In Santa Monica, scooter startup Bird's hometown, the city planning department has recommended the council award its two pilot program permits to Lyft and Uber over the one-year-old electric scooter upstart. It remains to be seen who the director of planning department chooses.
Why it matters: Bird's initial deployment of its scooters in Santa Monica ruffled the city's feathers, and its relatively low score in the "compliance" category suggests the planning department hasn't forgotten. Notably, unlike the ride-hailing wars a few years ago, some scooter companies are choosing to stick to the rules this time around.
The story has been corrected to show that the director of the planning department, not city council, gets the final decision.
The Democratic National Committee will now accept donations from fossil fuel workers and "their unions' or employers' political action committees" after voting to pass a new resolution on Friday, The Hill reports.
Why it matters: DNC Chairman Tom Perez said the new resolution allowing the donations "was a commitment to organized labor," per The Hill. Critics say this is a reversal of a resolution from June, which banned donations from fossil fuel companies and associations. The new resolution shows the limits of the democratic party’s growing left-most wing pushing aggressive climate and energy policies.
Much of the United States' energy infrastructure is archaic and unreliable. Severe weather is the primary cause of power loss, with numerous areas suffering multi-day outages last winter. The need for improved infrastructure in response to climate change was highlighted in a 2013 White House report and persists today.
What's next: Daunting and expensive as it would be, a national overhaul of the grid is sorely needed. Microgrids could play a significant role, as they offer a promising way to provide stable, green and cost-efficient energy.
Tesla shareholders have proposed filing a class-action lawsuit against the company and CEO Elon Musk accusing him of securities fraud, reports Reuters.
The big picture: Shareholders are say Musk's tweet claiming he would take Tesla private was an attempt to manipulate Tesla's stock price and ruin plans for short-sellers.
Elon Musk is "seeking a wide pool of investors to back a potential take-private" of Tesla, according to Bloomberg.
Why it matters: This will only increase skepticism that Musk was being truthful when he tweeted "funding secured" on Tuesday, a claim that reportedly is being investigated by financial securities regulators.
Sourcing of cobalt, a material commonly used in lithium ion batteries for portable electronics and electronic vehicles, has come under intense scrutiny lately for economic, political and geographical reasons. Most notably, 58% of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where production is attended by political unrest and reported human rights violations, including child labor.
The big picture: While significant efforts to reduce cobalt quantities in EV batteries are underway, they are still very much a work in progress. Global demand for cobalt has nearly quadrupled in the past 5 years as a result of increased demand for rechargeable batteries, and is expected to keep rising.
The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to have below average activity, due in large part to the formation of an El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, and cooler than average sea surface temperatures in key regions of the tropical Atlantic, forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center announced Friday.
Why it matters: Hurricanes are nature's most powerful and costliest storms, and after an extraordinarily destructive hurricane season in 2017, the prospect of a below-average season is a welcome one for millions of coastal residents.
The man accused of starting the Holy Fire, Forrest Gordon Clark, texted the Holy Jim Volunteer Fire Department chief two weeks ago saying, "The place is going to burn," CNN reports, citing remarks from the fire chief.
The big picture: The fire in Southern California forced 20,000 residents to evacuate, according to CNN. Chief Mike Milligan said he's been "trying for years to get someone to pay attention" to Clark, but "nobody has really had the opportunity to do that until now."
