Industry opposition helped kill a number of ambitious environmental and clean energy measures in the California legislature before the session ended late last week, including a top senator's bill to establish a target of powering all of the state's electricity with renewable and zero-carbon resources by 2045 and another that would have locked in to state law Obama-era federal environment and worker safety standards.

California pesticide officials are planning "interim" mitigation steps to reduce exposure to agricultural applications of the pesticide chlorpyrifos as they advance a new health risk assessment for the compound, but public health groups and environmentalists argue the action falls well short of what is necessary to protect residents and farmworkers.

A California appellate court has scrapped the pesticides department's approval of expanded use of two neonicotinoid pesticides that environmentalists claim are killing bees, finding that regulators failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by approving product label amendments without sufficient environmental review.

Truck trailer manufacturers say they will ask a federal appellate court to pause greenhouse gas standards for trailers included in U.S. EPA's phase 2 GHG rule for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, arguing the agency's refusal to suspend the rule's implementation as it reconsiders the trailer provisions leaves industry facing "imminent" compliance deadlines.

San Francisco and Oakland are launching climate change nuisance suits against a host of fossil fuel producers, joining three other municipalities in California that filed similar litigation in July.