New plan would extend cap-and-trade through 2030, aquariums try to reduce plastic waste, Two Bit Circus combines old-fashioned showmanship with lasers and robots.
Gov. Brown has 2 bills to help California’s air quality
California's cap-and-trade program — a key element in the state's efforts to reduce toxic pollutants — is up for renewal.
Up until Monday evening, the future of the program looked uncertain. But, after months of discussion, Governor Jerry Brown revealed legislation Monday that extends the program to the year 2030.
For analysis, Take Two spoke to Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA.
Need a review session on how cap-and-trade came to be? Click the link above located below the play button.
It's worth pointing out that there's not just one bill this time. Brown has unveiled two. Why is that?
It's really a sign of how much the conversation has shifted since 2006 when we passed AB32.
Yes, we still are committed to climate leadership in California, but we've also collectively come to the realization that we need to make sure that we're not leaving disadvantaged Californians behind — that we shouldn't tackle climate change pollution without addressing long-standing, very harmful traditional air pollution with serious public health consequences that have plagued many California communities for decades.
We have two bills because we're doing this in lockstep. One of the bills tackles climate cap-and-trade extension, and the other tackles these more longstanding, traditional air quality concerns.
Let's look at Assembly Bill 398. What's in that one?
This is the cap-and trade bill.
Essentially, it extends the ability for California to continue to use cap-and-trade as one tool in the regulatory toolbox to try and reach our state climate goals, which are to reduce our state climate pollution pretty significantly by the year 2030.
This is important because cap-and-trade is a really flexible, affordable regulatory approach and California would like to continue to be able to use it through 2030 — but the legal footing for that approach is uncertain.
This bill put that cap and trade program on very firm legal footing through 2030. To do so, it requires a two-thirds vote, so it also includes sweeteners for various constituents to try to get all those votes in the legislature — especially some sweeteners for energy.
Let's get into Assembly Bill 697. What's that one?
That's the companion bill that increases regulation of those local traditional air pollutants in California communities. We're talking ozone, particulate matter, toxic air contaminants that often come from these big, polluting facilities covered by the cap-and-trade program.
The bill aims at ramping down those pollutants from those facilities. It improves air quality monitoring; it increases penalties for air quality violations and — perhaps most importantly — it requires retrofit technology to be used at some facilities covered by the cap and trade program to tamp down those other, more localized pollutants too. And it really focuses those efforts on disadvantaged communities in California.
What do you think?
It's a really interesting set of compromises. If the two bills pass, we get our cap and trade extension while improving air quality locally. Everyone doesn't get what they want, but that's the nature of compromise.
There are many giveaways to industry here, and it's hard to know how significant they are. There are many tax extensions; there are lots of free allowances to industry. From my perspective, those giveaways won't affect the environmental integrity of the program. We'll still get our reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and traditional air pollutants.
Overall, I think the compromise does a good job creating the big tent that is required to get a two-thirds vote.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
As California bilingual education grows, teacher training is key
Protecting marine life by shifting how consumers use plastic
You see it pretty much any time you go to the beach; plastic in its many forms, floating around in the water and even washed up on the sand.
A 2015 study found that nearly 9 million tons of plastic are dumped into oceans each year, and that number is expected to increase.
Now, a group of aquariums are trying to do something about it. Nineteen of them across the US have pledged to reduce the amount of plastic they use within their own facilities. And to try and change how consumers use plastics as well.
Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Jerry Schubel, President and CEO of The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, CA.
To hear the full interview with Jerry Schubel, click on the media player above.
Nerdy inventors to open country's first micro-amusement park in DTLA
A group of inventors is betting they can get millennials to put down their phones and play together in the country’s first micro-amusement park. Two Bit Circus is opening the first of a chain of small-scale amusement parks here in downtown L.A. in early 2018. Their unique style of entertainment combines old school carnival fun and cutting edge technology — and they even have a robot bartender.
I see our micro-amusement park as completely disrupting the entertainment industry, the world has nothing like this: there's no place that takes advantage of smaller spaces like we intend to do. There's no place that's filled with content that's constantly being rotated… there's no place where new technologies can come and live and be showcased in a place that allows everyone to play with them, and when they get old and stale we replace them with newer, cooler stuff.
– Eric Gradman, co-founder of Two Bit Circus.
The games and scenarios will change, so guests won’t get sick of the same thing. Gradman says this is a problem with other circuses and the out-of-home entertainment industry as a whole. Besides being a computer programmer and roboticist, Gradman also used to be a professional fire dancer and acrobat. He’d preform acts like hanging upside down by his ankles from a giant crane 40 feet above the pavement while spitting fire. Today, he’s the company’s resident technology officer and self-proclaimed mad inventor.
Gradman was introduced to Brent Bushnell by a mutual friend and the two immediately clicked. They both loved tinkering and inventing games, and Bushnell also used to perform in the circus as a nerd clown. Aside from being goofy, he’s got invention in his blood, his dad, Nolan Bushnell, founded Atari and Chuck-e-Cheese. Bushnell senior exposed his son to the business of entertainment from a young age.
The moment Bushnell met Gradman, they began working on projects together and pretty soon they were getting paid to bring their kooky inventions to events thrown by Intel, Honda, Microsoft and others. They founded Two Bit Circus in 2012 and not long after, their inventions were being featured at high profile events as the NFL and the Olympics.
“Eric is incredible, we could talk about something in the morning and he’ll literally have a working version in the afternoon,” said Brent Bushnell.
The Two Bit Circus headquarters is at the Lincoln Heights Brewery Arts Complex. On any given day their staff is sawing, welding, building electronics, experimenting with VR, writing code and even etching their own circuits. Their company’s DNA is built on being able to rapidly make and test prototypes.
For the past year the shop’s been focused on creating new games for their micro-amusement park. They’ve got a robot that paints the image you draw, by shooting paintballs at a wall. There’s a magic mirror that interacts with you and changes your face in many different characters. Not to mention the 5-foot-tall robot bartender that looks like an old-time jukebox.
But perhaps even more impressive is a motion platform that uses simulation technology--- originally meant for training pilots-- to make the player actually feel what its like to drive a tank or fly a plane. While these games may seem all over the place, they are all intentionally geared towards getting people moving and playing together.
![Brent Bushnell plays a game based on Japanese game shows that makes the player move like they are in a tetras game. “It’s a really active game and part of what makes this social is [just] look how ridiculous I am!”](https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f888473/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2409x1724+0+0/resize/1920x1374!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fa.scpr.org%2F165104_2419eb600d2d297d867294a6a033e047_original.jpg)
They don’t see themselves as having any direct competitors but they say there will still some be challenges.
One is of course durability, where building stuff that has to last, it has to withstand the most powerful destructive force in the world… that being kids and drunk people.
– Eric Gradman.
Their micro-amusement park is betting on two trends says Bushnell. One is glut of newly available real estate in malls as retail moves online. And the other:
People want new life experience you could think of their Instagram as kind of a new kind of currency rate and is not wearing the shirt that has the Porsche logo that says you're cool, it's what kind of cool new experiences you’re getting into, and so this is about a place for new life experience.
– Brent Bushnell.
Angelinos will be able to judge the experience for themselves when Two Bit Circus opens in downtown LA in early 2018.
To listen to the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Trump admin shifts focus of a domestic counter-terror program
Since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security has funded a program called Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE, that tries to stop homegrown terrorists before they start.
The program gives money to local groups so that they have the resources to reach out to people in their own communities and prevent them from being radicalized.
But under President Trump, the program is shifting its attention away from far-right extremists. Now it will focus primarily on those who are Islamic.
Peter Simi, professor of sociology at Chapman University and expert in extremist groups, tells Take Two that Islamic terrorism and far-right terrorism are both threats, and they both need to be addressed with this program.
Tuesday Reviewsday: new music from Kinky and A. CHAL
Need some fresh new music to update your old playlist? that's what Tuesday Reviewsday was made for.
This week
comes in and talks about two new artists. Here are his picks.
Kinky
Album: Nada Vale Más Que Tú (Nothing is Worth More Than You)
The eclectic band, rooted in electronica, is approaching nearly 20 years in the music business, which is no easy feat. For all these years they have always shown us that the party never stops when they step onto spotlight.
The new album, Nada Vale Mas Que Tú (Nothing is Worth More Than You), is Kinky's first project in about 5 years and stays true to the group's electronica style anchored to bold and spirited orchestrations with elements of funk, rock and other sounds. Here's one of the songs we featured, Te Vas.
A.CHAL
Album: ON GAZ
A.CHAL, who was born in Peru and raised in New York and Los Angeles, introduces a mixtape, ON GAZ, with new music featuring his hip-hop/R&B chill style.
Born Alejandro Salazar, A.CHAL will be on tour his summer heading to cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. No stranger to music festivals, A.CHAL's soulful sound continues to evolve and find new audiences.
A.CHAL's music has been described as having touches of psychedelic, but ultimately he creates a certain musical world that’s anchored to a dream-like theme within a style of music that showcases his passion for music that connects and explores humanity and complex relationships
Queen Mary will make 'hidden' room available to public
The Queen Mary first docked at Long Beach in 1967. Now, fifty years later, workers have discovered a forgotten room.
The 1,500-square-foot room was hidden behind a locked bathroom, and contains the equipment once used to control the ship's 16-ton anchors.
John Thomas is the Historic Resources Advisor aboard the Queen Mary. He says that while the room wasn't necessary "forgotten," it has been hidden to the public, and closed off for at least the past 25 years.
Thomas says the room will offer visitors a behind-the-scenes look at how the ship once operated.
"Although we’ve known the room existed for years, we hadn’t really thought about the room in terms of an exhibit space. We think this will be a wonderful opportunity to showcase some of the more mechanical aspects of the Queen Mary. So this was a great discovery for the opportunity to curate the exhibit, and show our guests how the ship was anchored."
The rediscovered room should be open to the public within a year.