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      California Will Add a Fixed Charge to Electric Bills and Reduce Rates

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      Officials said the decision would lower bills and encourage people to use cars and appliances that did not use fossil fuels, but some experts said it would discourage energy efficiency.Utility regulators in California on Thursday changed how most residents will pay for energy by adding a new fixed monthly charge and lowering the rates that apply to energy use. Officials said the shift would reduce monthly bills for millions of residents and support the use of electric vehicles and appliances that run on electricity, rather than fossil fuels.The decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will apply to the rates charged by investor-owned utilities, which provide power to about 70 percent of the state. Starting next year, most customers of those companies will be required to pay a $24.15 monthly charge. Low-income customers will pay $6 to $12 a month.Regulators said the revenue from the fixed charge would be paired with a roughly 20 percent reduction in rates assessed by how many kilowatts of energy were used per hour by a home or business. (The average American home uses around 1,000 kilowatt-hours in a month.) California’s residential electric rates, which averaged 31.2 cents per kilowatt-hour in February, are the highest in the country after Hawaii, where rates were about 44 cents, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The national average in February was 16.1 cents.Some energy experts have argued that California’s high rates for energy use are very likely discouraging some people from buying electric vehicles, heat pumps and induction stoves to replace cars and appliances that run on gasoline and natural gas.“This new billing structure puts us further on the path toward a decarbonized future, while enhancing affordability for low-income customers and those most impacted from climate change-driven heat events,” said Alice Reynolds, president of the utilities commission.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Podesta Meets With China’s Climate Envoy Amid Deep Economic Tensions

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      Beijing’s dominance raises economic and security concerns, and tensions will be on full display as top climate diplomats meet this week.The world’s two most powerful countries, the United States and China, are meeting this week in Washington to talk about climate change. And also their relationship issues.In an ideal world, where the clean energy transition was the top priority, they would be on friendlier terms. Maybe affordable Chinese-made electric vehicles would be widely sold in America, instead of being viewed as an economic threat. Or there would be less need to dig a lithium mine at an environmentally sensitive site in Nevada, because lithium, which is essential for batteries, could be bought worry-free from China, which controls the world’s supply.Instead, in the not-ideal real world, the United States is balancing two competing goals. The Biden administration wants to cut planet-warming emissions by encouraging people to buy things like EVs and solar panels, but it also wants people to buy American, not Chinese. Its concern is that Chinese dominance of the global market for these essential technologies would harm the U.S. economy and national security.Those competing goals will be on vivid display this week, as the Biden Administration’s top climate envoy, John Podesta, meets for the first time with his counterpart from Beijing, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington.Trade tensions are likely to loom over their talks.The flood of Chinese exports, particularly in solar panels and other green-energy technology, has become a real sore spot for the Biden administration as it tries to spur the same industries on American soil. Mr. Podesta has sharply criticized China for having “distorted the global market for clean energy products like solar, batteries and critical minerals.”Not only that, he has set up a task force to explore how to limit exports from countries that have high carbon footprints, a practice that he called “carbon dumping.” That was considered a veiled reference to China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scientists Predict Most Extensive Coral Bleaching Event on Record

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      Rising sea temperatures around the planet have caused a bleaching event that is expected to be the most extensive on record.The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday.It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more reefs than any other. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but if the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die.Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: limestone cradles of marine life that nurture an estimated quarter of ocean species at some point during their life cycles, support fish that provide protein for millions of people and protect coasts from storms. The economic value of the world’s coral reefs has been estimated at $2.7 trillion annually.For the last year, ocean temperatures have been off the charts.“This is scary, because coral reefs are so important,” said Derek Manzello, the coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, which monitors and predicts bleaching events.The news is the latest example of climate scientists’ alarming predictions coming to pass as the planet heats. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and pledges from leaders, nations are burning more fossil fuels than ever and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Pervasive in Water Worldwide, Study Finds

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      A global survey found harmful levels even in water samples taken far any obvious source of contamination.They’re in makeup, dental floss and menstrual products. They’re in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. Same with rain jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf on sports fields.They’re PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called “forever chemicals” because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong they don’t break down for hundreds to thousands of years, if at all.They’re also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that weren’t near any obvious source of contamination have PFAS levels considered harmful to human health by the Environmental Protection Agency. About 16 percent of surface water samples tested, which were also not near any known source, have similarly hazardous PFAS levels.This finding “sets off alarm bells,” said Denis O’Carroll, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales and one of the authors of the study, which was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience. “Not just for PFAS, but also for all the other chemicals that we put out into the environment. We don’t necessarily know their long-term impacts to us or the ecosystem.”High levels of exposure to some PFAS chemicals have been linked to higher cholesterol, liver and immune system damage, hypertension and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, as well as kidney and testicular cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close

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      The company that owns the Merrimack and Schiller stations in New Hampshire plans to turn them into solar farms and battery storage for offshore wind.The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are set to close by 2025 and 2028, ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for more than 50 years.The decision to close the Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, makes New England the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.Environmentalists waged a five-year legal battle against the New Hampshire plants, saying that the owner had discharged warm water from steam turbines into a nearby river without cooling it first to match the natural temperature.In a settlement reached on Wednesday with the Sierra Club and the Conservative Law Foundation, Granite Shore Power, the owner of the plants, agreed that Schiller would not run after Dec. 31, 2025 and that Merrimack would cease operations no later than June 2028.“This announcement is the culmination of years of persistence and dedication from so many people across New England,” said Gina McCarthy, a former national climate adviser to President Biden and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration who is now a senior adviser at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which supports efforts to phase out coal.“I’m wicked proud to live in New England today and be here,” Ms. McCarthy said. “Every day, we’re showing the rest of the country that we will secure our clean energy future without compromising.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars

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      The auto giant lobbied hard against tougher pollution rules. This week, the E.P.A.’s new rules proved favorable to hybrid technology, an area that Toyota dominates.The breakfast at Toyota’s annual dealership gathering in Las Vegas last fall was an exclusive, invite-only affair, where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.Speaking was Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s top lobbyist. He said the industry was facing an existential crisis — not because of the economy or fuel prices, but because of stronger tailpipe pollution limits being proposed in the United States. The rules were “bad for the country, bad for the consumer, and bad for the auto industry,” he said, according to a memo he later circulated among Toyota dealerships that was reviewed by The New York Times.“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” he wrote, using the acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require car makers to meet tough new average emissions limits. The rules are some of the most significant aimed at fighting climate change in United States history.But the rules relaxed major elements of an earlier, more stringent proposal. In particular, the final regulations were favorable to hybrid cars, those that run both on gasoline and electricity — giving a bigger role to a market that Toyota dominates.Toyota, it appeared, had come out on top.Once a leader in clean cars, Toyota has cemented its role as the voice of caution against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations muscle to oppose a rapid shift that experts say is critical to fighting climate change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sixteen States Sue Biden Administration Over Gas Permit Pause

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      President Biden halted approvals for new exports of liquefied natural gas to study its effect on the climate, national security and the economy. Major oil- and gas-producing states are angry.Louisiana and 15 other Republican-led states sued the Biden administration on Thursday over its decision to temporarily stop approving new permits for facilities that export liquefied natural gas.The lawsuit contends that the Biden administration acted illegally when it decided in January to pause the approvals so it could study how gas exports affect climate change, the economy and national security.Filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the lawsuit asks a judge to end the pause, arguing that the White House had flouted the regulatory process and instead taken action “by fiat.”“There is no legal basis for the pause,” Elizabeth B. Murrill, the attorney general of Louisiana, which led the legal challenge, said in an interview.Ms. Murrill, who referred to the pause as a ban, said halting permits for any amount of time would hurt states’ economies and would have significant long-term consequences abroad by restricting supplies of gas from the United States to Europe.The United States is the world’s top exporter of natural gas. Liquefied natural gas is a gas that has been cooled to a liquid state to allow for shipping and storage. Even with the pause, the country is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction. But any expansions beyond that are now in doubt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Really Causes Poor Performance in School

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      More from our inbox:Becoming a Republican to Vote Against TrumpCountering Propaganda From the Fossil Fuel Industry Wayne Miller/MagnumTo the Editor:Re “We’re Not Battling the School Issues That Matter,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, March 7):I completely agree with Mr. Kristof’s column. The situation is serious, not only for education but also for our embattled democracy.I would like to add some nuance. I have been working on a state-by-state analysis of the possible influence of racism, specifically anti-Black racism, on educational achievement.What I have found so far indicates that some children are taught quite well: those in private schools, of course; Asian American children (particularly those whose families are from India); white children of families prosperous enough to be ineligible for the National School Lunch Program; children of college-educated parents; and Hispanic children who are not English-language learners.Some students are in groups that are not likely to be taught to read effectively: Native Americans, children who are poor enough to be eligible for the National School Lunch Program and Black children.None of this will be news to Mr. Kristof. What is surprising to me is the sheer extent and arbitrary nature of the failure by school authorities. Almost everywhere that urban schools, in particular, are failing, socioeconomically similar children are being taught much more effectively in the nearest suburban districts.Part of the reason is money: Per-student expenditure is associated with educational achievement.But part of the problem — most of it — is a matter of administrative decisions: placing the best teachers in schools with the “best” students; equipping schools, in effect, in accordance with parental income; offering more gifted and talented classes to white students — all the perhaps unconscious manifestations of everyday racism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More