A look at the two climate bills Governor Brown signed into law Wednesday, what do rising ocean temperatures mean for us? 2016 could be the deadliest year for traffic deaths in a decade.
What's next for CA's ambitious climate change plan
Governor Jerry Brown said he plans to sign legislation that would extend targets for reducing greenhouse gasses in California and boost oversight of the state's climate regulators.
The two bills, SB 32 and AB 197, are an ambitious step in the state's climate policy, often cited as one of the most aggressive in the nation. But the move has drawn criticism from some business leaders and Republican lawmakers.
"It sets the most aggressive mid-term target for climate pollution reduction in the United States," said Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. That target aims to reduce greenhouse gasses to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, a more drastic cut than the state's current goal.
"The fact that it's the legislature setting forth this law makes it more enduring than Governor Brown's existing executive order," said Horowitz.
4 things we know from 100 years of measuring ocean temperature and salinity
At UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, researchers have had a front-row seat for climate change for a century.
Every single day for one hundred years, the ocean temperature and salinity has been measured and recorded from the end of the Scripps Pier.
No breaks. Even New Year's Day and Christmas morning.
It's created a pretty remarkable set of data that can tell us about our ocean, sea life, and even the air we breathe.
Melissa Carter started out as a volunteer in 1999, actually measuring the data, and now she oversees the program. A Martinez talked to Carter about what the data tells us about the ocean and its inhabitants.
- "The ocean is warming. There was a big shift in the late '70s where we saw warming occur and we have seen that warming trend continue." Over the past century, the ocean has warmed 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
- "The last two years have been the warmest on record."
- It's hurting the base of the ocean food chain. "The most important things that we're seeing at Scripps Pier and in Southern California is that with, especially the last two years of warming that have been the most drastic on record, ...we have lost about fifty percent of our phytoplankton. Those are the microscopic organisms that are in the sun-lit portion of the water. With the loss of phytoplankton, that's the base of the food chain. You can expect to see other trophic changes. It can be a cascading effect that works its way up the food chain.
- A warm ocean has a huge effect on the air we breathe. "We learned as kids that trees are responsible for providing the air that we breathe. Actually, phytoplankton are just as important for creating that oxygen. This is really critical when it comes to understanding the carbon cycle because phytoplankton are expected to be absorbing this extra co2 we're pumping int o the atmosphere through our cars and through other means, but if the phytoplankton aren't there, they're not going to be uptaking the CO2 and that won't be happening. ...Warm water is less able to take up CO2 so it can be a double whammy that can happen with a warmer ocean. The sun lit portion is very warm and then you have the bottom layer that has cold nutrient-rich waters, so as you have more and more warming, you have this greater depth of warm stratified waters that are separate from the nutrient-rich bottom waters...then you don't have mixing that's going to introduce nutrients and allow the phytoplankton to grow."
To hear the full interview, click the blue audio player above.
Luxurious danger: A cruise through the Northwest Passage
This week, a cruise ship embarked on a trip through a historically impassable path of water.
The liner, Crystal Serenity, is sailing from Seward, Alaska, through the Northwest Passage, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans along the northern coast of Canada.
In the past, ships have been trapped in the passage by sea ice, but because of climate change, that's less of a concern now.
For more, we're joined by Jeanette Lee Falsey, business reporter for the Alaska Dispatch News.
Unemployment down, traffic deaths up
It’s a sad reality of U.S. car culture that traffic crashes claim a lot of lives. So far in 2016, they’re claiming even more than usual.
Traffic fatalities were up nine percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2015, according to preliminary estimates released this week by the nonprofit National Safety Council. From January through the end of June, 19,100 people were killed on U.S. roads and another 2.2 million were also seriously injured. By the end of the year, traffic fatalities could exceed 40,000 for the first time in nine years.
Among the factors influencing the higher traffic fatality toll is the recovering economy. With fewer people unemployed, gas prices low and U.S. auto sales peaking, more people are driving — and crashing. U.S. drivers logged a record one and a half trillion miles in the first half of the year — a 3.3 percent increase over the same period in 2015, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
But cities including L.A. are attempting to reverse the steady uptick of traffic deaths. A member of the Vision Zero Network, L.A. is working to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by 2025. Some of the city’s strategies for achieving such a goal were presented by the city’s Department of Transportation during this week’s Advancing Vision Zero webinar held by the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals.
The Vision Zero Network, founded in Sweden, is dedicated to reducing traffic fatalities to zero by recognizing that crashes are preventable and increasing the urgency of achieving zero traffic deaths.
The United States has the highest incidence per capita of motor vehicle crash deaths among high-income countries — double the rate of Canada and France, according to the 2015 World Health Organization Global Status Report on Road Safety.
In L.A., a majority of traffic crashes occur on a minority of streets. Six percent of L.A. streets account for 65 percent of deaths and serious injuries for people walking and biking. A disproportionate number of injury crashes also occur in low-income communities; almost half of the high injury areas in L.A. are low income, according to the city’s Department of Transportation.
Almost half of the pedestrians who were killed or severely injured in traffic crashes in L.A. were due to a lack of crossing infrastructure; 12 percent of pedestrians and cyclists killed in collisions were at left turn signals.
The L.A. DOT praised the success of its reconfigured, diagonal intersection at Hollywood and Highland. Prior to its installation last November, 13 collisions occurred at the intersection annually. In the six months following its reconfiguration with diagonal crosswalks, collisions there dropped to zero.
Sue Carpenter is co-host of our podcast and series on modern mobility, The Ride.
Floyd Norman on life as a misfit, troublemaker and animator at Disney
There's a lot of talk lately about the lack of diversity in Hollywood...
Well, you should have seen things back in the 50s.
Tinsel Town was pretty white, especially when it came to those working in animation.
Floyd Norman changed all that.
He was the first African American animator at Disney Studios.
His incredible life is the subject of a new documentary titled "Floyd Norman: An Animated Life."
Take Two's Alex Cohen recently had the chance to talk with Norman, who turned 81 earlier this summer.
On what it was like to walk into Disney Studios for the first time
It was wonderland. I was Alice arriving in Wonderland. Of course today [The Disney Studio] is a monster enterprise, but back then, it was sort of sleepy little Disney. Hardly anyone knew the studio was in Burbank, California because it had a very low profile. But it was a wonderful, once you walked into ... the studio. Art work and artists were everywhere. And for a kid like me newly arrived from Santa Barbara, coming into the Disney studios ... was the most magical place I've ever seen in my life.
On being called a "troublemaker" by his co-workers
As Roy Edward Disney said, most artists are trouble makers because we're not main stream. Artists are really counter culture. We are mavericks. We cause trouble wherever we go. Hopefully we bring entertainment and delight we bring smiles to children's faces and we make adults laugh, but we are who we are and we are misfits who create popular entertainment.
On drawing cartoons of his colleagues
What's so wonderful is I didn't really invent anything. I was carrying on a long standing Disney tradition. Back when I was a child, long before I got to Disney, the other artists were drawing cartoons about each other. It's what cartoonists do! We mock people. We mock ourselves. And so when I came to disney and I saw all of these funny cartoons on the wall and I saw these gags as the artists riffed on each other... i loved it! Lo and behold in the 1960's maybe it was just a sign of the times, we lost that sense of humor. And artists stopped drawing cartoons. I didn't want to see that long standing Disney tradition die. So I began drawing cartoons. That's really what motivated. So I started drawing cartoons about my friends my colleagues ... even Walt Disney himself! That was a very good thing because Walt Disney discovered me because of those gags.
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.
Answers have ben edited for clarity.
State of Affairs: A tough week for Hillary Clinton, when will Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez debate?
On this edition of State of Affairs, Take Two's weekly look at government and politics in the Golden State:
- Hillary Clinton had a tough week, with more conversation about her email practices. The AP released an analysis on Tuesday claiming more than half the people outside of government who got a meeting with Clinton while she was Secretary of State gave money to The Clinton Foundation. How serious is this?
- How is Donald Trump's changing stance on immigration resonating with voters? And, the Trump Effect is playing out in California's down ballot races, including the District 5 Los Angeles County Supervisor's race. In a candidate statement from Darrell Park, he implies that opponent Republican Kathryn Barger supports Trump. Barger is now challenging the candidate statement. A petition filed this week by Barger in Los Angeles County Superior Court says Barger does not support Trump or his agenda.
- Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez are facing off for a Senate seat, but Sanchez missed a deadline this week to declare her participation in a proposed debate. As the underdog in this race, how could this impact her campaign?
- There are nearly 40 school bond measures heading to L.A. and Orange County voters in November. We'll find out if that number is unusual, and why these bond measures will now get oversight.
- There is a call to completely change the way we vote here in California. Sen. Ben Allen of Santa Monica wants to do away with polling places. We'll hear about what he's proposing instead.
Joining State of Affairs this week is
, senior writer at POLITICO, and KPCC's politics reporter,
.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
EpiPen manufacturer offers cost reduction program. Is it enough?
Mylan is bulking up programs that help patients pay for its EpiPen but the drugmaker didn't budge on its price hikes.
The average cost of the emergency allergy treatment has soared over the past decade. There aren't many competing treatments, forcing families to shell out increasingly large sums for the potentially life-saving treatment. The price hikes have also drawn the ire of Congress.
Insurers and employers pay much of the EpiPen cost for many patients, contributing to higher health insurance costs.
"That's just going to come out in the premiums," said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute. "Everybody suffers, except the Mylan investors."
Mylan joins a growing list of drugmakers, including Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., that have been called out after instituting mammoth price hikes for their drugs while adding little or no innovation.
Former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli became the poster child for pharmaceutical industry greed last fall when he hiked the price of Daraprim, a life-saving drug, by more than 5,000 percent. Shkreli has applauded Mylan's actions.
The average price of a two-dose EpiPen package climbed to about $608 earlier this year, up more than 500 percent from around $94 nine years ago, according to the Elsevier Clinical Solutions' Gold Standard Drug Database.
Mylan CEO Heather Bresch told CNBC Thursday that lowering the price was not an option.
"Had we reduced the list price, I couldn't ensure that everyone who needs an EpiPen gets one," she said.
NBC News reports that Bresch's pay soared by 671 percent between 2007 and 2015, rising from $2.4 million to $18.9 million. During that same period, the cost of the EpiPen rose by 461 percent.
Coincidentally, Bresch is the daughter of Joe Manchin III, currently a senator for West Virginia and formerly the state's governor. As the New York Times reports, "That could prove to be uncomfortable for Mr. Manchin and his Senate colleagues should Ms. Bresch be called to testify about a more than 400 percent increase in the product’s price since Mylan acquired it in 2007."
EpiPens are used to treat severe allergies that can lead to anaphylactic shock. Roughly 40 million Americans have severe allergies to spider bites, bee stings and foods like nuts, eggs and shellfish.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and members of Congress from both parties have quickly ramped up criticism of the price Mylan charges for the medicine.
Clinton said Wednesday that pharmaceutical and biotech industries can fuel American innovation and combat debilitating diseases. But she added that "It's wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients, raising prices without justifying the value behind them."
Bresch said Thursday that Mylan gets $274 for a two-dose EpiPen package. The rest of the $608 price goes to entities that stand between the drugmaker and the patient — insurers, pharmacy benefits managers, wholesalers and drugstores.
"This isn't an EpiPen issue," she said. "This isn't a Mylan issue. This is a health care issue."
However, Mylan is the one increasing the price of the EpiPen and the company stuck by those price hikes Thursday.
That stance brought a wave of new money from investors who drove Mylan's shares up more than 2 percent in morning trading, while major U.S. indexes slipped.
Last year, more than 3.6 million U.S. prescriptions for two-packs of EpiPens were filled, according to data firm IMS Health. That brought in sales of nearly $1.7 billion for Mylan.
Mylan said Thursday that it was doubling the eligibility for its patient assistance program to people with incomes four times higher than the federal poverty level. It said a family of four making up to $97,200 would pay nothing out of pocket for the treatment. It also noted that its $300 savings card would cut the bill in half for patients who would otherwise have to pay full price for the EpiPen.
Patients will also be able to order the injected medicine directly from the company, to help lower costs.
These measures could provide help for people with no coverage facing the full bill. But they might have more limited value to a patient whose insurer will cover most of the bill anyway and whose future premium could be affected by the drug's price.
Customers of Express Scripts Holding Co., the nation's largest pharmacy benefits manager, pay about $73.50 out of pocket for an EpiPen prescription, spokesman Brian Henry said. He noted that price has stayed relatively stable the past couple years.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, dismissed the actions Mylan detailed Thursday as a baby step.
"This step seems like a PR fix more than a real remedy, masking an exorbitant and callous price hike," the senator said in a statement.
___
AP Business Writer Joseph Pisani in New York also contributed to this story.
For the original article, click here.
Take Two's Libby Denkmann spoke with Tom Murphy, Health Writer for the Associated Press and asked Mr. Murphy who is really at fault and how can this kind of pharmaceutical price hike be prevented in the future?
Tom Murphy: This isn't the first time this has happened. There's been other drug makers like Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals that have dramatically raised prices on drugs. This is one of those situations where everybody blames everybody else. The drug makers say, it is not their fault, it is the systems fault - it is the system that has too many middle men and is not a true market so prices get artificially inflated and congressmen and politicians and parents and people who pay the price see nothing but greed coming from the drug makers for raising prices.
To hear the full interview, click the blue arrow above.
Is there another Earth out there? Maybe — and it's not far
Star-gazers have always been on the lookout for a planet that mirrors ours. Now, astronomers may have found something like that.
To get the details on the potential discovery of an Earth-like planet, Take Two’s A Martinez spoke with Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society.
Highlights:
Who found this planet and what is it called?
This was found by a very large group led by an astronomer in England and also including astronomers all over the world. It was a combination of data and information - all of the data taken at the European Southern Observatory in Chile because this is around Proxima Centauri which is in the southern skies so we can’t actually see it from here.
The planet is called Proxima B. Its around the star, Proxima Cantauri and then you get a letter designation.
How far away is it from Earth?
It is about four and half light years so Prxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth besides the Sun but still really really far away. So, its the amount of time light can travel in about four and a quarter years.
It’s a neightbor, its in our backyard, just keeping track of how big out backyard it.
How was Proxima B discovered?
This was found using a couple of different telescopes using whats called the Radio Velocity Method. So, these planets are very dim. They’re next to stars which are very bright and so very rarely so you actually see them per say. You actually look for the wobble in the star caused by the planet. As it goes around the star, it tugs on it and it causes it to wobble back and forth. You use what’s called Doppler Shift to see a change in the frequency of the light. That gives you a velocity so then you see in this case, a periodic wobbling. In this case, it was a period of eleven days.
This planet is a weird place compared to Earth. It’s got an eleven day year. It orbits Proxima Cantauri which is a much smaller, cooler, redder star.
How does the method used to discover the planet inform what we do or don’t know about it?
We have a lower limit on the mass of the star but we don’t have an exact mass. We know it’s at least 1.3 Earth masses so its bigger than Earth but it could range up to 2.5 Earth masses. We also don’t know anything about its atmosphere. We are guessing it’s rocky but it could be gaseous. Because it’s not passing in front of the star, we can’t do Spectroscopy - where we look at the atmospheric signals in it. Basically, we sort of know its mass, we know its period, and we know characteristics of the star. What got people even more excited is that this falls in the so called “Habitable Zone” of the star - meaning theoretically, you could have liquid water on the surface and liquid water is required by all life.
Proxima B is closer to its star than Earth is, but the Proxima Centauri star is dimmer than our Sun. How does that effect the planet’s habitability?
That leads directly to the key point: It is in the “sweet spot” because the star is far less than one percent as bright as the Sun. The "sweet spot" for liquid water is much closer to the star, which is why you can be literally 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun and still have the possibility for liquid water. However, yes, it could be habitable but it’s also very close to the star. Despite being small, the small stars - so called Red Dwarfs - are actually more active than say, a bigger star like the Sun. You get more solar flares, more X-rays coming out, more UV, more high energy particles, and the planet is much much closer so when you do get a so called Coronal Mass Ejection - where it spits a bunch of high energy particles at the planet - you get hit harder. The end effect of this may be that you strip off the atmosphere completely and that you bath the surface in radiation dangerous to life, so it could be a really nasty place. The bottom line is, we don’t really know.
Is it possible for an atmosphere to protect against high levels of radiation?
It is possible theoretically, but we are dealing with something that we have no analog for in our solar system. This is far closer to its parent star than Mercury is to our star. If you generated a strong enough Magnetic Field like the Earth has, it helps protect from particle radiation. This is really cool but we don’t really know the details and it will probably be a while before we do.
Promixa Cantauri is part of a binary system. What does that mean?
It can either be considered or not considered part of the Alpha Centauri System. Alpha Centauri - which looks like a very bright star in the southern sky - is actually two roughly Sun-like stars which are creatively named Alpha Cantauri A and B. Then you’ve got Proxima Cantauri - the small, dim, Red Dwarf - that sits much farther away and is probably gravitationally bound to the others. Rather than orbiting each other like A and B do every few years, it orbits in more like, half a million years. So, the effect is not that strong, other than they would see a couple of bright stars that are Alpha Centauri A and B.
If planets are discovered frequently, why are people so excited about this one?
Part of the lesson is reminding us, even when we go to the closest star besides the Sun, we still find a planet and it’s kind of Earth-like. It’s an example in our own backyard, so to speak, that tells us that these things are probably really common out there, and that’s what we are finding. We have confirmed more than 3,000 planets around other stars. Some fraction of those are in the Earth-like Habitable Zone category. So its kind of amazing that we happen to find one of those around our closest neighbor.
Since we need bigger telescopes to tell us more, could we get to Proxima B in our current lifetimes?
At current space craft speed, it would take tens of thousands of years to get a space craft there. There are people always pondering about using other technologies to get there faster, but best case, you’re talking about decades to get there. That’s why remote observations are by far, the most intriguing.
Are there many more planets still undiscovered?
Yes, very much so. For reference, in 1995, we discovered the first planet around another star. This is a burgeoning, big developing field that you’re going to keep getting exciting discoveries from and keep learning more and more.
*Interview edited for clarity.
To hear the full interview, click to big blue arrow above.
Gingee: A unique blend of Filipino rhythm, global bass and LA roots
It's hard to describe the style of L.A.-based musician and DJ Gingee. Her music draws on electronica, merengue, hip-hop and much more. But one thing's for certain: it's full of energy and infused with the flavors of her native Los Angeles.
"Growing up in L.A., I was exposed to a million different subcultures," said Gingee, aka Marjorie Light. "Even just at my high school [in Eagle Rock] there were the hip-hop people, there were the indi-rock people, there were the punk rock people, the ravers, so I would be friends with all these people and go to different shows – that's what I grew up in."
Her latest album is called Tambol, and features the indigenous percussion and flute of the Philippines, her family's heritage.
"I think it's important for us to explore our sound," said Gingee. That leads to an important question that drives her music: "What is the Filipino American sound or, more generally, what is the Asian American sound?"
Highlights from the interview:
How growing up in Los Angeles influenced her music:
"It was normal for me to go to some random deep house show, then go to a ska show, then go to an underground hip-hop show, then go to a rave. All this music kind of just worked its way inside of me, so I'm just going to draw from all of that to express myself musically and as a way of finding identity as a Filipina. I don't have that many representations of Filipinas around me so I have to create me own."
On being a female DJ in a genre dominated by men:
"It can be really awesome because people give you a lot of love, but it can be really tough because you can be invisible and people can just really hate on you. So it depends on who you're dealing with. But I'm just having fun with it just existing and surviving as a female DJ. I'm overjoyed that I'm able to pursue my dreams and my passion and if in any small way I am helping to pave the way for other women, then that's great because other women have actually paved the way for me."
Gingee will be performing live this weekend in L.A.'s Historic Filipinotown.
- What: Hidden Hi Fi: Art Alleys Celeberation
- When: Saturday, August 27, 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm
- Where: Gabba Gallery, 3126 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
- More info: http://www.designeastoflabrea.org/event/hidden-hi-fi-art-alleys-celebration