ReportWire

Tag: option

  • As a Colorado River deadline passes, reservoirs keep declining

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    The leaders of seven states failed to negotiate a deal to share the diminishing waters of the Colorado River by a Trump administration deadline on Saturday, leaving the Southwest in a quagmire with uncertain repercussions while the river’s depleted reservoirs continue to decline.

    Former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said in an interview with The Times that the impasse now appears so intractable that Trump administration officials should take a step back, abandon the current effort and begin all over again.

    Babbitt said he believes it would be a mistake for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “try to impose a long-term solution” by ordering major water cuts across the Southwest — which would likely set off a lengthy court battle.

    “We need a fresh start,” Babbitt said. “I believe that in the absence of a unanimous agreement, [the Interior Department] should renew the existing agreements for five years, and then we should start all over. We should scrap the entire process and invent a new one.”

    Officials for the seven states have tried to boost reservoir levels via voluntary water cutbacks and federal payments to farmers who agree to leave fields dry part of the year. But after more than two years of trying to hash out new long-term rules for sharing water, they remain deadlocked; the existing rules are set to expire at the end of this year.

    The states similarly blew past an earlier federal deadline in November.

    Interior Department officials have not said how they will respond. The agency is considering four options for imposing cutbacks starting next year, as well as the option of taking no action.

    Babbitt, who was Interior secretary under President Clinton from 1993 to 2001, said he thinks the Trump administration’s options are too narrow and inadequate. They would place the burden of water cuts on Arizona, California and Nevada while not requiring any for the four other upriver states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

    Without a consensus, the only reasonable approach is to extend existing water-saving agreements for a few years while making a new push for solutions, Babbitt said.

    Federal officials have “missed the opportunity” to take a strong leadership role, he said, and it’s time to reimagine the effort as a “much more inclusive, public, broad” process.

    The river provides for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico. California uses more water than any other state but has cut back substantially in recent years.

    Since 2000, relentless drought intensified by climate change has sapped the river’s flow and left reservoirs depleted. This winter’s record warmth and lack of storms has left the Rockies with very little snow.

    Lake Mead, the river’s largest reservoir, is now 34% full, while Lake Powell is at 26%.

    “Our states have conserved large volumes of water in recent years,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a joint statement with Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and Nevada’s Joe Lombardo. “Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.”

    The states’ positions haven’t changed much in the last two years, said JB Hamby, California’s lead negotiator, and moving toward an agreement will require firm commitments for cuts by all.

    Officials representing the four Upper Basin states said they’ve offered compromises and are prepared to continue negotiating. In a written statement, they stressed they are already dealing with substantial water cuts, and said their downstream neighbors are trying to secure water “that simply does not exist.”

    The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast shows the amount of runoff flowing into Lake Powell will decrease so dramatically this year that the dropping reservoir levels could render Glen Canyon Dam unable to continue generating electricity.

    The Interior Department said in a written statement Saturday that it will finalize new rules by Oct. 1, and it “cannot delay action.” The agency is accepting comments from the public as part of its review of options until March 2.

    “Negotiation efforts have been productive,” Burgum said. “We believe that a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach.”

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    Ian James

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  • Dragon’s Dogma 2 will soon let you start a new game without deleting your save first

    Dragon’s Dogma 2 will soon let you start a new game without deleting your save first

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    Capcom has released a list of fixes and updates it will make to Dragon’s Dogma 2 “in the near future” — including the much-requested option to start a new game when save data already exists.

    Dragon’s Dogma 2 only offers a single save slot, and presently, players who want to start the game again — perhaps to try a different specialization — can only do so by manually deleting their save file at the system level first. This can be a fiddly process involving disabling cloud saving and, for Steam players, actually locating their game save on the hard drive.

    Capcom said it would add “the option to start a new game when save data already exists” as part of the first wave of updates to Dragon’s Dogma 2. This doesn’t mean it will actually add a second save slot for a new character; the update will simply make it easy to overwrite your save from within the game itself.

    Capcom also said it would add a frame rate cap of 30 frames per second to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game. As it is, the game runs with an uncapped frame rate, meaning it can sometimes run faster than 30 fps, but this can result in inconsistent and juddery performance (especially for players without variable refresh rate displays). A 30 fps cap should ensure a more consistent and stable feel to the game.

    Capcom also said it would add options to switch off the motion blur and ray tracing graphical effects to console versions of Dragon’s Dogma 2, but it warned that doing so “will not affect the frame rate significantly.” Frame rate improvements will come in “future updates,” it said. PC players will now get better-quality results from the DLSS.

    Another target for an early fix is the Art of Metamorphosis item that allows you to change the appearance of your character. Previously in very limited supply, the stock of this item is being increased to 99 at Pawn Guilds. This change appears to be targeted at criticism of the game’s microtransactions, which include the sale of Art of Metamorphosis at $1.99. With this change, it will only be inability to afford the in-game price that would push players toward paying real money to change the looks of their character or Main Pawn. (No changes were announced for other rare items available to buy as microtransactions, such as Wakestones or Portcrystals.)

    Other changes coming soon will make it possible to acquire your own dwelling earlier in the game, as well as various text display and bug fixes.

    Capcom said it would release the updates “as soon as they are ready for distribution on each platform.”

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    Oli Welsh

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  • Austin Pets Alive! | APA! Offers Courtesy Listings for Rehoming

    Austin Pets Alive! | APA! Offers Courtesy Listings for Rehoming

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    Going to a shelter should be and can be the last option for an animal whose family is having to make the tough decision to say goodbye to their furry family member.

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  • Commentary: I tried to bury my mom in an environmentally responsible way in L.A. It was impossible

    Commentary: I tried to bury my mom in an environmentally responsible way in L.A. It was impossible

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    To get a sense of how progressive ideals don’t always reflect actual practice, try burying a dead relative in Southern California. You’ll find that even in this land where people talk about sustainability, saying farewell in an environmentally responsible manner is, for most people, nearly impossible.

    I came to grips with that reality in August, when my mother died from an unexpected illness. Making the final arrangements was my job, and I valued the experience as much as one can while gripped by grief.

    My mother, a nurse and devout Lutheran, spent her life caring for the world around her and the people whom Jesus called “the least of these brothers and sisters.” I felt strongly that her remains should be handled in a way that reflected her values and, to some extent, mine.

    As funeral director and poet Thomas Lynch wrote, “By getting the dead where they need to go, the living get where they need to be.”

    And where are the living? On a planet in serious peril, where resource- and land-intensive burial practices reflect the overconsumption that put us in this mess. So, in the days just before my mom’s death, and with the clock ticking fast, I explored “green burial” options in Southern California that minimize environmental impacts.

    That involved ditching the local (and very expensive) mortuary giant Forest Lawn — where seemingly everyone in Glendale, my mom’s hometown, goes to spend eternity — and calling smaller funeral homes that advertise eco-friendly options.

    I settled on a small business in Hollywood that partners with a natural burial cemetery — where the land is minimally disturbed and traditional embalming isn’t allowed — and even offers an intriguing “human composting” option. Crucially, prices for the most common services are listed prominently on the funeral home’s website (note to other mortuaries: Please do this).

    But the eco-friendly options had serious drawbacks. The natural burial cemetery is near Joshua Tree (gorgeous, but 120 miles away), and human composting — a process that accelerates decomposition and, within a month, turns a body into nutrient-dense soil — isn’t yet legal in California and would have required shipping my dead mother to Washington state.

    Burial options that require two-hour flights or three-hour car drives don’t strike me as green. Even in this era of heightened environmental consciousness, the most accessible disposal options are not the sustainable ones. Our final choice: local cremation.

    Still, the future for handling the dead in an environmentally sound way isn’t totally dim. Last year, California passed a law to allow human composting starting in 2027. And, although there are only two fully natural burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council in all of California (none of them near Los Angeles), more “traditional” cemeteries are offering some environmentally friendly options.

    Sarah Chavez, executive director of the L.A.-based advocacy group the Order of the Good Death, told me these cemeteries and California lawmakers are responding to an increasing demand for burials that not only conserve resources, but are also more meaningful to the people seeking them.

    She said the $20-billion U.S. funeral industry has commodified death in a way that has made people scared of their dead loved ones, convinced that only trained, very expensive professionals must take over the moment a relative dies.

    I told Chavez my family resisted this routine, even if we didn’t get a green burial. The funeral home accommodated our request to sit with my mom for several hours before it sent workers to pick her up. In that time, the few of us there had a mini-funeral.

    We alternated between tears, laughter and prayers, all while my mom was there with us. Her body was not hazardous waste to be swiftly disposed of.

    Chavez said our experience reflects a grassroots change in death services. Her group supports families taking a more active role in burials. She said many people entering the funeral industry now are women who recognize the need for change, which I noticed in making my arrangements as well.

    From this desire for more control, we’ll get more green burial options in the future. Just not in time for my mom.

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    Paul Thornton

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  • Stocks are trapped in a trading range. Something’s got to give.

    Stocks are trapped in a trading range. Something’s got to give.

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    The U.S. stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index SPX, is trapped in a trading range, and volatility seems to be damping down considerably. The significant edges of the trading range are support at 4330 and resistance at 4540. Both of those levels were touched in the latter half of August. A breakout from this range should give the market some strong directional momentum. 

    Since Labor Day, prices have hunkered down into an even narrower range. Typically, the latter half of September through the early part of October…

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