Your Electric Car Isn’t Making California’s Air Any Cleaner

The Environmental Benefits of Rich People’s Teslas Are Canceled Out By All the Gas-Guzzling Clunkers Still on Our Roads

This is a tale of two zip codes.

First there’s 94582: San Ramon, California.

Since 2010, the roughly 38,000 citizens and businesses of this prosperous Bay Area suburb, where the median household income is $140,444, have purchased 463 zero-emissions vehicles. Such vehicles receive major state subsidies; nearly $1 million of these subsidies went to vehicle purchasers in San Ramon. But San Ramon doesn’t need the anti-pollution help. Despite being home to a large highway complex and a business park, the city scores in the cleanest 10 percent of California’s zip codes, according …

The Central Valley Was Ride-Sharing Long Before Uber

On the Bus, My Hometown Is Hours Away From Schools, Hospitals, and Good Jobs. Carpooling Is a Way of Life Here.

Public transportation is a huge challenge in Huron, the city of about 7,000 people in California’s Central Valley where I grew up. If you need to make the 110-mile round …

Is the Final Frontier Under the Sea?

Before We Got to the Moon, Americans Made Scientific History Exploring the Ocean Floor

Fabien Cousteau, the eldest grandson of legendary ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, just wrapped up an unusually long underwater stay, logging 31 days living and working at the world’s only undersea …

Former California Environment Secretary Linda S. Adams

In Her Next Life, She’s Going to Rock Out

Linda S. Adams is a senior advisor at Sacramento-based consulting firm Clean Tech Advocates. She served in cabinet-level positions with three California governors, including as California Environment Secretary from 2006 …

Natural Resources Defense Council’s Steve Fleischli

He Finds Inspiration in Smelt

Steve Fleischli is director of the water program and a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica, California. Before participating in a panel on why everyone …

Letting Wildflowers Take Over My Front Lawn

I Volunteered to Tear Up the Grass and Turn My Home Into a Piece of Public Art

It is early July. As I look through my front window, I can see what’s left of the spring blooms that only months ago covered our front yard. The tall …