California takes a big step back as July 4 nears

Restaurant dining rooms, wineries, card rooms to close for at least three weeks in 19 counties

Pedro Armenta cleans menus at Du-par's restaurant at the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles.

By TARYN LUNA, PHIL WILLON Los Angeles Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday ordered tougher restrictions on indoor activities for most of the state, marking a major step backward in the reopeningand an attempt to slow an alarming rise of the coronavirus in 19 counties.

The governor took action to halt visits to indoor restaurants, bars, wineries and tasting rooms, entertainment centers, movie theaters, zoos, museums and card rooms for the next three weeks in Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino and Sacramento counties and other regions hard hit by the virus.

Newsom is imposing the restrictions in an effort to reduce opportunities for people to gather indoors in advance of the July 4 holiday weekend, when officials fear disaster if Californians continue to ignore safety guidelines and businesses remain open in areas already experiencing significant spikes in coronavirus infections.

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As of Wednesday at 5 p.m., there were 237,068 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in California, following record increases earlier in the week, and 6,152 total deaths, according to data tracked by The Times.

“We have to be much more vigilant in terms of maintaining our physical distancing from others and be much more vigilant as it relates to the prospects of being in situations where we are transmitting COVID-19,” Newsom said. “The decisions we’re making here today — we do so soberly but thoughtfully and deliberately with an idea on mitigating the spread of this virus.”

The change signals a reversal in the state’s reopening that began in early May and quickly progressed by June 12 to allow retail stores, dine-in restaurants, bars, religious services, hair salons, gyms and other businesses to open again with modifications in counties that met state guidelines.

Main Street in Huntington Beach.

Newsom is also recommending the cancellation of all fireworks shows on the Fourth of July in the affected counties, and is urging Californians to rethink having large get-togethers with friends and neighbors to celebrate the holiday.

The governor emphasized that the new mandates would allow businesses to remain open for outdoor service and takeout. Bars and other drinking establishments in the affected counties are also allowed to seat guests outdoors as long as they sell a meal with drinks in the same transaction and meet all of the same safety requirements as restaurants.

The state applied the closures to counties that have been flagged for at least three consecutive days based on troubling longer-term data on key public health metrics, including hospitalizations, community transmission and hospital capacity. The state has been using the data to determine when counties are safe to open businesses and now to decide when to “toggle back,” as Newsom has described the process of reversing course and closing down.

Newsom’s order immediately applies to the affected indoor business activities in Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Merced, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Solano, Stanislaus, Tulare and Ventura counties.

State officials have long anticipated that reopening would lead to an increase in cases and risk of more deaths as Newsom shifted power to counties in May to open businesses at their own pace.

Newsom began sounding the alarm about the growing spread of the virus on June 18 by requiring Californians to wear masks or other face coverings in public and high-risk settings. But the state continued to speed up the reopening process and allowed personal care services in one of the highest-risk sectors, such as nail salons, massage parlors, tattoo shops and waxing services, to resume the next day.

The governor defended his administration’s approach to reopening the state’s economy on Wednesday, saying it relied heavily on local public health officials to assess the severity of the outbreak in their areas and to determine the safest approach.

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Solar deal brings Wells Fargo and Shell together

The big bank and the big oil company show widening corporate interest in renewable energy

A boarded-up Wells Fargo Bank in Washington. (Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

By Steven Mufson Washington Post – June 23, 2020 at 9:00 a.m.

Wells Fargo will buy electricity generated by solar plants from Shell Energy, a move that demonstrates widening corporate interest in renewable energy even among some of the strongest supporters of fossil fuels.

The deal is modest: Wells Fargo says its share of the plants’ combined capacity, purchased from three locations in Virginia and one in California, would add up to 62.7 megawatts and would meet about 8 percent of its global energy needs.

But it carries symbolic value. Wells Fargo, the second-biggest lender to fossil fuel companies over the past four years, is buying carbon-free electricity from Shell, a company that’s been in the oil business since the 1880s. The deal also shows the appeal of solar projects even in the midst of the punishing economic downturn brought on by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Rockefeller heirs to Big Oil find dumping fossil fuels benefits the bottom line

Shell Energy, a unit of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, which entered into a long-term contract to buy power from the solar plants’ developers, will resell some of the energy to Wells Fargo. The Wells Fargo contract for solar energy from California will last seven years, and those from the Mid-Atlantic will last six years and seven months.

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Curt Radkin, senior vice president and corporate properties sustainability strategist at Wells Fargo, said that the bank has “a pipeline of additional transactions that we’re hoping to bring to closure.”

The continued push for renewable projects comes amid the economic downturn. In April, Wells Fargo set aside $3.1 billion for potential losses and said its quarterly profit fell nearly 90 percent.

Wells Fargo has been a target of climate activists, who point to a Rainforest Action Network report that said the bank had provided nearly $200 billion of financing for fossil fuel firms and projects since the Paris climate agreement was signed in December 2015.

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As pandemic has humans hibernating, bears roam free

Bear spotted in Ocean County
A police photo of a bear that was spotted in a shopping center last month in Manahawkin.Stafford Township police

By Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

When the humans are home, the bears will roam.

Bear sightings surged in the first half of 2020 compared to the same time frame last year, according to new statistics released in June by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP reported 147 bear sightings around the state in that period. That’s a 93% increase from the 76 sightings in the first half of last year. The figures cover bear sightings and complaints from Jan. 1 to June 21.

Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, indicated that the increase says less about changes in the bear population and more about people spending increased time at home due to coronavirus-related restrictions.

“This is the time of year when bears are looking for habitat, particularly younger males that have left their mothers,” Hajna said in a statement. “Reports may have increased due to more people being at home seeing bears as they disperse into habitats.”

General complaints of bears being a nuisance or inflicting damage are up nearly 40%, with 327 complaints so far this year compared to 234 this time last year.

The 474 total bear incidents — sightings and complaints combined — in the first half of 2020 mark a 53% increase from 310 incidents in the same time frame last year.

The report only includes bear sightings and complaints reported to the DEP. Any bear activity reported to local police or other agencies without the involvement of the DEP is not included.

The report breaks down the bear incidents into three categories, with Category 1 involving the most severe incidents. Category 1 reports increased slightly, from 13 in the first half of 2019 to 15 so far in 2020. Reports of bears entering homes have doubled, though reports of bears being aggressive have decreased from last year.

Less severe incidents — like property damage and bothering unprotected bee hive complaints — are classified by the state as Category 2. Reports of bears going through garbage and being a general nuisance are the two most frequent complaints in this category. Overall, Category 2 incidents have increased about 38% since last year.

The least severe bear reports are grouped into Category 3, which has seen a 70% increase in complaints since last year. Sightings make up the majority of reports in this category, but vehicle strikes and reports of bears bothering bird feeders are also up. Reports of injured bears and bears found dead are down.

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Toxic algae and dead fish: Newark’s lake is sick

Branch Brook Lake Newark NJ algae bloom
Branch Brook Lake in Newark, NJ

By Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The dead fish floated along the surface, covering much of Branch Brook Lake.

Catherine Marcal was stunned by the sheer number of them, stretching from the lion statues at the Prudential Concert Grove to the Park Avenue overpass.

But somehow, that was not the most disturbing image the Bloomfield resident saw earlier this month when she visited Branch Brook Park in Newark.

“A lot of them were still alive,” Marcal said. “They were still flip-flopping, and it was just horrifying.”

The fish die-off June 16 claimed hundreds of bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish, plus a few largemouth bass, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

”I had no idea that there were even fish like that living there,” Marcal said. “I couldn’t believe the quantity. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fish.”

Branch Brook Lake sits in the heart of Branch Brook Park — the largest stretch of open space in Newark and one of the crown jewels of the Essex County parks system.

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A call to invest big in struggling coal regions, but please don’t mention ‘Green New Deal’

Solar panels at the Lynch, Kentucky, water plant, on an old massive coal mine site in Harlan County. This is one example of the kind of economic transition identified in a new roadmap for economic transition in coal communities across the United States. Credit: James Bruggers

BY JAMES BRUGGERS Inside Climate News

The global coronavirus that’s put tens of millions of Americans out of work and plunged the nation into a recession is speeding an ongoing transition away from coal.

With devastation in communities left behind, 80 local, regional and national organizations on Monday rolled out a National Economic Transition Platform to support struggling coal mining cities and towns, some facing severe poverty, in Appalachia, the Illinois Basin, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and elsewhere.

Although it comes just four months before the presidential election in November, the platform doesn’t mention the Green New Deal, the proposed massive shift in federal spending to create jobs and hasten a transition to clean energy that’s divided Republicans and Democrats. 

But Heidi Binko, executive director of the Just Transition Fund, which drafted by the plan with a wide range of partners, including labor unions, community organizations, business groups and environmental and tribal nonprofits, said it could be used as a template for part of the Green New Deal or any other legislative initiatives aimed at helping coal communities.

While some of the sponsors haven’t endorsed the Democrats’ manifesto for a new economy based on clean energy, all of them are united in the principles of community-based economic development for coal country, Binko said. 

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The Green New Deal, introduced in Congress last year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 “through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.” It does not include specific provisions for retraining out-of-work coal miners or reinvesting in struggling coal communities. 

Last year, the Appalachian Regional Commission identified 80 counties across its area as economically distressed—meaning they rank among the most impoverished 10 percent of counties in the nation.

During a telephone news conference Monday introducing the sweeping program for economic revitalization of the nation’s coal regions, speakers from Appalachia to the Navajo Nation described the need for bottom-up economic development that builds on community members’ strengths and resources. 

The main point in putting forth the platform is that communities that have relied on coal need far more help than they’ve been getting, said Just Transition’s Binko. The fund was created in 2015 by several philanthropic foundations and the Appalachian Funders Network to help communities redefine their local economies.

Binko said the platform is based on what has already been shown to work and lacks only the funding needed to scale up efforts well beyond President Obama’s proposed Power Plus plan, a $1 billion economic development fund tied to cleaning up abandoned mines. Congress funded a more limited program.

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New Chinese flu with ‘pandemic potential’

pig being transported
The new flu strain is similar to the swine flu that spread globally in 2009

By Michelle Roberts, Health editor, BBC News online

A new strain of flu that has the potential to become a pandemic has been identified in China by scientists.

It emerged recently and is carried by pigs, but can infect humans, they say.

The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak.

While it is not an immediate problem, they say, it has “all the hallmarks” of being highly adapted to infect humans and needs close monitoring.

As it’s new, people could have little or no immunity to the virus.

The scientists write in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures to control the virus in pigs, and the close monitoring of swine industry workers, should be swiftly implemented.

Pandemic threat

A bad new strain of influenza is among the top disease threats that experts are watching for, even as the world attempts to bring to an end the current coronavirus pandemic.

The last pandemic flu the world encountered – the swine flu outbreak of 2009 that began in Mexico – was less deadly than initially feared, largely because many older people had some immunity to it, probably because of its similarity to other flu viruses that had circulated years before.

The new flu strain that has been identified in China is similar to 2009 swine flu, but with some new changes.Video captionThese bats in Thailand could carry useful information about human viruses

So far, it hasn’t posed a big threat, but Prof Kin-Chow Chang and colleagues who have been studying it, say it is one to keep an eye on.

The virus, which the researchers call G4 EA H1N1, can grow and multiply in the cells that line the human airways.

They found evidence of recent infection starting in people who worked in abattoirs and the swine industry in China.

Current flu vaccines do not appear to protect against it, although they could be adapted to do so if needed.

Prof Kin-Chow Chang, who works at Nottingham University in the UK, told the BBC: “Right now we are distracted with coronavirus and rightly so. But we must not lose sight of potentially dangerous new viruses.”

While this new virus is not an immediate problem, he says: “We should not ignore it.”

Prof James Wood, head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said the work “comes as a salutary reminder” that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of pathogens, and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses.Video captionSwine fever devastates China’s pigs

More on this story

Coronavirus: Worst could be yet to come, WHO warns 29 June 2020
Coronavirus: This is not the last pandemic 06 June 2020

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