PLANET WATCH--Enough of dealing with plastic trash once it floats down storm drains and rivers to end up on beaches, let's stop the plastic deluge upstream - especially the disposable single-use kind.

WATER POLITICS--There is no public service used more often or more reflexively than drinking water. Every time we reach for the faucet handle, without even thinking about it, we expect clean, drinkable water to pour out. Sadly, this ritual has been betrayed for years by big corporations and lax oversight, right here in California -- with very little public attention or outrage. 

Every year, Green Car Reports picks a new car or model line that we feel is the best green car for that new model year.  This year, we picked a car that's the all-new version of one that was revolutionary when it was introduced several years ago. The latest version improves on it in pretty much every dimension.

Redeem is a renewable biofuel that is cheaper than gasoline, and burns 90 percent cleaner.

An innovative new fuel is now available here in Southern California.  It’s clean, cheap, and made from an unlikely source -- trash.

ACTION ALERT--Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, the largest green building expo, comes to Los Angeles for the first time, on Oct. 5-7, 2016.  To that end, the first opportunity to get involved is the Legacy Project.  

CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS-As the United Nations conference on climate change or COP21 came to an end, one of the main issues that needed to be addressed remained conspicuously absent from consideration by world leaders: controlling a world population that is rapidly approaching 7.5 billion people – this, on a planet whose optimum human population is estimated to be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion people. 

SPORTS POLITICS--Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has never been afraid to be unpopular if it meant taking a stand for what he believed in -- even if his legacy in the history books was at stake. This past week, he expressed sadness and just a hint of judgment when he said the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, doesn’t share those same priorities. 

VOICES-The prolific Victor Davis Hanson wrote an excellent piece for National Review two weeks ago, in which he attributed California’s present middle-class stagnation and decline in economic opportunity to the devolution of California’s two-party system in the 90s and the Golden State’s emergence as a de facto one-party Democratic state. Hanson describes how a favorite Democratic policy inexorably led to the decline of the Republican voter base:

BLOG SOUP--Kevin Drum says people really aren't engulfed in existential despair after all: 

RACE IN AMERICA-Now former University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe (photo left) in a moment of rare candor for someone who just fired himself admitted what has been probably one of the worst kept secrets at American colleges. His words: “Racism does exist at our university, and it is unacceptable.” 

CALL TO ACTION--Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School (photo) were recently exposed for having a “Got to Go” list of students, which singles out the children they would like to see leave through suspensions, counseling-out, or by not sending annual re-enrollment forms.