Ethan Elkind

Take the subway from #BeverlyHills to #DTLA in 20 minutes, starting Friday May 8!! 4 new miles, 3 new stations!

California needs to step up on clean trucks to counter federal rollbacks | Opinion Even though state-level transportation policy faces federal headwinds, California still retains significant autonomy to make progress.

After federal rollbacks hit California’s clean truck rules and EV incentives, state leaders are weighing next steps. CLEE’s Ethan Elkind and Marie Grimm say the state must advance without waiting for federal change.

Read more in The Sacramento Bee: www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

BART tax? / Tariff ruling impact / The book "Why Fly" The impact of the Supreme Court tariff ruling on California; a proposed new sales tax to save for public transit; Caroline Paul's book Why Fly ; the News Quiz!

Should the Bay Area approve a new BART tax? Tonight @stateofthebay.bsky.social 6pm PT w/Laura Tolkoff @spur-urbanist.bsky.social & Jay Donde

+ Susanne Stirling w/@calchamber.bsky.social on tariffs

+ @carolinembpaul.bsky.social book "Why Fly"

Stream live @kalwradio.bsky.social! shorturl.at/V8D5P

2/23 6p @kalwradio.bsky.social

Susanne Stirling with the CA @calchamber.bsky.social on the SCOTUS tariff decision

Should voters support a new tax to shore up BART? Jay Donde of Briones Society & Laura Tolkoff of SPUR discuss the pros and cons

@carolinembpaul.bsky.social on her new book Why Fly

Enter the ballot billionaires

Looks like the statewide initiative that would chop Los Angeles' ULA "mansion tax" is going to qualify for the November ballot per @politico Playbook PM. Backers are turning in 1.2m signatures and need 874k valid ones www.politico.com/newsletters/...

What Happens to State Regulation if the Endangerment Findings are Gone? - Legal Planet Trump's repeal of the Endangerment Finding will leave state climate policy intact and might even strengthen the state's hand.

If upheld by the courts, EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding would virtually end federal climate regulation. But what about state climate action? The answer is complicated but mostly positive.
legal-planet.org/2026/02/23/w...

YouTube video by Olympics Alysa Liu wins the Olympic gold medal for the United States

I urge you to stop what you're doing and watch Alysa Liu's free skate from yesterday. I have never seen anything like this. I understand why sports writers are born now. I have never seen anyone as free from the burdens of this world as this pierced Oakland girl spinning to Donna Summers.

The Rise and Fall of Bay Area Streetcar Transit System | KQED All nine counties of the Bay Area had robust streetcar systems at the start of the 20th century. In the East Bay, rumors swirl about how and why the Key System failed.

“What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay?”

“It’s really a story of technology change,” says @ethanelkind.bsky.social, climate program director at @cleeberkeley.bsky.social www.kqed.org/news/1207376... via @kqednews.kqed.org @danbrekke.bsky.social #BayCurious

The Oakland Ballers are a great example of grassroots community revitalization, and the quality of baseball play is surprisingly good. Great write up here on the team’s future vision.

California needs to step up on clean trucks to counter federal rollbacks | Opinion Even though state-level transportation policy faces federal headwinds, California still retains significant autonomy to make progress.

California needs to step up on clean trucks to counter federal rollbacks | #Opinion by @ethanelkind.bsky.social & Marie Grimm @cleeberkeley.bsky.social via @sacbee.com

🧵 THREAD: Energy Empire — The Podcast Clean Energy Needs

1/ For most of my career, people asked why I stuck with solar when it was fringe. My uncle said it was a career mistake. Turns out it wasn’t.

Among the key ideas, California needs:

- a "clean miles standard" for shippers, which would push them to buy/lease clean trucks
- a statewide "indirect source rule" limiting emissions from big facilities that attract truck traffic
- more fiscal tools to support clean truck purchases/leases

California needs to step up on clean trucks to counter federal rollbacks | Opinion Even though state-level transportation policy faces federal headwinds, California still retains significant autonomy to make progress.

How can California counter federal rollbacks and maintain momentum on clean trucks?

My op-ed w/ Marie Grimm in today's @sacbee.com has some recommendiations, based on our recent @cleeberkeley.bsky.social & @uclalawemmett.bsky.social report:

www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports The East African country is making use of cheap hydropower and Chinese electric vehicles to ditch the internal combustion engine.

Ethiopia banned ICE vehicle imports 2 years ago & now 6% of all vehicles there are EVs, up from 1%. They have cheap hydroelectricity for fuel and are reducing oil imports. Plus they're assembling many EVs in country now due to incentives, boosting local jobs:

financialpost.com/pmn/business...

"...China’s developmental drive toward green growth is ultimately a positive force for the planet. Decarbonization is more likely to succeed when tied to economic self-interest than when driven solely by moral obligation or foreign pressure."

Heat pump sales dipped in 2025. They still beat gas furnaces. Yet again, heat pumps were the most-shipped heating appliance in the U.S. And experts say the factors behind last year’s sales slide are temporary.

"Heat pumps outsold fossil gas–fired furnaces in the U.S. yet again last year. That’s the fourth year in a row," reports @alisontakemura.bsky.social: www.canarymedia.com/articles/hea... 🔌💡

Hotel guests are fleeing early because of the snowstorm. Traffic to the Bay Area and Reno is jammed due to gridlock, plows and crashes. Drivers are clearing snow off windshields and having to buy tire chains.

But not us. Our Amtrak is on time. We'll relax in the dining car. The smart way to go.

LA City Council: serving hyper local special interests over the greater good since 1850

Opinion | Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free

Sorry, but this @nytimes.com op-ed on free fares in New York City, by @galvinalmanza.bsky.social, is deeply ignorant of the issues.

It proposes that pretty social justice vibes and some careless citations will change facts of math. Thread: 1/

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...

Can California Set Its Own Car Emissions Standards? Trump's Climate Reversal May Force the Issue Withdrawal of federal climate authority could ironically give California broader power to regulate emissions and sue oil companies.

“California is struggling with wildfire costs ... which are linked strongly to a warming climate. I think that opens up a lot of legal avenues for states like California,” @ethanelkind.bsky.social, director of the @cleeberkeley.bsky.social Climate Program to @calmatters.org: https://bit.ly/4rIYUZI

As I told @gauchoesque.bsky.social for this piece, the rollback of the federal endangerment finding could ironically allow states like California to pursue more aggressive regulation and litigation against polluters.

China’s emissions fall as US scraps bedrock climate rules The country's carbon pollution has plateaued or fallen for 21 months, the longest-ever stretch not associated with a decrease in power demand.

Like two ships passing in the night...

www.eenews.net/articles/chi...

Final EIA-860 is out, and 2025 really did it: 54 GW of new U.S. electric capacity, 96% clean. Solar again carries the offense, and we built more storage in 2025 than the cumulative total through 2023. More and more and more additions... but also record low retirements.

Good example here of how renewable energy companies are now ramping up investments outside the US, as offshore wind developer Orsted pitches a big project off of Australia's coast:

renewablesnow.com/news/rsted-f...

Today we’re launching Open Climate Risk, a fully open option for U.S. building-level climate risk data. It’s unique because it allows you to see not only risk scores, starting with wildfire, but also the complete underlying dataset, methods, and codebase. carbonplan.org/research/cli...

Open Climate Risk – CarbonPlan Explore fire risk across the contiguous U.S.

You can look up the wildfire risk for any address in the US with @carbonplan.org new Open Climate Risk map:

carbonplan.org/research/cli...

Revoking the endangerment finding would mean full-blown warfare against all things climate. Some thoughts from our Ann Carlson who has been tracking this all year🧵

The Cost of Fragmentation: A Comparison of State Affordable Housing Finance Governance Systems - Terner Center To finance and build affordable housing, developers across the United States need to assemble multiple funding sources at the federal, state, and local levels. Public funding sources can be administer...

Big research effort from @ternerhousing.bsky.social showing that California's byzantine process for financing low-income housing is a major outlier nationally that delays new affordable developments and makes them more expensive to build ternercenter.berkeley.edu/blog/the-cos...

I Drove A Rivian R2 Prototype. It's Going To Surprise People Rivian’s 300-mile, 656-horsepower SUV is a breath of fresh air for the American EV space. Here are five things to know.

Rivian’s 300-mile, 656-horsepower SUV is a breath of fresh air for the American EV space. Here are five things to know.

insideevs.com/reviews/7868...

Notes on winter When the world turns whimsical

Wild fact from @billmckibben.bsky.social's latest newsletter:

"The last colder-than-average month on planet earth was in February of 1985, which means that no one under the age of forty has ever known one."