre business hub in San Ramon. The free shuttles tend to fill during lunchtime with Bishop Ranch workers bound for shops and restaurants in the hub’s commercial center.
This summer the East Bay county will deploy three wheelchair-accessible autonomous shuttles that will provide on-demand transportation to Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez for nearby patients. As part of the project, the county is training some paratransit bus drivers to become safety attendants who assist riders boarding the autonomous vehicles.
The Contra Costa Transportation Authority will also deploy two autonomous shuttles in the gated adult community of Rossmoor in Walnut Creek by this summer. The shuttles will be primarily used to transport senior residents to the community hub, which includes a popular fitness center, on the northern end of Rossmoor.
Like the Bishop Ranch AV shuttles, the Rossmoor and county hospital autonomous shuttles will operate on public roads shared with human drivers. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Contra Costa County’s homeless population jumps 19% despite hundreds of new homeless housing beds – Contra Costa County’s homeless population jumped 19% from last year, even as local officials added hundreds of homeless housing units and shelter beds.
The county’s latest annual “point-in-time” homeless count — conducted by a team of volunteers on a single morning this past January — identified 2,843 people, according to newly released data. Almost 70% were living outdoors, in vehicles or in other places not meant for habitation. The rest were in shelters.
The surge came despite a 26% increase in the county’s supportive housing and shelter capacity to more than 3,500 beds, underscoring the challenge of moving people off the streets as fast as rising housing costs, job losses, and mental health and addiction issues force others out.
County officials said it was difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for the spike in homelessness, but in a statement added: “What we do know that contributes to homelessness in Contra Costa County is the lack of affordable housing here in the Bay Area and in the state.” Read More > in The Mercury News
New Research Finds Bay Area Needs $9.7 Billion to ‘Unlock’ 40,000 Affordable Homes in Predevelopment Pipeline – Proposed Regional Bond Measure Seen as Way to Close the Gap
Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise)(link is external) and the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA)(link is external) today released the Bay Area Affordable Housing Pipeline 2024 Report,(link is external) which analyzes affordable housing projects in various stages of predevelopment and identifies solutions for moving them toward completion. The updated research reveals there are now 433 projects in various stages of predevelopment that would create more than 40,896 affordable homes across the nine-county Bay Area. These would account for nearly a quarter of the 180,000 affordable homes the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) Plan determined are needed in the Bay Area by 2031.
Affordable housing developments typically are supported by a capital “stack” investment that includes a commercial mortgage; Low-Income Housing Tax Credits; tax-exempt bonds; and additional local, regional and state dollars that fill the gap between the cost of the development and the financing secured through debt and equity. The new report calculates that the hundreds of Bay Area projects now in the predevelopment pipeline need $9.7 billion in public funds to move forward, and that a $20 billion regional bond measure proposed for the ballot in Bay Area counties this fall would help close this gap.
“We’ve been stuck in an affordable housing crisis that has overwhelmed the region. The November ballot presents an opportunity to unlock thousands of affordable homes for Bay Area residents,” said Heather Hood, VP and Northern California Market Leader at Enterprise. “We expect voters to have a chance to end our housing crisis and deliver the dignified, healthy homes the Bay Area community needs and deserves.”
The predevelopment pipeline includes projects in all nine Bay Area counties. These include more than 10,000 units in both Alameda and Santa Clara counties, with another 8,400 affordable homes pending development in San Francisco and more than 3,000 units in both San Mateo and Sonoma counties. Project pipelines in other Bay Area counties range from over 300 affordable homes in Solano County to 1,173 units in Marin County; nearly 1,500 homes in Napa County; and over 2,500 units in Contra Costa County. Each Bay Area city, town or county currently is working on its own to meet the challenges of housing affordability and homelessness. Read More > from ABAG
Shocking new footage emerges of huge wooden ‘shantytown’ built in Democrat-run city whose name is byword for crime and urban decay – Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic ‘shantytown’ that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city’s slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues.
Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland.
The footage showed trash strewn around scores of houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials.
Particularly shocking was just how large the ‘shantytown’ is, with a lengthy stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered with the makeshift dwellings.
Oxford could be heard calling the area a ‘shantytown’ that is ‘absolutely mindboggling,’ as he remarked how ‘insane it is that [city officials] allow this.’
He captioned the video, ‘Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country. They just allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.
‘This looks like Hooverville during the great depression. Welcome to Oakland’s very own Gavinville.’
Tom Wolf, a former homeless man who is a recovering heroin and fentanyl addict from San Francisco, also re-shared the same video and said, ‘Worse than any shanty in the third world. You know how we got here? Drugs.’ Read More > in the Daily Mail
Solar project to destroy thousands of Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert – A renewable energy company will soon begin clearing thousands of protected Joshua trees just outside this desert town, including many thought to be a century old, to make way for a sprawling solar project that will generate power for 180,000 homes in wealthier coastal neighborhoods.
The 2,300-acre project has angered residents of Boron and nearby Desert Lake, two small Kern County towns where the poverty rate is twice the California average. Residents say their concerns about construction dust, as well as the destruction of the mostly pristine land that is habitat for endangered desert tortoises, have been ignored by the county and state officials who approved it.
The controversy over the Mojave Desert project is an example of the trade-offs being made in California as state and local government officials press for a rapid expansion of clean energy. Although solar and wind fields are expected to help mitigate climate change, they are also tearing up undeveloped land, harming threatened plants and wildlife and causing concern in nearby communities, which are often small and far from the state’s cities. Read More > in the Los Angeles Times
California’s largest new reservoir project in 50 years moves forward after judge rules against environmental groups – Plans to build the largest new reservoir in California in 50 years have taken a significant step forward, following a judge’s decision to reject a lawsuit by environmental groups opposed to it.
The $4.5 billion project, known as Sites Reservoir, is planned for the rolling ranchlands west of the town of Maxwell, about 70 miles northwest of Sacramento.
Sites would be California’s eighth largest reservoir, a 13-mile-long off-stream lake providing water to 500,000 acres of Central Valley farmlands, and 24 million people, including residents of Santa Clara County, parts of the East Bay and Los Angeles.
Late Friday, a judge in Yolo County dismissed a lawsuit from the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the River, and other groups who sued in December, claiming the project’s environmental impact report was inadequate and needed to be redone.
The project is supported by President Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom, farm organizations, labor unions and about 20 water agencies, including the Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose, Zone 7 Water Agency in Livermore, and the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles, all of which are partners and would receive water from it. Read More > in The Mercury News
Why a Bay Area transit rescue plan is on hold – A long-term fix for Bay Area transit agencies’ budget woes is on pause, after the proposal’s authors announced Friday they would try to resolve disagreements between agencies and other stakeholders within the region before bringing the bill back.
Senate Bill 1031 by Democratic Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Aisha Wahab of Fremont authorized a Bay Area ballot measure in 2026 or later to help raise revenue for transit agencies. It also required a study of whether it makes sense to consolidate the more than two dozen transit agencies that serve the nine-county region.
The Bay Area has been a focus of the financial troubles facing many public transit agencies across California, which have struggled to bring riders back after the COVID pandemic. But funding efforts have been beset by disagreements over how money is collected and distributed. While BART says it supported the bill, agencies including VTA in Santa Clara County and SamTrans in San Mateo County opposed the bill.
Wiener and Wahab — along with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which sponsored the bill — “decided a reset is needed to allow further stakeholder engagement to occur this summer and early fall,” the senators wrote in a statement.
This delay is the latest setback: Wiener’s prior bill to temporarily increase tolls on Bay Area bridges to help fund transit was paused last year, and Wahab pulled her prior bill to develop a consolidation pllan shortly after its introduction in January. Wiener and Wahab’s efforts were paired at the recommendation of Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire.
Last year, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom gave transit agencies a $5 billion lifeline to cover operating shortfalls and avoid service cuts for riders. But they have agreed to delay at least $1 billion in future funding due to the state’s projected budget deficit, though negotiations will continue until June 30.
That funding delayed the “fiscal cliff” transit agencies face, but this bill was intended as a long-term solution for the Bay Area. Read More > at CalMatters
These are the Red Lobster restaurants in the Bay Area targeted for closure – As part of its recent bankruptcy filing, Red Lobster has identified a list of restaurants it plans to close nationwide, including several in the Bay Area.
Following last month’s closures in Rohnert Park and Fremont, the largest seafood chain in the U.S. intends to shutter dining rooms at the following locations in the Bay Area and surrounding region: 503 E. Calaveras Blvd. in Milpitas, 4095 Century Blvd. in Pittsburg, 1720 N. Main St. in Salinas, 2040 Aborn Road in San Jose, 1180 Admiral Callaghan Lane in Vallejo, and 2283 W. March Lane in Stockton.
But Bay Area residents still have time to enjoy lobster, shrimp, and cheddar bay biscuits. The closures will proceed only if the court approves the bankruptcy plan. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Rubio’s closes 48 restaurants in California, citing ‘business climate’ – Rubio’s Coastal Grill employees took to social media over the weekend, lamenting dozens of California restaurant closures that took them by surprise.
“Former employee after today,” wrote Thesil58, a SoCal employee, on Reddit. “They legit told us this morning when we showed up for work that today was going to be our last day. No severance, no warning, nada. I’m not sure exactly what locations are going, but it’s a ton of them.”
The San Diego County-based chain known for its fish tacos said it was closing 48 restaurants in California, blaming the state’s business climate. Among the shutdowns were the last three in the Bay Area, in North San Jose, Sunnyvale and Pleasant Hill. Read More > from the Orange County Register
Can the Grid Keep Up With AI and Data Demands? – America’s energy demands are growing. New data centers are stressing the electricity grid in many parts of the country. Artificial intelligence “already uses as much energy as a small country,” according to an International Energy Agency report, and its demands are expected to double in the next few years.
The federal government and many states are also pushing for a broader adoption of electric vehicles, which have lower carbon emissions than gas-powered cars but require more power from the electricity grid. At the same time, many states are trying to wean themselves off of traditional sources of power: Fossil-fueled power plants are gradually shutting down, while new wind and solar plants are being built.
The simultaneous growth in energy demands and the transition to renewable power sources have raised questions about the reliability of the power grid in many parts of the country. Wind and solar sources generate power differently than a traditional coal plant. But grid reliability isn’t just about generating enough power. It’s also about transmission — the process of carrying electricity from the generating source to the local utilities that distribute it to homes and businesses. That requires expensive infrastructure, namely high-voltage transmission lines that take a long time to plan and build. Anticipating future energy needs is key to making cost-effective investments.
Recently, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) adopted a new order mandating longer-term planning for transmission, in hopes of building more reliability and resilience into the nation’s energy grids. The order applies to transmission planners, including regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs), which identify and plan for energy transmission needs. The new order says that those groups need to look 20 years ahead, as opposed to the current five years, when they’re planning new transmission projects. And it lays out a scheme for how the costs of transmission should be allocated among states.
There’s a lot of minutiae in the 1,300-page order. But its main aim is to improve the reliability of the power grid by pushing states to do more proactive planning. “[The FERC order] is intended to improve the planning and coordination of transmission development in the United States,” says Greg White, executive director of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “Siting any kind of energy infrastructure these days is a challenge. People love the service, but they don’t want to have to see it out their back door.” Read More > at Governing
Report: More than HALF of all new American jobs in the last 5 years are in just two states – Let’s see, the two most conservative major US states are doing a lion’s share of the work in keeping Americans employed. Who could have guessed it?
More than half of the nation’s jobs created in the past five years have come in two states: Texas and Florida.They’re at the forefront of a job creation revolution in which states with lower wages and a lower cost of living are gaining the highest share of new jobs, according to a new Stateline analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Massachusetts, New York, and California – all states that tout their “high wages” – saw themselves fall out of the top 10 of job creation states. I wonder how many “high-wage” workers decided to move to places with sane economic policies that don’t take away your wages with income taxes.
Between 2014 and 2019, California gained 1.4 million new jobs — more than any other state and 12 percent of the national total. But for the past five years California has been dead last in job creation, losing about 214,000 jobs. Texas moved into first place during that time, seeing almost 1.3 million new jobs, almost one-third of all new jobs created nationally.Florida was not far behind, with about 911,000 new jobs, almost 25 percent of the national total of about 4 million.
Oklahoma also made a huge leap, from the 30s in the previous five-year period to a top 10 state now. Read More > at Not the Bee
Jobs Report: Strong Hiring Sinks Fed Rate-Cut Hopes; S&P 500 Fights Back – The May jobs report showed that hiring easily topped expectations, as employers added 272,000 payroll positions, even as the unemployment rate hit 4% for the first time in more than two years. After the jobs report, the S&P 500 fell moderately, then cut its losses as Wall Street weighed the implications for Fed rate cuts.
The 272,000 overall employment gain exceeded Wall Street’s 182,000 forecast, according to Econoday. Private-sector employers added 229,000 jobs, beating 168,000 forecasts. Government jobs rose by 43,000.
The unemployment rate rose to 4%, defying predictions of a steady 3.9% rate.
That came as the ranks of the employed tumbled by 408,000. Meanwhile, the ranks of the unemployed increased by 157,000. Read More > at Investor’s Business Daily
Colon cancer crisis in young people could be fueled by booming drinks brands adored by teens – They are used by millions of workers to power through afternoon slumps.
But highly caffeinated energy drinks could be partly fueling the explosion of colorectal cancers in young people, US researchers warn.
They believe an ingredient in Red Bull and other top brands such as Celsius and Monster may be linked to bacteria in the gut that speeds up tumor growth.
Researchers in Florida theorize that cancer cells use taurine – an amino acid thought to improve mental clarity – as their ‘primary energy source.’
At the world’s biggest cancer conference this week, the team announced a new human trial that will test their hypothesis, which so far is based on animal studies.
They plan to discover whether drinking an energy drink every day causes levels of cancer-causing gut bacteria to rise. Read More > at the Daily Mail
Social Distancing Was Always A Guess – Why Did So Many Insist It Was Science? – In 2020, it was a bad idea to note that, for most people, COVID-19, a coronavirus in the same family as the common cold only known to be distinct from the cold since the 1960s, was just a bad cold, or that wiping down everything with Clorox was doing no good, or that the lab next door to Wuhan with such poor safety protocol that a researcher had been jailed for selling lab animals to the nearby wet market might have accidentally leaked one of the 16,000 coronavirus samples they were doing gain-of-function experiments on.
You were called anti-science or, worse, a Republican.
Questions about the legitimacy of six-foot social distancing would get you uninvited from a lot of parties. Even wondering about the need to wear a mask walking in the woods was going to get you dirty looks.
I am all for social distancing in general. When the government came up with that breezy six-feet number I asked ‘Why so close?’ and ‘let’s ban social hugs next’ but I never thought it had a science basis.
Because it didn’t. That is not to say you don’t want people sneezing on you, you don’t, we wrote about the effect of aerosol emissions here, but there is no magic line that made six feet okay and five feet a risk, it was the disease epidemiology version of dietary salt recommendations; arbitrary and capricious because it is based on an average with no underlying data. Read More > at Science 2.0
America’s Commute to Work Is Getting Longer and Longer – The American worker is making peace with a longer ride.
Big shifts in the way people live and work are making commutes of over an hour into the office more common—and even more palatable. Rising housing costs have prompted many to move farther away from city centers, while the staying power of hybrid work means they don’t have to drive into work every day.
The share of super commutes—those 75 miles or longer—have grown the most and are up by nearly a third since 2020, according to new research from Stanford University.
A recent analysis of satellite-navigation data for the 10 largest cities in the U.S. shows he isn’t alone in making that calculus.
Examining two million morning commutes over the same four-month period in 2023-24 and 2019-20, Stanford University economists Nick Bloom and Alex Finan found the number of longer drives—though still a fraction of total trips—rose the most over the four years: As a share of all morning commutes, those between 50 and 74 miles rose 18%, while those 75 miles and up rose 32%. Commutes less than 35 miles, which were the majority of all commutes, declined, according to their analysis of data from transportation research firm INRIX.
Bloom says the data points to a shift away from living close to workplaces. He attributes the widespread adoption of hybrid work—allowing employees to do their jobs from home on certain days—as the key driver.
A two-hour long car ride, performed twice a day, would be punishing as a regular commute. The difference now, he adds, is that many of these commuters are doing it once or twice a week. Read More > in The Wall Street Journal
Americans still not sold on EVs despite Biden push, poll shows – President Biden has made the push for broader adoption of electric vehicles a key pillar of his agenda to fight climate change since he entered the White House, but the latest data shows a major chunk of Americans still have no intention of buying an EV in the near future.
A poll released Tuesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found nearly half of Americans (47%) said they are not likely to purchase an EV for their next vehicle.
Only 19% of respondents said they were either “very” or “extremely” likely to buy an EV for their next car purchase, and another 22% said they were “somewhat likely” to do so.
Despite hefty tax incentives for purchasing all-electric cars, a majority of U.S. adults — 6 in 10 — of those surveyed cited high prices as the major reason they would not buy an EV, and some 25% cited cost as a minor reason.
The AP noted that the average price of a new EV is out of reach for many Americans’ budgets at $58,000, according to Kelley Blue Book, while the average vehicle sold in the U.S. is under $46,000.
Seventy-five percent of those surveyed in the poll cited too few charging stations as a reason they would not purchase an EV, and 70% said EVs take too long to charge. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they prefer gas-powered cars. Read More > at FOX Business
A heat wave will cook your electric car battery, if you let it – Consider it ironic, or at least a little poetic: Electric vehicles, great for combating climate change, don’t do well in extreme heat. It’s a paradox being thrown into relief as multiple US states bake under heat waves that are becoming more frequent and more intense.
High temperatures aren’t kryptonite for battery-powered vehicles. An EV in a hot climate has to work harder to keep its battery and its passengers cool, but the car will function just fine. On a chemical level, though, extreme heat is akin to heart disease for EV batteries, or a mellow and slow-moving form of cancer.
That’s because when temperatures climb, the ions in a car battery speed up. Once that happens, they often have trouble attaching to the anode or cathode. The pressure and speed can also create small cracks, which slow chemical reactions and make for less usable battery life.
To some degree, this happens with any fast-charging cycle. Using a Tesla Supercharger will move ions more quickly than plugging into a wall outlet, and the heat generated by rapid charging is one reason smartphone batteries aren’t speedier. But on extremely hot days, the ions in an EV battery whizz around even when the car isn’t driving or plugged in, and that can curtail range irreversibly. Read More > from Bloomberg
Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares: Virginia Will Exit California Electric Vehicle Mandate at End of Year – Governor Youngkin today announced the end of the California electric vehicle mandate in Virginia, effective at the end of 2024 when California’s current regulations expire. An official opinion from Attorney General Jason Miyares in response to a request by the Governor and Senate Republican Leader Ryan McDougle confirms that Virginia is not required to comply with expansive new mandates adopted by the unelected California Air Resources Board (CARB) set to take effect January 1, 2025.
“Once again, Virginia is declaring independence – this time from a misguided electric vehicle mandate imposed by unelected leaders nearly 3,000 miles away from the Commonwealth,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin. “The idea that government should tell people what kind of car they can or can’t purchase is fundamentally wrong. Virginians deserve the freedom to choose which vehicles best fit the needs of their families and businesses. The law is clear, and I am proud to announce Virginians will no longer be forced to live under this out-of-touch policy.”
“Today, I’ve issued an official Attorney General Opinion that confirms that Virginians are no longer legally bound to follow the emission standards of California,” said Attorney General Jason Miyares. “EV mandates like California’s are unworkable and out of touch with reality, and thankfully the law does not bind us to their regulations. California does not control which cars Virginians buy and any thoughts that automobile manufacturers should face millions of dollars in civil penalties rather than allowing our citizens to choose their own vehicles is completely absurd.”
In 2021, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation authorizing Virginia’s Air Board to adopt California’s “Advanced Clean Cars I” regulation pursuant to Section 177 of the federal Clean Air Act. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently adopted “Advanced Clean Cars II,” set to take effect January 1, 2025, which would require 100% of new cars sold in Model Year 2035 to be electric vehicles. An opinion from Attorney General Jason Miyares confirms the law, as written, does not require Virginia to follow ACC II. Therefore, the Commonwealth will follow federal emissions standards on January 1, 2025. Read More > from the State of Virginia
Drinking alcohol on airplanes is bad for your body – One of the few consolations of long-haul international flights is the free alcohol, right? Nope—not according to a study conducted by a group of researchers at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine.
The study investigated the effects that combining alcohol consumption and the hypobaric conditions of a typical airplane cabin have on sleep. Researchers took a group of healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 40, and placed half in a chamber where the atmospheric pressure simulated the environment of a plane’s cruising altitude. The remaining volunteers were placed in a sleep laboratory at sea level.
Each group spent two nights in their respective environments, and were provided with alcohol to drink on one of these nights. They slept for four hours, during which they were monitored by polysomnographic equipment that allowed researchers to monitor the subjects’ blood oxygen level (SpO2), along with their heart rate, the time they spent in deep sleep, and various other factors.
The study notes that it’s already well established that both altitude and alcohol consumption can take a toll on the heart—these conditions increase heart rate during sleep and decrease SpO2. They also reduce the amount of time spent in REM sleep. The authors thus “hypothesized that the combination of alcohol and hypobaric conditions would exacerbate the changes in sleep observed under single exposure conditions.” In the study, both altitude and alcohol consumption alone affected median SpO2 levels, heart rates, and time spent in deep sleep, and the combination of both seemed to augment these effects. Read More > at Popular Science
Romick in Oakley 