Chip Jacobs

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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We appeared on KCRW’s “Which Way L.A.?” program with Warren Olney in early July, and it’s only now that we’re getting around to blogging about it. Indolence, no doubt. Though we did the show from two different states (geographical, that is), we came together in agreeing just how much good, ‘ol toxic, L.A. smog has [...]

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News link from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Formal ceremony to be held in New York city later this month. Nearly 3,400 books in 65 different categories were entered. Smogtown tied with Where Have all the Flowers Gone? by Charles Flower for this tribute in the environmental category.

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The final order of gold, silver and bronze medals will be announced later this month. Award page link. Here’s the verbatim block o’ copy from the IPBA’s people: “You Can Save the Earth: 7 Reasons Why & 7 Simple Ways, edited by June Eding (Hatherleigh Press); The Little Green Book, by Joseph R. Provey and [...]

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Chip will be on a panel this Saturday (April 25) at 3:30 p.m. called “History: Unknown Los Angeles” with writers D.J. Waldie and Francis Dinkelspiel. William Deverell will moderate it. Here’s the entire lineup for Saturday’s panels. Bill will be on a Sunday panel (April 26) at 11 a.m. called “Climate in Crisis” with writers [...]

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It was named one of the runner-ups in the evidently crowded non-fiction category by the judges on April 20. Our most obvious response is short, but certainly not curt. Thanks! Here’s the link to all the finalists and winners. It’s a pretty tantalizing crop of stories out there on the environment, particularly stories of our [...]

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