Chip Jacobs

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California is “failing,” or so says the British. Excuse us if I’ve heard this one before from supposed sharp-eyed observers convinced we’re past the tipping point to social doom. We dip into outsiders fancy for seeing ruin before the ruin is really there in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. [...]

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WAS CONVICTED SMOG-CREDIT SWINDLER ANNE SHOLTZ PART OF SHADY INTERNATIONAL ‘MONEY REPATRIATION’ SCHEMES? August 20, 2009 By Chip Jacobs for the Pasadena Weekly The demise of Anne Sholtz’s once-grand life is evident in the smaller things. It’s there in the GPS-tracking bracelet — standard issue for felons in home detention — that looped around her [...]

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Can the GM Volt really get 230 MPG? Story If you’re skeptical about that, how do you feel about carbon sequestration. Count us as skeptics here, until that “ah-ha” moment of truth in science and consensus in D.C. Link. The public’s de-prioritizing environmental cleanup during hard economic times is both common sense and old hat [...]

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People, we have lots of ground to cover. Let’s get started. From the Los Angeles Times story “In an effort to clean the air along the nation’s choked highways, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a major regulation to control nitrogen dioxide, a key factor in respiratory illness …” Consistent with other GW news [...]

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Here’s a teaser opening from the Pasadena Weekly story about congressional interest in this case. “A former Pasadena businesswoman convicted of engineering a fraudulent cap-and-trade pollution credit deal involving millions of dollars and one of the world’s biggest oil companies is at the heart of a congressional inquiry into the government’s latest response to global [...]

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Californians are less concerned about smog and global warming than they used to be. Here’s the story about the poll in the Los Angeles Times. Why some scientists now believe climate change is worse than many imagined is the focus of this Newsweek piece. “Shock” is not a word you want to hear. Freeways and [...]

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If you’re interested in making it for this panel discussion, Q&A with the audience and signing at the downtown Central Branch, click here for details. They put on a wonderful program. Ours will be in the Mark Taper Auditorium. Here’s the promo: Tuesday, June 9 7:00 pm SMOGTOWN: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los [...]

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To watch the clip from C-SPAN’s Book TV, click here, and scroll forward to 5 hours, 3 minutes and 20 seconds. The panel, devoted to Los Angeles’ unknown and forgotten history and moderated by USC history professor William Deverell, took place on Saturday, April 25 on the UCLA campus. Here’s the Times’ coverage of the [...]

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In the months since we released our social history of one of the planet’s first true environmental crises, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, we’ve been scurrying around appearing on a bunch of terrific platforms. We’re talking the West Hollywood Book Festival, Patt Morrison’s NPR-syndicated radio show, “Deadline L.A.,” ABC public radio, [...]

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