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"content": "\u003cp>To address climate change, experts say we \u003cem>all\u003c/em> need to get to work. So how do you do that, as just one, busy person?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s one idea: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1977320 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png\" alt='Top circle of Venn diagram says \"what brings you joy?\" A circle on the left says \"What are you good at?\" The final circle on the right says \"What is the work that needs doing?\" Where the three circles overlap is a space named: \"What you should do.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’re bringing you a series of stories of people who are doing that, like musician and writer \u003ca href=\"https://www.madlinesinfo.com/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Maddy “MADlines” Clifford\u003c/a>. She’s penned an entire album about climate change, finding it to be surprisingly … fun, which is not a word most people associate with climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with Clifford about her latest creative venture and how it intersects with injustices affecting so much more than the natural world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LAURA KLIVANS: When was your climate awakening?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MADDY CLIFFORD\u003c/strong>: That day that we all woke up in 2020 and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1969409/no-you-didnt-wake-up-to-the-apocalypse-wildfire-smoke-turns-bay-area-sky-orange-and-dark\">the sky was like this apocalyptic ashen color\u003c/a> for the whole entire day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that was a really big moment for a lot of people, especially on the West Coast. And it really cemented in my mind how dire the situation is and has been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I felt a lot of despair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d you relate to climate action before?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m from Seattle, born and raised in the city of Seattle and in the northwest. Environmentalism is a really big topic that we talked about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remember when I was in elementary school, they even had us in different “orca pods,” but [environmentalism] was still largely seen as a white, hippie, upper-middle-class issue, and it wasn’t really talked about in the Black community in particular or the community that I was in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just didn’t really see myself reflected in a lot of the environmental movements until more recently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where did you start when it came to taking action?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to research and learn a bit about Indigenous stewardship around fires — how that related to colonization and the ways in which we’ve lost a lot of really vital information about how to protect the planet because of racism and colonization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then last year, I was lucky enough to find this really cool project called \u003ca href=\"https://creativewildfire.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Creative Wildfire\u003c/a>, and it’s a collective action involving \u003ca href=\"https://creativewildfire.org/artists/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">different artists\u003c/a> from across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their purpose was to educate artists on how to really amplify issues around the climate emergency and push back against this idea of returning to normal. I really liked that concept because I was just experiencing such profound change over 2020 and 2021, and I was like, I really don’t want to go back to some of the things that were problematic, especially as it relates to pollution and the destruction of our climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We had to attend classes. We learned about all types of different things, from \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2022/02/14/queer-communities-often-left-out-of-disaster-planning-research-shows/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">solidarity economies\u003c/a> [economies \u003ca href=\"https://doughnuteconomics.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">prioritizing people and the planet over endless growth and profit\u003c/a>] to different grassroots organizing that was going on in different parts of the country around climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to feel really excited about how to draw connections in my arts practice. I was able to reach out to one of my colleagues and friends, \u003ca href=\"http://charlesburchell.com/\">Charles Burchell\u003c/a>, and he created these instrumentals and I wrote songs to the instrumentals, and we put out this project called “downCHANTS.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tell me a bit about “downCHANTS.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inspired by the Bob Marley and the Wailers song “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AZAsarTZHo&ab_channel=BobMarley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chant Down Babylon\u003c/a>.” [Chanting down] is a spiritual pushing back against all this negativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going through a lot of these different workshops as part of the Creative Wildfire cohort, I realized everything is connected to the climate emergency. Women are going to be more disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. Immigrants, Indigenous folks, all the people that are actually the ones that can make a difference. I really got inspired by that and invigorated by that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are some of your favorite songs [on the album]? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/1PHvy8vNSdNrK73B0nPLQr?si=07f666019cba4823\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Imagination\u003c/a>” is one song where I bring up the fact that the Black imagination is so rich, even though there is a serious racial wealth gap in our country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I begin the song with, “The end is near, but also the beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That has to do with this balance between pessimism and optimism that I see a lot of Black writers and Black intellectuals bring up. It’s this balance between being really clear and aware of the obstacles that we’re facing, but at the same time having a healthy dose of joy and excitement about the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/229B8qFmcrtdr9C5Lt3m3n?si=3f5ca6b84a2b4138\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Femme Future\u003c/a>,” I thought a lot about the way the Earth is gendered feminine, and how this degradation of anything that’s non-male really contributes to people not caring about the climate crisis, or thinking that it’s inevitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978554\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978554 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Woman wearing a red and gold shirt throws back her head; her dark golden hair flies up behind her and around her face.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maddy Clifford was surprised when writing songs about climate change: It was actually fun. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jenn Wong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I wanted to reclaim femininity as something that was powerful. In a lot of ways, I felt almost a sense of pride in the fact that the Earth is seen as feminine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do love “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/5WrcmSdUPB2SJe1lsQnfvI?si=8707106a3d624efe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bike Life\u003c/a>.” I love riding a bike: It gives me the ability to exercise, it’s really fun, and biking culture is a huge part of the culture in East Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='news_11879641' label='Trucks Are Banned on Oakland's I-580. These Sixth Graders Wondered Why']I don’t think people realize — in their cars all the time — the fact that the city was literally built for cars and that it didn’t have to be built that way. I also think about the ways that freeways, for example, desecrated and destroyed a lot of thriving Black communities in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How do I make these issues around climate and social justice visceral? How do I make them poetic? Because you want to show people, you don’t want to just tell them these things. That’s what makes these topics really resonate with wider amounts of people at the end of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve always been a politicized artist because I believe art is innately political.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is a way to strengthen the work that I’ve already been doing around intersectional feminism and empowerment. It really actually complimented my work in a lot of ways, and it felt really exciting to go in this direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What have you gained from this work?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have had such a good time just writing about climate, I didn’t realize how much fun I would have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of the discussions around the climate crisis become really apocalyptic and really depressing, and I think that can often cause people to just ignore it. And for me, it wasn’t so much that I was ignoring the issues, it’s just I felt I didn’t know where to get in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then I thought back to rappers that I admire and a lot of them actually have written songs about the climate, like “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7HhWoQgi8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New World Water\u003c/a>” by Yasiin Bey. I was like, “Wow, that’s one of my favorite songs of all time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to realize this is not something that’s so outside of me, but it’s part of a tradition within the hip-hop community, within my practice and my medium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was surprised how much I actually fit perfectly into this idea of a climate activist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: Maddy Clifford has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881399/why-we-must-center-healing-in-the-movement-for-black-lives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">written for KQED Arts\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>To address climate change, experts say we \u003cem>all\u003c/em> need to get to work. So how do you do that, as just one, busy person?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s one idea: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1977320 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png\" alt='Top circle of Venn diagram says \"what brings you joy?\" A circle on the left says \"What are you good at?\" The final circle on the right says \"What is the work that needs doing?\" Where the three circles overlap is a space named: \"What you should do.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’re bringing you a series of stories of people who are doing that, like musician and writer \u003ca href=\"https://www.madlinesinfo.com/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Maddy “MADlines” Clifford\u003c/a>. She’s penned an entire album about climate change, finding it to be surprisingly … fun, which is not a word most people associate with climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with Clifford about her latest creative venture and how it intersects with injustices affecting so much more than the natural world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LAURA KLIVANS: When was your climate awakening?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MADDY CLIFFORD\u003c/strong>: That day that we all woke up in 2020 and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1969409/no-you-didnt-wake-up-to-the-apocalypse-wildfire-smoke-turns-bay-area-sky-orange-and-dark\">the sky was like this apocalyptic ashen color\u003c/a> for the whole entire day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that was a really big moment for a lot of people, especially on the West Coast. And it really cemented in my mind how dire the situation is and has been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I felt a lot of despair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d you relate to climate action before?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m from Seattle, born and raised in the city of Seattle and in the northwest. Environmentalism is a really big topic that we talked about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remember when I was in elementary school, they even had us in different “orca pods,” but [environmentalism] was still largely seen as a white, hippie, upper-middle-class issue, and it wasn’t really talked about in the Black community in particular or the community that I was in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just didn’t really see myself reflected in a lot of the environmental movements until more recently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where did you start when it came to taking action?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to research and learn a bit about Indigenous stewardship around fires — how that related to colonization and the ways in which we’ve lost a lot of really vital information about how to protect the planet because of racism and colonization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then last year, I was lucky enough to find this really cool project called \u003ca href=\"https://creativewildfire.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Creative Wildfire\u003c/a>, and it’s a collective action involving \u003ca href=\"https://creativewildfire.org/artists/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">different artists\u003c/a> from across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their purpose was to educate artists on how to really amplify issues around the climate emergency and push back against this idea of returning to normal. I really liked that concept because I was just experiencing such profound change over 2020 and 2021, and I was like, I really don’t want to go back to some of the things that were problematic, especially as it relates to pollution and the destruction of our climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We had to attend classes. We learned about all types of different things, from \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2022/02/14/queer-communities-often-left-out-of-disaster-planning-research-shows/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">solidarity economies\u003c/a> [economies \u003ca href=\"https://doughnuteconomics.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">prioritizing people and the planet over endless growth and profit\u003c/a>] to different grassroots organizing that was going on in different parts of the country around climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to feel really excited about how to draw connections in my arts practice. I was able to reach out to one of my colleagues and friends, \u003ca href=\"http://charlesburchell.com/\">Charles Burchell\u003c/a>, and he created these instrumentals and I wrote songs to the instrumentals, and we put out this project called “downCHANTS.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tell me a bit about “downCHANTS.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inspired by the Bob Marley and the Wailers song “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AZAsarTZHo&ab_channel=BobMarley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chant Down Babylon\u003c/a>.” [Chanting down] is a spiritual pushing back against all this negativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going through a lot of these different workshops as part of the Creative Wildfire cohort, I realized everything is connected to the climate emergency. Women are going to be more disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. Immigrants, Indigenous folks, all the people that are actually the ones that can make a difference. I really got inspired by that and invigorated by that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are some of your favorite songs [on the album]? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/1PHvy8vNSdNrK73B0nPLQr?si=07f666019cba4823\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Imagination\u003c/a>” is one song where I bring up the fact that the Black imagination is so rich, even though there is a serious racial wealth gap in our country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I begin the song with, “The end is near, but also the beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That has to do with this balance between pessimism and optimism that I see a lot of Black writers and Black intellectuals bring up. It’s this balance between being really clear and aware of the obstacles that we’re facing, but at the same time having a healthy dose of joy and excitement about the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/229B8qFmcrtdr9C5Lt3m3n?si=3f5ca6b84a2b4138\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Femme Future\u003c/a>,” I thought a lot about the way the Earth is gendered feminine, and how this degradation of anything that’s non-male really contributes to people not caring about the climate crisis, or thinking that it’s inevitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978554\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978554 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Woman wearing a red and gold shirt throws back her head; her dark golden hair flies up behind her and around her face.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/37.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maddy Clifford was surprised when writing songs about climate change: It was actually fun. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jenn Wong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I wanted to reclaim femininity as something that was powerful. In a lot of ways, I felt almost a sense of pride in the fact that the Earth is seen as feminine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do love “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/5WrcmSdUPB2SJe1lsQnfvI?si=8707106a3d624efe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bike Life\u003c/a>.” I love riding a bike: It gives me the ability to exercise, it’s really fun, and biking culture is a huge part of the culture in East Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I don’t think people realize — in their cars all the time — the fact that the city was literally built for cars and that it didn’t have to be built that way. I also think about the ways that freeways, for example, desecrated and destroyed a lot of thriving Black communities in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How do I make these issues around climate and social justice visceral? How do I make them poetic? Because you want to show people, you don’t want to just tell them these things. That’s what makes these topics really resonate with wider amounts of people at the end of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve always been a politicized artist because I believe art is innately political.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is a way to strengthen the work that I’ve already been doing around intersectional feminism and empowerment. It really actually complimented my work in a lot of ways, and it felt really exciting to go in this direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What have you gained from this work?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have had such a good time just writing about climate, I didn’t realize how much fun I would have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of the discussions around the climate crisis become really apocalyptic and really depressing, and I think that can often cause people to just ignore it. And for me, it wasn’t so much that I was ignoring the issues, it’s just I felt I didn’t know where to get in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then I thought back to rappers that I admire and a lot of them actually have written songs about the climate, like “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7HhWoQgi8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New World Water\u003c/a>” by Yasiin Bey. I was like, “Wow, that’s one of my favorite songs of all time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started to realize this is not something that’s so outside of me, but it’s part of a tradition within the hip-hop community, within my practice and my medium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was surprised how much I actually fit perfectly into this idea of a climate activist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: Maddy Clifford has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881399/why-we-must-center-healing-in-the-movement-for-black-lives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">written for KQED Arts\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "To Understand Sea Level Rise, This Climate Artist Wants You to Feel It in Your Body",
"headTitle": "To Understand Sea Level Rise, This Climate Artist Wants You to Feel It in Your Body | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>So you’re worried about climate change. You’re ready to act. But you don’t know where to start, or how to actually be effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a suggestion: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1977320\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png\" alt='Top circle of Venn diagram says \"what brings you joy?\" A circle on the left says \"What are you good at?\" The final circle on the right says \"What is the work that needs doing?\" Where the three circles overlap is a space named: \"What you should do.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re bringing you a series of stories of people who are doing that, like artist \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://anateresafernandez.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ana Teresa Fernández\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. When she first heard how much sea levels could rise by 2100 — roughly 6 feet — she grappled with what that would look and feel like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_11527370']As someone who communicates through visual and performance art, Fernández wanted to make that number something people could touch. After deliberating for a year on how to do that, she created a project that’s sprouted up on beaches in California and Mexico, and is currently installed at the San Francisco Cliff House as a part of the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOR-SITE Foundation\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">’s exhibition “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.for-site.org/project/landsend/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lands End\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with Fernández.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>LAURA KLIVANS: When was your climate awakening?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>ANA TERESA FERNÁNDEZ\u003c/b>:\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As I was growing up in Tampico, Tamaulipas [in Mexico], we spent every Sunday at the beach. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were all these refineries. We knew we were getting closer to the beach because there was a stench in the air. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The smell was something that triggered happiness for me, not realizing what a refinery really does and how harmful that is to not only the land, but the world in its entirety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are these things that you are aware of that are not right; you just know in your body that there’s something wrong. I think that was when I first realized that the world is under pressure. \u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n[ad fullwidth]\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many, many years later, I went to the Art and Environment Conference at the Nevada [Museum of Art], where \u003ca href=\"https://anateresafernandez.com/1718-2/\">I was invited to speak about borders\u003c/a> in 2017.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the panelists was talking about climate change. I remember sitting in the audience, just having my arms crossed and thinking, “Huh, six feet. I’m 5’10.'” \u003cem>(Editor’s note: The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1978580/new-sea-level-predictions-show-need-for-environmental-justice-in-climate-change-planning\">latest projections\u003c/a> put sea level rise as high as 6.5 feet by 2100.)\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As someone who surfs and who’s constantly in the water, I know what that feels like — when you’re pushed down under a wave and you actually can’t get to the surface of the water to breathe. It gave me this moment where I was like, huhhh! [Gasps audibly.]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, this is the time where I actually have to connect the dots and do something directly in response to this specific statistic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really began to understand that we have a disassociation from these numbers to our bodies. These numbers sit on a page neatly in line in relation to words, but they don’t sit in relation to a body. So how is it that we can have those numbers come off the page and really become an experience, a somatic experience, a visceral experience?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Where did you start when it came to taking action?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It took me about a year to really get the courage to start working on this and start walking towards it and trying to find a way to embody this idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tell me about the installation you ultimately created, called “\u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://onthehorizon.org/\">\u003cb>On the Horizon\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>.”\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wanted to actually take a step to try and tackle this issue. And when I say tackle, I mean, how can I hold it, quite literally? Not only the idea of sea levels rising, but specifically grasp and hold 6 feet of ocean water? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I worked with a fabricator to create a design that would be able to hold 6 feet of ocean water. It’s a [plexiglass] cylinder that’s 10 inches in diameter and 6 feet tall. It looks and feels as if this body of seawater is emerging from the sand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people address them as pillars, but I see them as “sea bodies” because they’re an extension of the body of water that’s in front of us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I’ve done this installation, it’s always at the shoreline — literally where the water ends and the land begins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978625\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978625\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Five clear, cylindrical pillars of ocean water emerge vertically from the sand on a shoreline. Three children sit at the bases of the scattered pillars, while four people hold hands and walk towards them from the left of the frame.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community volunteers help install ‘On the Horizon’ in November 2021, at Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Carlos Bravo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What happens during the installations? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the things that became really apparent was that people want to touch it; people want to be a part of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every time that we put the piece up at the beach, people would stop us: “What is this?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When they realize what it’s about, it’s like someone’s knocking them over. Then the second reaction is always walking towards it to touch the water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People want to see the relationship of their own body to [the sea bodies].\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What do you think that says about the human relationship to climate change? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re missing a way in which we can experience climate change more physically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate change is usually experienced in really chaotic, violent, sudden, unpredictable ways. But there are not many moments where you can experience climate change in a physical way that is peaceful and calm.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you can sit with it, if you can talk to it, I think you can slowly alter behaviors — we can change how we respond.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A mother and child smile while carrying a white bucket painted light blue between them. They walk across a beach toward the camera and away from the ocean. More people carrying buckets follow behind.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachel McIntire with daughter Isla were community volunteers in an ‘On the Horizon’ bucket brigade at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach in October 2021. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Colectivo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You talk about the community being part of the installation process. Why is that important?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most beautiful parts of this has been that with the installation, I’ve actually gotten closer to my neighbors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As soon as we start inserting [the tubes] into the sand and then the buckets come out [to carry ocean water to fill the tubes], people are like, “Can I help?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve worked with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunsetcoop.org/\">Sunset Co-Op [Nursery School]\u003c/a> as well, with the kindergarten kids.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been really beautiful to see how easy it is to educate people through an experience that’s about them creating the piece. Because ultimately, this piece doesn’t exist without the community, because the community are the ones that are actually pouring life into the piece. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s the external hustle of finding the funding and figuring out the fabrication.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s the internal hustle. I sat with this idea for about a year before I let myself try to tackle it because I’m like, “No, it’s too simple. No, it’s not good enough. No, it’s not going to make a difference.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, “I’m not a climatologist. I’m not a scientist. Can I do this?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was something I had to come to terms with — I had touched issues that are very political, that are very much driven by numbers and by statistics and all these things that might not necessarily be artsy. But why not use art as a way to grapple with these issues, help bring people to it and create an awareness in a different way that sits off the page? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of science and it’s printed everywhere. But no matter how many times it gets printed, sometimes we just need to experience it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like anything, you just make it a priority. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978568\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978568\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Three glass cylinders, or sea bodies, six feet tall, rise from a pile of sand in front of wide glass windows at San Francisco's Cliff House. The sea green ocean beyond the windows is restless with whitecaps. Dark mounds of rock rise from the sea.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘On the Horizon’ is installed at the FOR-SITE Foundation’s exhibition ‘Lands End’ in San Francisco’s Cliff House. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What have you gained from this work?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of connectivity to the community, both here along this coastline and around different coastlines. People from Israel have contacted me, people from Sweden. People are really eager to amplify the message of protecting the sea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of doing these things is starting something and then hoping there’s a ripple effect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now I’ve been invited to three other exhibitions about climate change. I never thought of myself as a climate artist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The director of the Sunset Co-Op has told me all these stories about the kids talking about the piece and how they’ve been relating to the water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It creates its own constellations that exist beyond you. And that’s the beauty of it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Ana Teresa Fernández wanted to give people a way to sit calmly with the idea of sea level rise. \r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>So you’re worried about climate change. You’re ready to act. But you don’t know where to start, or how to actually be effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a suggestion: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1977320\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png\" alt='Top circle of Venn diagram says \"what brings you joy?\" A circle on the left says \"What are you good at?\" The final circle on the right says \"What is the work that needs doing?\" Where the three circles overlap is a space named: \"What you should do.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Rectangle-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re bringing you a series of stories of people who are doing that, like artist \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://anateresafernandez.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ana Teresa Fernández\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. When she first heard how much sea levels could rise by 2100 — roughly 6 feet — she grappled with what that would look and feel like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As someone who communicates through visual and performance art, Fernández wanted to make that number something people could touch. After deliberating for a year on how to do that, she created a project that’s sprouted up on beaches in California and Mexico, and is currently installed at the San Francisco Cliff House as a part of the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOR-SITE Foundation\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">’s exhibition “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.for-site.org/project/landsend/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lands End\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.”\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with Fernández.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>LAURA KLIVANS: When was your climate awakening?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>ANA TERESA FERNÁNDEZ\u003c/b>:\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As I was growing up in Tampico, Tamaulipas [in Mexico], we spent every Sunday at the beach. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were all these refineries. We knew we were getting closer to the beach because there was a stench in the air. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The smell was something that triggered happiness for me, not realizing what a refinery really does and how harmful that is to not only the land, but the world in its entirety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are these things that you are aware of that are not right; you just know in your body that there’s something wrong. I think that was when I first realized that the world is under pressure. \u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many, many years later, I went to the Art and Environment Conference at the Nevada [Museum of Art], where \u003ca href=\"https://anateresafernandez.com/1718-2/\">I was invited to speak about borders\u003c/a> in 2017.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the panelists was talking about climate change. I remember sitting in the audience, just having my arms crossed and thinking, “Huh, six feet. I’m 5’10.'” \u003cem>(Editor’s note: The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1978580/new-sea-level-predictions-show-need-for-environmental-justice-in-climate-change-planning\">latest projections\u003c/a> put sea level rise as high as 6.5 feet by 2100.)\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As someone who surfs and who’s constantly in the water, I know what that feels like — when you’re pushed down under a wave and you actually can’t get to the surface of the water to breathe. It gave me this moment where I was like, huhhh! [Gasps audibly.]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, this is the time where I actually have to connect the dots and do something directly in response to this specific statistic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really began to understand that we have a disassociation from these numbers to our bodies. These numbers sit on a page neatly in line in relation to words, but they don’t sit in relation to a body. So how is it that we can have those numbers come off the page and really become an experience, a somatic experience, a visceral experience?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Where did you start when it came to taking action?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It took me about a year to really get the courage to start working on this and start walking towards it and trying to find a way to embody this idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tell me about the installation you ultimately created, called “\u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://onthehorizon.org/\">\u003cb>On the Horizon\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>.”\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wanted to actually take a step to try and tackle this issue. And when I say tackle, I mean, how can I hold it, quite literally? Not only the idea of sea levels rising, but specifically grasp and hold 6 feet of ocean water? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I worked with a fabricator to create a design that would be able to hold 6 feet of ocean water. It’s a [plexiglass] cylinder that’s 10 inches in diameter and 6 feet tall. It looks and feels as if this body of seawater is emerging from the sand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people address them as pillars, but I see them as “sea bodies” because they’re an extension of the body of water that’s in front of us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I’ve done this installation, it’s always at the shoreline — literally where the water ends and the land begins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978625\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978625\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Five clear, cylindrical pillars of ocean water emerge vertically from the sand on a shoreline. Three children sit at the bases of the scattered pillars, while four people hold hands and walk towards them from the left of the frame.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53889_5_CARLOS-BRAVO-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community volunteers help install ‘On the Horizon’ in November 2021, at Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Carlos Bravo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What happens during the installations? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the things that became really apparent was that people want to touch it; people want to be a part of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every time that we put the piece up at the beach, people would stop us: “What is this?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When they realize what it’s about, it’s like someone’s knocking them over. Then the second reaction is always walking towards it to touch the water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People want to see the relationship of their own body to [the sea bodies].\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What do you think that says about the human relationship to climate change? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re missing a way in which we can experience climate change more physically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate change is usually experienced in really chaotic, violent, sudden, unpredictable ways. But there are not many moments where you can experience climate change in a physical way that is peaceful and calm.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you can sit with it, if you can talk to it, I think you can slowly alter behaviors — we can change how we respond.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A mother and child smile while carrying a white bucket painted light blue between them. They walk across a beach toward the camera and away from the ocean. More people carrying buckets follow behind.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53892_3_Colectivo-Dancers-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachel McIntire with daughter Isla were community volunteers in an ‘On the Horizon’ bucket brigade at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach in October 2021. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Colectivo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You talk about the community being part of the installation process. Why is that important?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most beautiful parts of this has been that with the installation, I’ve actually gotten closer to my neighbors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As soon as we start inserting [the tubes] into the sand and then the buckets come out [to carry ocean water to fill the tubes], people are like, “Can I help?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve worked with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunsetcoop.org/\">Sunset Co-Op [Nursery School]\u003c/a> as well, with the kindergarten kids.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been really beautiful to see how easy it is to educate people through an experience that’s about them creating the piece. Because ultimately, this piece doesn’t exist without the community, because the community are the ones that are actually pouring life into the piece. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s the external hustle of finding the funding and figuring out the fabrication.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s the internal hustle. I sat with this idea for about a year before I let myself try to tackle it because I’m like, “No, it’s too simple. No, it’s not good enough. No, it’s not going to make a difference.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, “I’m not a climatologist. I’m not a scientist. Can I do this?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was something I had to come to terms with — I had touched issues that are very political, that are very much driven by numbers and by statistics and all these things that might not necessarily be artsy. But why not use art as a way to grapple with these issues, help bring people to it and create an awareness in a different way that sits off the page? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of science and it’s printed everywhere. But no matter how many times it gets printed, sometimes we just need to experience it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like anything, you just make it a priority. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978568\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978568\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Three glass cylinders, or sea bodies, six feet tall, rise from a pile of sand in front of wide glass windows at San Francisco's Cliff House. The sea green ocean beyond the windows is restless with whitecaps. Dark mounds of rock rise from the sea.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/RS53289_016_SanFrancisco_ClimateAnaTeresaFerndandez_01252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘On the Horizon’ is installed at the FOR-SITE Foundation’s exhibition ‘Lands End’ in San Francisco’s Cliff House. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What have you gained from this work?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of connectivity to the community, both here along this coastline and around different coastlines. People from Israel have contacted me, people from Sweden. People are really eager to amplify the message of protecting the sea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of doing these things is starting something and then hoping there’s a ripple effect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now I’ve been invited to three other exhibitions about climate change. I never thought of myself as a climate artist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The director of the Sunset Co-Op has told me all these stories about the kids talking about the piece and how they’ve been relating to the water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It creates its own constellations that exist beyond you. And that’s the beauty of it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">No surprise, but now it’s official: The Environmental Protection Agency announced today it has restored California’s authority to set tailpipe emissions standards more strict than the federal government’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move allows California to once again set its own strict clean car rules, something the state had done for nearly a half century in an effort to combat smog and, more recently, fight climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA announcement is a reversal of a contentious decision by the Trump administration to revoke the waiver, which teed off years of fighting and lawsuits between the country’s top environmental agency and the leaders of its most populous state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Biden administration said in a press release that Trump’s policy was “decided in error” and is now “entirely rescinded.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our partnership with states to confront the climate crisis has never been more important,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement, adding that the action would “advance clean technologies and cut air pollution for people not just in California, but for the U.S. as a whole.”\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The transportation sector is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “a major victory for the environment, our economy, and the health of families across the country.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/mslianeran/status/1501640062731120641?s=20&t=9yR3gRqc1DuELbbJX_oFtg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, California has sought and obtained dozens of waivers that provide the state special authority to set tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks more stringent than those adopted federally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/177_states_12062021_nada_sales.pdf\">The District of Columbia and 15 other states\u003c/a> have adopted California’s strict emissions standards, momentum that steered the U.S. car market overall toward cleaner cars. Now that California’s waiver has been restored, other states can once again choose to adopt these more stringent standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But much has changed in the few years since the Trump administration moved to pull California’s waiver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, Newsom issued an \u003cspan class=\"s1\">executive order\u003c/span> requiring that \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-announces-california-will-phase-out-gasoline-powered-cars-drastically-reduce-demand-for-fossil-fuel-in-californias-fight-against-climate-change/\">all new cars sold in California after 2035 must be electric\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following that announcement, major carmakers committed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069739399/2022-is-promising-to-be-big-year-for-electric-vehicles\">billions of dollars in \u003cspan class=\"s1\">investments\u003c/span> in new electric car models\u003c/a>, and President Biden set the goal of 50% clean car sales by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California getting its waiver back sends a signal that the federal government is counting on innovation at the state level, said \u003ca href=\"https://erg.berkeley.edu/people/kammen-daniel-m/\">Dan Kammen\u003c/a>, who directs a \u003ca href=\"https://rael.berkeley.edu/\">renewable energy lab\u003c/a> at UC Berkeley and advises the Biden administration on energy and international development issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">“\u003c/b>California has traditionally been that leader, but we need more,” he said. “We need more creative policies to build the market and to build energy justice into those markets, so that would reach more people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/lsanchez020\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Lauren Sanchez\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, Newsom’s senior adviser on climate, said during an \u003ca href=\"https://www.veloz.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/220224_March-Summit-Agenda_FINAL.pdf?mc_cid=6b887d011c&mc_eid\">electric vehicle \u003cspan class=\"s1\">summit\u003c/span>\u003c/a> this morning that California’s electric vehicle policies created “the market and will continue to drive it globally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Omar Vargas, head of global policy for GM, said in an emailed statement that the company is “proud to share California’s vision of an all-electric future with zero emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe everyone should have access to affordable, long-range electric vehicle options, and we are committed to working in collaboration with California to achieve an equitable transportation future,” he said. “We’re all in on putting everybody in an EV.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, a coalition group of health, labor and justice organizations thinks the state can be moving even faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after the EPA’s announcement, the American Lung Association in California, IBEW Local 569, the Greenlining Institute, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others called on California to set even stronger electric vehicle sales targets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with California and the U.S. government charging toward an electric vehicle future, and major automakers like GM, Ford, Honda, and Volvo\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069739399/2022-is-promising-to-be-big-year-for-electric-vehicles\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">investing\u003c/span> billions into new electric models\u003c/a>, California’s waiver continues to be important, said Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“While we are in the process of seeing a transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, that transition is going to take a considerable amount of time,” he said. “California has adopted an ambitious timeline for that transition. But it will take a while. And the state has a huge number of vehicles on the road, including personal vehicles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever California can do to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks is “important and indeed critical” to the state reaching its climate targets, Frank said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">No surprise, but now it’s official: The Environmental Protection Agency announced today it has restored California’s authority to set tailpipe emissions standards more strict than the federal government’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move allows California to once again set its own strict clean car rules, something the state had done for nearly a half century in an effort to combat smog and, more recently, fight climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA announcement is a reversal of a contentious decision by the Trump administration to revoke the waiver, which teed off years of fighting and lawsuits between the country’s top environmental agency and the leaders of its most populous state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Biden administration said in a press release that Trump’s policy was “decided in error” and is now “entirely rescinded.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our partnership with states to confront the climate crisis has never been more important,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement, adding that the action would “advance clean technologies and cut air pollution for people not just in California, but for the U.S. as a whole.”\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Since the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, California has sought and obtained dozens of waivers that provide the state special authority to set tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks more stringent than those adopted federally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/177_states_12062021_nada_sales.pdf\">The District of Columbia and 15 other states\u003c/a> have adopted California’s strict emissions standards, momentum that steered the U.S. car market overall toward cleaner cars. Now that California’s waiver has been restored, other states can once again choose to adopt these more stringent standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But much has changed in the few years since the Trump administration moved to pull California’s waiver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, Newsom issued an \u003cspan class=\"s1\">executive order\u003c/span> requiring that \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-announces-california-will-phase-out-gasoline-powered-cars-drastically-reduce-demand-for-fossil-fuel-in-californias-fight-against-climate-change/\">all new cars sold in California after 2035 must be electric\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following that announcement, major carmakers committed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069739399/2022-is-promising-to-be-big-year-for-electric-vehicles\">billions of dollars in \u003cspan class=\"s1\">investments\u003c/span> in new electric car models\u003c/a>, and President Biden set the goal of 50% clean car sales by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California getting its waiver back sends a signal that the federal government is counting on innovation at the state level, said \u003ca href=\"https://erg.berkeley.edu/people/kammen-daniel-m/\">Dan Kammen\u003c/a>, who directs a \u003ca href=\"https://rael.berkeley.edu/\">renewable energy lab\u003c/a> at UC Berkeley and advises the Biden administration on energy and international development issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">“\u003c/b>California has traditionally been that leader, but we need more,” he said. “We need more creative policies to build the market and to build energy justice into those markets, so that would reach more people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/lsanchez020\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Lauren Sanchez\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, Newsom’s senior adviser on climate, said during an \u003ca href=\"https://www.veloz.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/220224_March-Summit-Agenda_FINAL.pdf?mc_cid=6b887d011c&mc_eid\">electric vehicle \u003cspan class=\"s1\">summit\u003c/span>\u003c/a> this morning that California’s electric vehicle policies created “the market and will continue to drive it globally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Omar Vargas, head of global policy for GM, said in an emailed statement that the company is “proud to share California’s vision of an all-electric future with zero emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe everyone should have access to affordable, long-range electric vehicle options, and we are committed to working in collaboration with California to achieve an equitable transportation future,” he said. “We’re all in on putting everybody in an EV.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, a coalition group of health, labor and justice organizations thinks the state can be moving even faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after the EPA’s announcement, the American Lung Association in California, IBEW Local 569, the Greenlining Institute, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others called on California to set even stronger electric vehicle sales targets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with California and the U.S. government charging toward an electric vehicle future, and major automakers like GM, Ford, Honda, and Volvo\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069739399/2022-is-promising-to-be-big-year-for-electric-vehicles\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">investing\u003c/span> billions into new electric models\u003c/a>, California’s waiver continues to be important, said Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“While we are in the process of seeing a transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, that transition is going to take a considerable amount of time,” he said. “California has adopted an ambitious timeline for that transition. But it will take a while. And the state has a huge number of vehicles on the road, including personal vehicles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever California can do to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks is “important and indeed critical” to the state reaching its climate targets, Frank said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California's Transition to Solar Energy Is at a Crossroads: What That Means for Equity and Your Energy Bill",
"headTitle": "California’s Transition to Solar Energy Is at a Crossroads: What That Means for Equity and Your Energy Bill | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The pitched battle over rooftop solar regulations in California is at a momentary détente, with several vested interests hoping that Gov. Gavin Newsom will intervene to swing the new rules on solar incentives their way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The proposed changes would affect subsidies for generating power with rooftop solar arrays. In January, they provoked an all-out revolt among solar installers and some environmentalists. But unions and utilities are on the other side. They want drastic changes, arguing that renters and people with lower incomes shouldn’t have to pay more than their fair share for power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='small' citation='Veronica Young, Berkeley resident']‘We always had crazy-high electric and gas bills, so we used some of her retirement to essentially eliminate the worry about unpredictable energy bills.’[/pullquote]Environmental groups that usually agree on green energy are divided on the proposed changes, because they say the changes that are supposed to promote equity will jeopardize the state’s ability to reach its ambitious climate goals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luverta Cooper, a retired accountant, installed solar panels last year on the family’s 1963 ranch-style home in Richmond’s Hilltop neighborhood. If the proposed net-metering changes were in place, they would’ve changed her entire calculus on whether to install solar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It cost about $40,000. More than we were expecting, but we’re totally electrified now,” she said. “Our PG&E bill was running like $500 a month.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The family went big: 19 panels, 320 watts, a battery in the garage to store power for blackouts, and a heat pump in the side yard to replace the gas heater and AC. Her daughter, Veronica Young, who takes care of her parents, helped with the research and decision-making, and said the savings means the investment will pay off in about 10 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We always had crazy-high electric and gas bills, so we used some of her retirement to essentially eliminate the worry about unpredictable energy bills,” Young explained. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The utility bill went from about $500 per month to only $5 per month — a fee for the gas connection. And now PG&E pays the family for the excess electricity their system generates and transmits to the electrical grid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='small' citation='Mark Toney, executive director, The Utility Reform Network (TURN)']‘We think it’s important that the cost of greening the grid does not mean that low-income families, that communities of color are cut off from solar because the prices are too doggone high.’[/pullquote]At issue are the rules that govern selling power back to the utilities. It’s been five years since state utility regulators last adjusted the incentives to go solar so people like the Coopers could make the change financially feasible. Experts say it’s high time for adjustments, because when the Coopers pay less for power, that means their neighbors pay more. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The utilities still have to maintain infrastructure, build new and greener power plants, and bury power lines so they don’t start wildfires. Those costs are built into the cost of energy per kilowatt. Customers with solar pay for fewer kilowatts, or maybe don’t pay at all if they can sell enough extra solar power back to the utility. That means rates go up for the rest of the utility’s customers. The utilities argue that \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">someone \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has to pay so the electrical grid functions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s the other electrical customers who pay the subsidies. The subsidies do not come from the utility companies, it comes from utility customers,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a utility watchdog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For once, TURN has found itself agreeing with the state’s investor-owned utilities. But TURN’s argument is about equity. The people who have a few extra thousand dollars to invest in rooftop solar aren’t representative of California as a whole, Toney said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1972585\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1972585\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-800x551.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"551\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-800x551.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1020x702.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-768x529.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1536x1057.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-2048x1410.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1920x1322.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Biden has set a goal of making the U.S. carbon neutral by 2050, which will require steeper emissions cuts than the US has ever achieved. To reach it, coal power would have to wane into a footnote, replaced by renewables like solar and wind. \u003ccite>(Alex Wong/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Solar adopters \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2021/06/01/rooftop-solar-inequity/#:~:text=California%27s%20distributed%20solar%20policy%20hurts%20the%20poor.&text=As%20numerous%20EI%20blogs%20and,pumps%20kilowatts%20into%20the%20grid.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">skew whiter and higher-income\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> compared to California’s demographics, although their median incomes are dropping gradually. However, most renters — 45% of California residents — don’t even have a chance to go solar, he said. People who invested in solar should pay their fair share. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It made sense for early adopters to receive a high subsidy rate. But the price of solar installation has dropped [by] more than 50% in the past several years. And the solar subsidies have tripled in that same time,” Toney said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some environmental justice advocates are pushing for a grid participation fee that would be reduced for homeowners with lower incomes, along with lower subsidies for future solar customers, in alignment with the reduced cost of actually installing solar, plus more incentives to install battery storage and funding to help lower-income homeowners install solar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We think it’s important that the cost of greening the grid does not mean that low-income families, that communities of color are cut off from solar because the prices are too doggone high,” he said. “We have to find a solution that provides the greatest amount of clean energy at the most economical prices. The fact is, utilities are awful at doing that in a cost-effective manner.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the environmental front, respected national organizations are split — with the Natural Resources Defense Council siding with the investor-owned utilities in the name of equity, and the Sierra Club lining up with the solar installers to keep things the same, so as not to jeopardize the state’s ambitious climate goals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='small' citation='Ben Giustino, A1 Sun']‘People call it the solar coaster. It’s a disruptive technology. And so there’s a lot of larger powers that don’t really necessarily know what to do with it or like it because it challenges their way of doing business.’[/pullquote]The Public Utilities Commission proposal that went public in December would cut the rates that customers can get when they sell their excess solar power back to utilities. The proposal would also impose a new monthly fee to connect solar customers to the grid. Plus, it would set aside $600 million to help lower-income communities go solar and add battery storage for peak evening hours after the sun goes down, when electrical usage is still high.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are two competing visions for what solar power generation will look like in California. Solar installers want it distributed, in small arrays on rooftops across the state. Utilities want to invest in large-scale arrays developed out in the desert and built by union labor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many environmentalists ask, why don’t we have both? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It is going to be a tall order to build out all the resources we need to hit our climate targets. And California needs a thriving rooftop solar industry,” said Kate Ramsay, an attorney with the Sierra Club, one of the many parties that weighed in to ask state regulators to keep the subsidies. She says the fact that this discussion is going on at all means that California’s green energy industry is thriving and mature. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We have greened many parts of our grid,” she said. “Now a lot of parties are trying to focus on decarbonizing those peak hours in the late afternoons and evenings, when we’re firing up our gas plants, particularly on the hottest days of the summer.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978645\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Giustino, owner of A1 Sun, shows off a packet of rooftop solar panels at his Berkeley business in February 2022. \u003ccite>(Raquel Maria Dillon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rooftop solar systems won’t solve that peak problem, unless more homeowners invest in battery storage. The proposed changes include incentives to install batteries. But they’ll also mean it’ll take longer for the savings on power bills to pay off after a home gets panels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben Giustino, with A1 Sun, the Berkeley company that installed the Coopers’ panels and battery, says solar installers are in limbo, waiting for the PUC to reevaluate its proposal and wondering what to tell their customers and sales leads in the meantime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Giustino’s father founded the company, which makes Ben the second generation in his family to work in solar. It’s a family-owned business, complete with a dog named Sunshine. He and his colleagues are riled up about what the Public Utilities Commission might do to their industry. But he says one thing he’s learned from watching his dad over the years is that solar is a threat to the status quo, which benefits investor-owned utilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People call it the solar coaster. It’s a disruptive technology. And so there’s a lot of larger powers that don’t really necessarily know what to do with it or like it because it challenges their way of doing business,” Giustino said. He thinks the proposal before the Public Utilities Commission was bought and paid for by investor-owned utilities and jeopardizes the future of clean energy in California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s rooftops that can be used” to generate power, he said. “That benefits the homeowners, it benefits the grid, it reduces CO2 emissions. So the main gist of what investor-owned utilities are trying to do is pull the rug out from the competition so they can maintain monopoly.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The California Solar and Storage Association, which represents installers and the 75,000 Californians who work in the solar industry, says the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://calssa.org/press-releases/2022/2/23/calssa-statement-on-california-energy-commissions-announcement-on-californias-clean-energy-progress\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">proposed changes to subsidies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> would cost thousands of jobs statewide. Giustino says they would jeopardize a dozen jobs at his company. But worse, he says, cutting subsidies and adding fees would make solar power a niche industry, like it was when his dad got into the business — only for tinkerers, off-grid homesteaders and devoted environmentalists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s still lots of people here who are probably going to install solar just because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But if you look across the state and across the industry, there’s no doubt that people will stop installing solar if it stops making financial sense for them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since the proposal came out in December, it’s been busy at A1 Sun. Potential customers want to complete their solar projects and get grandfathered in before regulators make a decision. But even customers who already have rooftop arrays will lose their current rates eventually. Exactly when depends on what California utility regulators decide to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under the much-criticized proposal that the PUC is reevaluating, Luverta Cooper will be grandfathered in and able to sell power for solar credits at current rates for the next 15 years, and then at dramatically lower rates. But Veronica Young is quick to admit that part of what inspired her and her family to go solar was that “we truly hate PG&E” because the company isn’t managing the environment and wildfire risk well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“PG&E has not done what they should have,” she said. “And because of that, the customer is being punished. We’re the ones paying the lawsuits that they lost.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Young and her mother don’t buy the arguments about equity, even though the family is African American. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Veronica did not grow up poor, but I did. And so I do understand that part of it,” Cooper said. “I have family who couldn’t afford to do this, and I understand those issues, but I don’t feel like I need to be made responsible for what others are doing. I’m taking responsibility for my own situation.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cooper says she and her husband worked hard to buy this house back in 1984, so she could provide her daughter with all the privileges of a middle-class upbringing. She intends to keep her home updated so she can pass it on to her daughter and share the generational wealth she’s accumulated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A lot of the people who do solar aren’t exactly truly rich,” Young said. “I think they’re like us, who are [a] middle-class family who want to get off from paying unpredictable energy bills.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Homeowners with rooftop solar arrays can sell excess energy back to the utility company. A proposal to change how that works has erupted in conflicts over fairness, jobs and the state's climate goals. ",
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"description": "Homeowners with rooftop solar arrays can sell excess energy back to the utility company. A proposal to change how that works has erupted in conflicts over fairness, jobs and the state's climate goals. ",
"title": "California's Transition to Solar Energy Is at a Crossroads: What That Means for Equity and Your Energy Bill | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The pitched battle over rooftop solar regulations in California is at a momentary détente, with several vested interests hoping that Gov. Gavin Newsom will intervene to swing the new rules on solar incentives their way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The proposed changes would affect subsidies for generating power with rooftop solar arrays. In January, they provoked an all-out revolt among solar installers and some environmentalists. But unions and utilities are on the other side. They want drastic changes, arguing that renters and people with lower incomes shouldn’t have to pay more than their fair share for power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘We always had crazy-high electric and gas bills, so we used some of her retirement to essentially eliminate the worry about unpredictable energy bills.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Environmental groups that usually agree on green energy are divided on the proposed changes, because they say the changes that are supposed to promote equity will jeopardize the state’s ability to reach its ambitious climate goals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luverta Cooper, a retired accountant, installed solar panels last year on the family’s 1963 ranch-style home in Richmond’s Hilltop neighborhood. If the proposed net-metering changes were in place, they would’ve changed her entire calculus on whether to install solar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It cost about $40,000. More than we were expecting, but we’re totally electrified now,” she said. “Our PG&E bill was running like $500 a month.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The family went big: 19 panels, 320 watts, a battery in the garage to store power for blackouts, and a heat pump in the side yard to replace the gas heater and AC. Her daughter, Veronica Young, who takes care of her parents, helped with the research and decision-making, and said the savings means the investment will pay off in about 10 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We always had crazy-high electric and gas bills, so we used some of her retirement to essentially eliminate the worry about unpredictable energy bills,” Young explained. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The utility bill went from about $500 per month to only $5 per month — a fee for the gas connection. And now PG&E pays the family for the excess electricity their system generates and transmits to the electrical grid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘We think it’s important that the cost of greening the grid does not mean that low-income families, that communities of color are cut off from solar because the prices are too doggone high.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At issue are the rules that govern selling power back to the utilities. It’s been five years since state utility regulators last adjusted the incentives to go solar so people like the Coopers could make the change financially feasible. Experts say it’s high time for adjustments, because when the Coopers pay less for power, that means their neighbors pay more. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The utilities still have to maintain infrastructure, build new and greener power plants, and bury power lines so they don’t start wildfires. Those costs are built into the cost of energy per kilowatt. Customers with solar pay for fewer kilowatts, or maybe don’t pay at all if they can sell enough extra solar power back to the utility. That means rates go up for the rest of the utility’s customers. The utilities argue that \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">someone \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has to pay so the electrical grid functions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s the other electrical customers who pay the subsidies. The subsidies do not come from the utility companies, it comes from utility customers,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a utility watchdog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For once, TURN has found itself agreeing with the state’s investor-owned utilities. But TURN’s argument is about equity. The people who have a few extra thousand dollars to invest in rooftop solar aren’t representative of California as a whole, Toney said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1972585\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1972585\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-800x551.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"551\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-800x551.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1020x702.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-768x529.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1536x1057.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-2048x1410.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/02/gettyimages-527740276_custom-44a9fba694aee1e1f2cd4d4751a8498bea2e25f3-1920x1322.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Biden has set a goal of making the U.S. carbon neutral by 2050, which will require steeper emissions cuts than the US has ever achieved. To reach it, coal power would have to wane into a footnote, replaced by renewables like solar and wind. \u003ccite>(Alex Wong/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Solar adopters \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2021/06/01/rooftop-solar-inequity/#:~:text=California%27s%20distributed%20solar%20policy%20hurts%20the%20poor.&text=As%20numerous%20EI%20blogs%20and,pumps%20kilowatts%20into%20the%20grid.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">skew whiter and higher-income\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> compared to California’s demographics, although their median incomes are dropping gradually. However, most renters — 45% of California residents — don’t even have a chance to go solar, he said. People who invested in solar should pay their fair share. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It made sense for early adopters to receive a high subsidy rate. But the price of solar installation has dropped [by] more than 50% in the past several years. And the solar subsidies have tripled in that same time,” Toney said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some environmental justice advocates are pushing for a grid participation fee that would be reduced for homeowners with lower incomes, along with lower subsidies for future solar customers, in alignment with the reduced cost of actually installing solar, plus more incentives to install battery storage and funding to help lower-income homeowners install solar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We think it’s important that the cost of greening the grid does not mean that low-income families, that communities of color are cut off from solar because the prices are too doggone high,” he said. “We have to find a solution that provides the greatest amount of clean energy at the most economical prices. The fact is, utilities are awful at doing that in a cost-effective manner.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the environmental front, respected national organizations are split — with the Natural Resources Defense Council siding with the investor-owned utilities in the name of equity, and the Sierra Club lining up with the solar installers to keep things the same, so as not to jeopardize the state’s ambitious climate goals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Public Utilities Commission proposal that went public in December would cut the rates that customers can get when they sell their excess solar power back to utilities. The proposal would also impose a new monthly fee to connect solar customers to the grid. Plus, it would set aside $600 million to help lower-income communities go solar and add battery storage for peak evening hours after the sun goes down, when electrical usage is still high.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are two competing visions for what solar power generation will look like in California. Solar installers want it distributed, in small arrays on rooftops across the state. Utilities want to invest in large-scale arrays developed out in the desert and built by union labor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many environmentalists ask, why don’t we have both? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It is going to be a tall order to build out all the resources we need to hit our climate targets. And California needs a thriving rooftop solar industry,” said Kate Ramsay, an attorney with the Sierra Club, one of the many parties that weighed in to ask state regulators to keep the subsidies. She says the fact that this discussion is going on at all means that California’s green energy industry is thriving and mature. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We have greened many parts of our grid,” she said. “Now a lot of parties are trying to focus on decarbonizing those peak hours in the late afternoons and evenings, when we’re firing up our gas plants, particularly on the hottest days of the summer.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978645\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/03/Ben-Giustino-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Giustino, owner of A1 Sun, shows off a packet of rooftop solar panels at his Berkeley business in February 2022. \u003ccite>(Raquel Maria Dillon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rooftop solar systems won’t solve that peak problem, unless more homeowners invest in battery storage. The proposed changes include incentives to install batteries. But they’ll also mean it’ll take longer for the savings on power bills to pay off after a home gets panels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben Giustino, with A1 Sun, the Berkeley company that installed the Coopers’ panels and battery, says solar installers are in limbo, waiting for the PUC to reevaluate its proposal and wondering what to tell their customers and sales leads in the meantime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Giustino’s father founded the company, which makes Ben the second generation in his family to work in solar. It’s a family-owned business, complete with a dog named Sunshine. He and his colleagues are riled up about what the Public Utilities Commission might do to their industry. But he says one thing he’s learned from watching his dad over the years is that solar is a threat to the status quo, which benefits investor-owned utilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People call it the solar coaster. It’s a disruptive technology. And so there’s a lot of larger powers that don’t really necessarily know what to do with it or like it because it challenges their way of doing business,” Giustino said. He thinks the proposal before the Public Utilities Commission was bought and paid for by investor-owned utilities and jeopardizes the future of clean energy in California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s rooftops that can be used” to generate power, he said. “That benefits the homeowners, it benefits the grid, it reduces CO2 emissions. So the main gist of what investor-owned utilities are trying to do is pull the rug out from the competition so they can maintain monopoly.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The California Solar and Storage Association, which represents installers and the 75,000 Californians who work in the solar industry, says the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://calssa.org/press-releases/2022/2/23/calssa-statement-on-california-energy-commissions-announcement-on-californias-clean-energy-progress\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">proposed changes to subsidies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> would cost thousands of jobs statewide. Giustino says they would jeopardize a dozen jobs at his company. But worse, he says, cutting subsidies and adding fees would make solar power a niche industry, like it was when his dad got into the business — only for tinkerers, off-grid homesteaders and devoted environmentalists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s still lots of people here who are probably going to install solar just because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But if you look across the state and across the industry, there’s no doubt that people will stop installing solar if it stops making financial sense for them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since the proposal came out in December, it’s been busy at A1 Sun. Potential customers want to complete their solar projects and get grandfathered in before regulators make a decision. But even customers who already have rooftop arrays will lose their current rates eventually. Exactly when depends on what California utility regulators decide to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under the much-criticized proposal that the PUC is reevaluating, Luverta Cooper will be grandfathered in and able to sell power for solar credits at current rates for the next 15 years, and then at dramatically lower rates. But Veronica Young is quick to admit that part of what inspired her and her family to go solar was that “we truly hate PG&E” because the company isn’t managing the environment and wildfire risk well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“PG&E has not done what they should have,” she said. “And because of that, the customer is being punished. We’re the ones paying the lawsuits that they lost.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Young and her mother don’t buy the arguments about equity, even though the family is African American. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Veronica did not grow up poor, but I did. And so I do understand that part of it,” Cooper said. “I have family who couldn’t afford to do this, and I understand those issues, but I don’t feel like I need to be made responsible for what others are doing. I’m taking responsibility for my own situation.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cooper says she and her husband worked hard to buy this house back in 1984, so she could provide her daughter with all the privileges of a middle-class upbringing. She intends to keep her home updated so she can pass it on to her daughter and share the generational wealth she’s accumulated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A lot of the people who do solar aren’t exactly truly rich,” Young said. “I think they’re like us, who are [a] middle-class family who want to get off from paying unpredictable energy bills.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Finally, Some Hope on the Climate Front: Global Temperatures Will Stop Rising, If We Act Fast",
"headTitle": "Finally, Some Hope on the Climate Front: Global Temperatures Will Stop Rising, If We Act Fast | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>One of the biggest obstacles to avoiding global climate breakdown is that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1977314/climate-change-is-here-its-bad-heres-what-you-can-do\">so many people think there’s nothing we can do\u003c/a> about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They point out that record-breaking heat waves, fires and storms are already devastating communities and economies throughout the world. And they’ve long been told that temperatures will keep rising for decades to come, no matter how many solar panels replace oil derricks or how many meat-eaters go vegetarian. No wonder they think we’re doomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' citation='The authors']‘Understanding that we can still save our civilization if we take strong, fast action can banish the despair that paralyzes people and instead motivate them to get involved.’[/pullquote]But climate science actually doesn’t say this. To the contrary, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-60-minutes-emissions-warming.php\">best climate science you’ve probably never heard of\u003c/a> suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses and all of us take strong action starting now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many years, the scientific rule of thumb was that a sizable amount of temperature rise was locked into Earth’s climate system. Scientists believed — and told policymakers and journalists, who in turn told the public — that even if humanity hypothetically halted all heat-trapping emissions overnight, carbon dioxide’s long lifetime in the atmosphere, combined with the sluggish thermal properties of the oceans, would nevertheless keep global temperatures rising for 30 to 40 more years. Since shifting to a zero-carbon global economy would take at least a decade or two, temperatures were bound to keep rising for at least another half-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"160\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-768x767.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/a>But guided by subsequent research, scientists dramatically revised that lag time estimate down to as little as three to five years. That is an enormous difference that carries paradigm-shifting and broadly hopeful implications for how people, especially young people, think and feel about the climate emergency and how societies can respond to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This revised science means that if humanity slashes emissions to zero, global temperatures will stop rising almost immediately. To be clear, this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Global temperatures also will not fall if emissions go to zero, so the planet’s ice will keep melting and sea levels will keep rising. But global temperatures will stop their relentless climb, buying humanity time to devise ways to deal with such unavoidable impacts. In short, we are not irrevocably doomed — or at least we don’t have to be, if we take bold, rapid action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science we’re referencing was included — but inadvertently buried — in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/\">United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report\u003c/a>, issued in August. Indeed, it was first featured in the IPCC’s landmark 2018 report, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Full_Report_High_Res.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Global warming of 1.5°C\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID=science_1977314]\u003c/span>That report’s key finding — that global emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate disruption — generated headlines declaring that we had “12 years to save the planet.” That 12-year timeline, and the related concept of a “carbon budget” — the amount of carbon that can be burned while still limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — were both rooted in this revised science. Meanwhile, the public and policy worlds have largely neglected the revised science that enabled these very estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonscientists can reasonably ask: What made scientists change their minds? Why should we believe their new estimate of a three-to-five-year lag time if their previous estimate of 30 to 40 years is now known to be incorrect? And does the world still have to cut emissions in half by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer to the last question is yes. Remember, temperatures only stop rising once global emissions fall to zero. Currently, emissions are not falling. Instead, humanity continues to pump approximately 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere. The longer it takes to cut those 36 billion tons to zero, the more temperature rise humanity eventually will face. And as the IPCC’s 2018 report made hauntingly clear, warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would cause unspeakable amounts of human suffering, economic loss and social breakdown — and perhaps trigger genuinely irreversible impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' citation='The authors']‘If we want a livable future for today’s young people, temperature rise must be kept as close as possible to 1.5 C. The best climate science most people have never heard of says \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-13/cop26-glasgow-climate-change\">that goal remains within reach.\u003c/a>‘[/pullquote]Scientists changed their minds about how much warming is locked in because additional research gave them a much better understanding of how the climate system works. Their initial 30-to-40-year estimates were based on relatively simple computer models that treated the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a “control knob” that determines temperature levels. The long lag in the warming impact is due to the oceans, which continue to warm long after the control knob is turned up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More recent climate models account for the more dynamic nature of carbon emissions. Yes, CO2 pushes temperatures higher, but carbon “sinks,” including forests and in particular the oceans, absorb almost half of the CO2 that is emitted, causing atmospheric CO2 levels to drop, offsetting the delayed warming effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowing that 30 more years of rising temperatures are not necessarily locked in can be a game-changer for how people, governments and businesses respond to the climate crisis. Understanding that we can still save our civilization if we take strong, fast action can banish the despair that paralyzes people and instead motivate them to get involved. Lifestyle changes can help, but that involvement must also include political engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slashing emissions in half by 2030 demands the fastest possible transition away from today’s fossil-fueled economies in favor of wind, solar and other non-carbon alternatives. That can happen only if governments enact dramatically different policies. If citizens understand that things aren’t hopeless, they can better push elected officials to make such changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s record wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest illustrated just how deadly climate change can be in the United States. Yet minimizing temperature rise matters even more in the highly climate-vulnerable communities throughout the global south. Countless people in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Madagascar, Africa’s Sahel nations, Brazil, Honduras and other countries have already been suffering from climate disasters for decades because their communities tend to be more exposed to climate impacts and have less financial capacity to protect themselves. For millions of people in such countries, limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is not a scientific abstraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC’s most recent report, released this week, addresses how societies can adapt to the temperature rise now underway and the fires, storms and rising seas it unleashes. If we want a livable future for today’s young people, temperature rise must be kept as close as possible to 1.5 C. The best climate science most people have never heard of says that goal \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-13/cop26-glasgow-climate-change\">remains within reach\u003c/a>. The question is whether enough of us will act on that knowledge in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article from The Washington Post is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Hertsgaard is the executive director of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story. Follow him on\u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/markhertsgaard\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Saleemul Huq is the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Follow him on \u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/SaleemulHuq\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Michael E. Mann is a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of “The New Climate War.” Follow him on\u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/@MichaelEMann\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But climate science actually doesn’t say this. To the contrary, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-60-minutes-emissions-warming.php\">best climate science you’ve probably never heard of\u003c/a> suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses and all of us take strong action starting now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many years, the scientific rule of thumb was that a sizable amount of temperature rise was locked into Earth’s climate system. Scientists believed — and told policymakers and journalists, who in turn told the public — that even if humanity hypothetically halted all heat-trapping emissions overnight, carbon dioxide’s long lifetime in the atmosphere, combined with the sluggish thermal properties of the oceans, would nevertheless keep global temperatures rising for 30 to 40 more years. Since shifting to a zero-carbon global economy would take at least a decade or two, temperatures were bound to keep rising for at least another half-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"160\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-768x767.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/a>But guided by subsequent research, scientists dramatically revised that lag time estimate down to as little as three to five years. That is an enormous difference that carries paradigm-shifting and broadly hopeful implications for how people, especially young people, think and feel about the climate emergency and how societies can respond to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This revised science means that if humanity slashes emissions to zero, global temperatures will stop rising almost immediately. To be clear, this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Global temperatures also will not fall if emissions go to zero, so the planet’s ice will keep melting and sea levels will keep rising. But global temperatures will stop their relentless climb, buying humanity time to devise ways to deal with such unavoidable impacts. In short, we are not irrevocably doomed — or at least we don’t have to be, if we take bold, rapid action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science we’re referencing was included — but inadvertently buried — in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/\">United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report\u003c/a>, issued in August. Indeed, it was first featured in the IPCC’s landmark 2018 report, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Full_Report_High_Res.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Global warming of 1.5°C\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>That report’s key finding — that global emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate disruption — generated headlines declaring that we had “12 years to save the planet.” That 12-year timeline, and the related concept of a “carbon budget” — the amount of carbon that can be burned while still limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — were both rooted in this revised science. Meanwhile, the public and policy worlds have largely neglected the revised science that enabled these very estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonscientists can reasonably ask: What made scientists change their minds? Why should we believe their new estimate of a three-to-five-year lag time if their previous estimate of 30 to 40 years is now known to be incorrect? And does the world still have to cut emissions in half by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer to the last question is yes. Remember, temperatures only stop rising once global emissions fall to zero. Currently, emissions are not falling. Instead, humanity continues to pump approximately 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere. The longer it takes to cut those 36 billion tons to zero, the more temperature rise humanity eventually will face. And as the IPCC’s 2018 report made hauntingly clear, warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would cause unspeakable amounts of human suffering, economic loss and social breakdown — and perhaps trigger genuinely irreversible impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘If we want a livable future for today’s young people, temperature rise must be kept as close as possible to 1.5 C. The best climate science most people have never heard of says \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-13/cop26-glasgow-climate-change\">that goal remains within reach.\u003c/a>‘",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Scientists changed their minds about how much warming is locked in because additional research gave them a much better understanding of how the climate system works. Their initial 30-to-40-year estimates were based on relatively simple computer models that treated the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a “control knob” that determines temperature levels. The long lag in the warming impact is due to the oceans, which continue to warm long after the control knob is turned up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More recent climate models account for the more dynamic nature of carbon emissions. Yes, CO2 pushes temperatures higher, but carbon “sinks,” including forests and in particular the oceans, absorb almost half of the CO2 that is emitted, causing atmospheric CO2 levels to drop, offsetting the delayed warming effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowing that 30 more years of rising temperatures are not necessarily locked in can be a game-changer for how people, governments and businesses respond to the climate crisis. Understanding that we can still save our civilization if we take strong, fast action can banish the despair that paralyzes people and instead motivate them to get involved. Lifestyle changes can help, but that involvement must also include political engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slashing emissions in half by 2030 demands the fastest possible transition away from today’s fossil-fueled economies in favor of wind, solar and other non-carbon alternatives. That can happen only if governments enact dramatically different policies. If citizens understand that things aren’t hopeless, they can better push elected officials to make such changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s record wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest illustrated just how deadly climate change can be in the United States. Yet minimizing temperature rise matters even more in the highly climate-vulnerable communities throughout the global south. Countless people in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Madagascar, Africa’s Sahel nations, Brazil, Honduras and other countries have already been suffering from climate disasters for decades because their communities tend to be more exposed to climate impacts and have less financial capacity to protect themselves. For millions of people in such countries, limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is not a scientific abstraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC’s most recent report, released this week, addresses how societies can adapt to the temperature rise now underway and the fires, storms and rising seas it unleashes. If we want a livable future for today’s young people, temperature rise must be kept as close as possible to 1.5 C. The best climate science most people have never heard of says that goal \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-13/cop26-glasgow-climate-change\">remains within reach\u003c/a>. The question is whether enough of us will act on that knowledge in time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article from The Washington Post is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Hertsgaard is the executive director of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story. Follow him on\u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/markhertsgaard\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Saleemul Huq is the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Follow him on \u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/SaleemulHuq\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Michael E. Mann is a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of “The New Climate War.” Follow him on\u003ca class=\"font-xxxs gray-dark pointer nowrap truncate\" href=\"https://twitter.com/@MichaelEMann\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\"> \u003cspan class=\"dib b bb bc-gray\" data-sc-v=\"6.5.3\" data-sc-c=\"twitterlink\">Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Level Rise Predictions",
"headTitle": "Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Level Rise Predictions | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The county in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatecentral.org/pdfs/SLR-CA-SM-PressRelease.pdf\">most at risk from sea level rise\u003c/a> is San Mateo, with nearly 100,000 people — half residents of color — living just three feet above the high-tide line. If climate models prove correct, rising seas \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanmateocourt.org/documents/grand_jury/2020/Sea%20Level%20Rise.pdf\">threaten billions of dollars of homes and businesses\u003c/a>, and hundreds of contaminated sites could harm residents if flooded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re at ground zero for the state, so it’s our responsibility to act,” said Len Materman, who leads the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, or \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/\">OneShoreline\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sea levels along the California coastline, including the San Francisco Bay, could rise 7 to 21 inches by the year 2050, depending on how much and how quickly the world’s countries manage to cut carbon dioxide emissions. By the end of the century, with little drop in emissions, \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html\">seas could rise by as much as 6.5 feet\u003c/a>, according to a national study released last week. That’s from the climate emergency alone; storms, king tides and sinking land add inches to those estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 2050 numbers are a little lower than those in a similar 2017 report, it’s nonetheless distressing news for Black, Latino, Middle Eastern and Asian communities that ring the San Francisco Bay. Places like the Alviso neighborhood in San Jose, Richmond, East Palo Alto, Marin City and Bayview-Hunters Point already flood yearly during king tides or big storms. In most of these places, Bay Area scientists believe rising groundwater could push up legacy contamination in the soil, harming people’s health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay Area is definitely a hot spot,” said \u003ca href=\"https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/people/rachel-morello-frosch/\">Rachel Morello-Frosch\u003c/a>. Frosch is co-leading a UC Berkeley-UCLA project called \u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/toxictides\">Toxic Tides\u003c/a>, which maps contaminated sites, sea level rise and the communities most at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial/video/7059492308387007791\" data-video-id=\"7059492308387007791\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqedofficial\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kqedofficial\u003c/a> Lauren Mims of Marin City’s \u003ca title=\"poem\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/poem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#poem\u003c/a> speaks to the climate crisis affecting her community. 🗣\u003ca title=\"climatechange\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatechange\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatechange\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climateaction\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climateaction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climateaction\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"youth4climate\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/youth4climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#youth4climate\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - kqed\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7059492294818417455\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ original sound – kqed\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you think about the coast, people think about Malibu, mansions and people living by beaches,” she said. “We want to focus on … not only knowing about the facilities that are at risk but the communities that live nearby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One area of concern is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Near Sausalito, tiny Marin City lies adjacent to Highway 101 and the bay, and is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/07/11/sea-of-white-marin-segregation-detailed-in-uc-study/\">only predominantly Black community in Marin County\u003c/a>. Many residents there are the direct descendants of Black people who settled in the city in the 1940s to help build ships for World War II. All these years later, residents are beginning to test for remnants of legacy contamination throughout the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During atmospheric rivers in October 2021, heavy rain flooded the single entrance into Marin City with multiple feet of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to walk through floodwaters that are filled with toxins from the groundwater that’s actually mixing with the sewer water,” said Chinaka Green, a Marin City resident who said she disposed of her wet clothes because of the contaminated water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother, \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrie-green-84136414\">Terrie Green\u003c/a>, director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/MCCRHJ\">Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice\u003c/a>, along with a group of teenage climate activists, are appealing to the state for action on flooding. They say the county won’t invest in the unincorporated area because of the color of residents’ skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want the Black and Brown people out of here,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when thinking about multiple feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, Green says that kind of flooding already happens during storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what attention are we getting?” she said of the lack of long-term planning to protect Marin City from worse flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With communities of color already on the line because of existing inequities, the new federal projections show just how important it is to plan for the full range of projected sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make no mistake, sea level rise is upon us,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/nicole-leboeuf-named-director-of-noaa-s-national-ocean-service\">Nicole LeBoeuf\u003c/a>, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/welcome.html\">National Ocean Service\u003c/a> director, during a webinar on the updated sea level rise outcomes. “We do recognize that there are communities around our coastlines that are more vulnerable to these kinds of impacts because of their history and being underserved to begin with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Emissions do matter’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The new national report forecasts frequent flooding on the California coastline due to sea level rise of as much as 21 inches by 2050, 6.5 feet by the end of the century, and more than 12 feet by 2150. If emissions continue to escalate, some sea level rise scientists worry these upper limits could become a reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Emissions do matter,” said \u003ca href=\"https://polar.ucsd.edu/people/susheel-adusumilli/\">Susheel Adusumilli\u003c/a>, a postdoctoral researcher who studies sea level rise and changes in ice sheets at the \u003ca href=\"https://scripps.ucsd.edu/\">Scripps Institution of Oceanography\u003c/a>. “If you have high emissions, then it’s just going to be a widespread massive impact on communities in coastal areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report, led by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/\">NOAA\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/\">NASA\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usgs.gov/\">U.S. Geological Survey\u003c/a> and other federal agencies, updates federal sea level rise projections from 2017. It underscores how sea level rise brought on by human-caused climate change cannot be ignored and demands an all-hands-on-deck approach to preparing for encroaching seas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial/video/6958207339358850309\" data-video-id=\"6958207339358850309\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqedofficial\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kqedofficial\u003c/a> Parts of East Palo Alto are in danger of being underwater by 2050. \u003ca title=\"bayareatiktok\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/bayareatiktok\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#bayareatiktok\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climatecrisis\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatecrisis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatecrisis\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"paloalto\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/paloalto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#paloalto\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climatechangeisreal\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatechangeisreal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatechangeisreal\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climateemergency\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climateemergency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climateemergency\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - kqed\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-6958207288175823621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ original sound – kqed\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using data from tide gauges, satellites and computer modeling, the authors were able to project sea level rise with greater certainty up to 2050 than they’d been able to do before, and have extended their projections long into the future. The two leading causes of the rising tides are directly related to the continued burning of fossil fuels: Seas rise as ice sheets and glaciers melt and because ocean water expands as it warms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we keep emissions down, you start to take some of those very rapid, high-impact sea level processes off the table,” said \u003ca href=\"https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/hamlington/\">Ben Hamlington\u003c/a>, one of the report’s authors and a scientist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/\">NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u003c/a> in Southern California. “There’s still quite a bit of uncertainty about the melting of the ice sheets. They could really play a big role in those higher-end scenarios here in California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Hamlington says is significant about this update is that tidal gauge observations almost mirror the intermediate levels of sea level rise of nearly 10 inches on the West Coast by 2050. That suggests the intermediate sea level rise projections, rather than the higher ones, may be more accurate for California. But after the mid-century mark, he says, the “uncertainty range blows up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since real-time tidal gauge observations closely track with climate models, \u003ca href=\"https://climateadapt.ucsd.edu/about/team/mark/\">Mark Merrifield\u003c/a>, director of the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation at the Scripps Institution, says it’s critical to take swift action on climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we assume the worst-case scenarios … we’re going to be facing a sea level rise problem here that will far outpace what we’ve been dealing with in the past,” he said. “There’s literally no end in sight if we keep going on the same trajectory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2050 predictions are slightly lower than those of a few years ago, and that’s because science has improved. However, researchers note that it all depends on carbon dioxide emissions and local factors like subsidence, storm surge, waves and groundwater levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In some cases, it’s going actually to inundate and flood low-lying zones,” said Merrifield. “Places that have been built on reclaimed land, and the water tables going up with the sea level, are areas that are going to be particularly vulnerable as time goes on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Where was God?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Low-lying communities around the lip of the San Francisco Bay, like East Palo Alto on the peninsula, are already vulnerable to nuisance flooding from rain, king tides and contaminated groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>East Palo Alto sits within a federally designated flood zone. According to projections, in 10 years or so, up to two-thirds of the land within city limits may regularly flood. By mid-century, those areas could be frequently underwater during high tides. Flooding of that magnitude would stress major flex points for the entire Bay Area, such as Highway 101 and the Dumbarton Bridge. That would burden many residents already dealing with inequities like homelessness, joblessness or poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1975433\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1975433\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a marigold colored sundress and a long white-haired man in light blue stand and sit in their front yard surrounded by plants and an American Flag waves in the wind. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Dee Uhila and Senita Uhila at their home in East Palo Alto on March 29, 2021. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“If you were to get to know 100 families in East Palo Alto, maybe 50 out of 100 already are right at that point at which savings are so low that … a flood event … could be that tipping point,” said \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/derek-ouyang\">Derek Ouyang\u003c/a>, a program manager and lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://bay.stanford.edu/\">Stanford Future Bay Initiative\u003c/a>, who works with community leaders in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some in East Palo Alto, flooding and climate change are threatening their homes for a second time. Climate refugees here from the Pacific Islands have already fled rising seas, only to face similar threats in a new country several thousand miles away. Appollonia Grey ‘Uhilamoelangi of Samoa, known as Mama Dee in her East Palo Alto community, founded \u003ca href=\"https://anamatangi.org/\">‘Anamatangi Polynesian Voices\u003c/a> as a bridge between the city and its Polynesian residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last two floods over here, the question is, where was God?” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe in prayers. But I lived through so many disasters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in East Palo Alto — and commuters across the Dumbarton Bridge — will be protected, in part, once a new, high levee is built, separating a portion of the city from a creek nearby that connects to the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating flood protection for existing communities like East Palo Alto is essential because the new federal report found that moderate flooding, which already happens during king tides or storms, will likely arise 10 times more often by mid-century than it does today.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We’re not prepared’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While sea level rise predictions have become more definitive up to 2050, Zack Wasserman, chair of the San Francisco \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/\">Bay Conservation and Development Commission\u003c/a>, or BCDC, says the forecasts only confirm what the agency already knows: A slow-moving disaster is coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The difference in potential damage between 7 feet and 10 feet [past the year 2100] has some significance, but today, we’re not prepared for either,” he said of the more extreme climate models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wasserman says the slight adjustment in the near term gives BCDC a little more time to prepare and involve more agencies, cities and counties into a Bay Area-wide plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This report just demonstrates the need for us to continue our efforts and, to some extent, to accelerate our efforts,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/contact-us/\">Jessica Fain\u003c/a>, director of planning for the agency, says she’s glad the projections extend to 2150. This allows her team to plan even further into the future, which is vital because the state agency is spearheading a regional sea level rise adaptation plan, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Bay Adapt\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s 70 years away, the lifetime of a person who was born today,” she said. “So, having these further-out numbers to think about is really valuable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Planning with confidence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California sea level planners are taking the new update seriously. Kelsey Ducklow, a coastal resilience coordinator at the California Coastal Commission, says it will likely take a year to incorporate the recent federal data into the state’s climate plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having more confidence in what the sea level rise impacts are going to be over the next 30 years gives more confidence about the actions that we can take,” Ducklow said of the more secure levels of sea level rise projected by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973928\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973928\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level.jpg\" alt=\"A four-lane highway with water on either side and hazy blue sky above and mirroring in the plane of water. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1279\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Dumbarton Bridge near the East Palo Alto shoreline and other Bay Area infrastructure are at major risk of flooding as sea level rise accelerates. \u003ccite>(JJ Harris/Techboogie/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But she admits that any projects in play in California — highways, homes, buildings — have life spans beyond the 2050 time frame and are why it’s essential to plan for the more extreme projections after mid-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Susheel Adusumilli, from the Scripps Institution, is collecting data to rework the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20180314/Item3_Exhibit-A_OPC_SLR_Guidance-rd3.pdf\">2018 sea level rise guidance\u003c/a>. He says rising tides could be worse for some regions of California, like Foster City in San Mateo County, where he says the land is sinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also says that the California update, to come in 2023, needs to detail how Black, Middle Eastern, Latino and Asian communities will suffer economically because of rising tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California’s a rich state, and if California adapts to sea level rise in an equitable way … it will be heard around the world,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An aggressive approach\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sea level rise planners in San Mateo County are readying the entire shoreline — from East Palo Alto to Brisbane — for 10 feet of extra water above today’s high tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This level of protection goes well above the new federal predictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an aggressive number so that in this century, we’re not going to see overtopping if we pick that number,” said Materman of OneShoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To protect the hundreds of thousands of people, tech giants and infrastructure from San Mateo County that support the entire Bay Area, Materman says choosing not to be conservative when planning for rising tides is a no-brainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Forty years from now, I don’t want people to look back on our agency and say, ‘Oh, you trusted a report back in 2022, which under-assumed what the damage would be. So, now we have to go in and raise everything,’” he said. “That’s not what we’re about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The county in California most at risk from sea level rise is San Mateo, with nearly 100,000 people — half residents of color — living just three feet above the high tide line. Across the Bay, many communities of color are facing a similar risk.",
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"description": "The county in California most at risk from sea level rise is San Mateo, with nearly 100,000 people — half residents of color — living just three feet above the high tide line. Across the Bay, many communities of color are facing a similar risk.",
"title": "Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Level Rise Predictions | KQED",
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"headline": "Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Level Rise Predictions",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The county in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatecentral.org/pdfs/SLR-CA-SM-PressRelease.pdf\">most at risk from sea level rise\u003c/a> is San Mateo, with nearly 100,000 people — half residents of color — living just three feet above the high-tide line. If climate models prove correct, rising seas \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanmateocourt.org/documents/grand_jury/2020/Sea%20Level%20Rise.pdf\">threaten billions of dollars of homes and businesses\u003c/a>, and hundreds of contaminated sites could harm residents if flooded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re at ground zero for the state, so it’s our responsibility to act,” said Len Materman, who leads the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, or \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/\">OneShoreline\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sea levels along the California coastline, including the San Francisco Bay, could rise 7 to 21 inches by the year 2050, depending on how much and how quickly the world’s countries manage to cut carbon dioxide emissions. By the end of the century, with little drop in emissions, \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html\">seas could rise by as much as 6.5 feet\u003c/a>, according to a national study released last week. That’s from the climate emergency alone; storms, king tides and sinking land add inches to those estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 2050 numbers are a little lower than those in a similar 2017 report, it’s nonetheless distressing news for Black, Latino, Middle Eastern and Asian communities that ring the San Francisco Bay. Places like the Alviso neighborhood in San Jose, Richmond, East Palo Alto, Marin City and Bayview-Hunters Point already flood yearly during king tides or big storms. In most of these places, Bay Area scientists believe rising groundwater could push up legacy contamination in the soil, harming people’s health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay Area is definitely a hot spot,” said \u003ca href=\"https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/people/rachel-morello-frosch/\">Rachel Morello-Frosch\u003c/a>. Frosch is co-leading a UC Berkeley-UCLA project called \u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/toxictides\">Toxic Tides\u003c/a>, which maps contaminated sites, sea level rise and the communities most at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial/video/7059492308387007791\" data-video-id=\"7059492308387007791\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqedofficial\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kqedofficial\u003c/a> Lauren Mims of Marin City’s \u003ca title=\"poem\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/poem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#poem\u003c/a> speaks to the climate crisis affecting her community. 🗣\u003ca title=\"climatechange\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatechange\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatechange\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climateaction\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climateaction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climateaction\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"youth4climate\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/youth4climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#youth4climate\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - kqed\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7059492294818417455\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ original sound – kqed\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you think about the coast, people think about Malibu, mansions and people living by beaches,” she said. “We want to focus on … not only knowing about the facilities that are at risk but the communities that live nearby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One area of concern is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Near Sausalito, tiny Marin City lies adjacent to Highway 101 and the bay, and is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/07/11/sea-of-white-marin-segregation-detailed-in-uc-study/\">only predominantly Black community in Marin County\u003c/a>. Many residents there are the direct descendants of Black people who settled in the city in the 1940s to help build ships for World War II. All these years later, residents are beginning to test for remnants of legacy contamination throughout the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During atmospheric rivers in October 2021, heavy rain flooded the single entrance into Marin City with multiple feet of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to walk through floodwaters that are filled with toxins from the groundwater that’s actually mixing with the sewer water,” said Chinaka Green, a Marin City resident who said she disposed of her wet clothes because of the contaminated water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother, \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrie-green-84136414\">Terrie Green\u003c/a>, director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/MCCRHJ\">Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice\u003c/a>, along with a group of teenage climate activists, are appealing to the state for action on flooding. They say the county won’t invest in the unincorporated area because of the color of residents’ skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want the Black and Brown people out of here,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when thinking about multiple feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, Green says that kind of flooding already happens during storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what attention are we getting?” she said of the lack of long-term planning to protect Marin City from worse flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With communities of color already on the line because of existing inequities, the new federal projections show just how important it is to plan for the full range of projected sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make no mistake, sea level rise is upon us,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/nicole-leboeuf-named-director-of-noaa-s-national-ocean-service\">Nicole LeBoeuf\u003c/a>, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/welcome.html\">National Ocean Service\u003c/a> director, during a webinar on the updated sea level rise outcomes. “We do recognize that there are communities around our coastlines that are more vulnerable to these kinds of impacts because of their history and being underserved to begin with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Emissions do matter’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The new national report forecasts frequent flooding on the California coastline due to sea level rise of as much as 21 inches by 2050, 6.5 feet by the end of the century, and more than 12 feet by 2150. If emissions continue to escalate, some sea level rise scientists worry these upper limits could become a reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Emissions do matter,” said \u003ca href=\"https://polar.ucsd.edu/people/susheel-adusumilli/\">Susheel Adusumilli\u003c/a>, a postdoctoral researcher who studies sea level rise and changes in ice sheets at the \u003ca href=\"https://scripps.ucsd.edu/\">Scripps Institution of Oceanography\u003c/a>. “If you have high emissions, then it’s just going to be a widespread massive impact on communities in coastal areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report, led by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/\">NOAA\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/\">NASA\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usgs.gov/\">U.S. Geological Survey\u003c/a> and other federal agencies, updates federal sea level rise projections from 2017. It underscores how sea level rise brought on by human-caused climate change cannot be ignored and demands an all-hands-on-deck approach to preparing for encroaching seas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial/video/6958207339358850309\" data-video-id=\"6958207339358850309\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqedofficial\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqedofficial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kqedofficial\u003c/a> Parts of East Palo Alto are in danger of being underwater by 2050. \u003ca title=\"bayareatiktok\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/bayareatiktok\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#bayareatiktok\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climatecrisis\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatecrisis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatecrisis\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"paloalto\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/paloalto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#paloalto\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climatechangeisreal\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climatechangeisreal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climatechangeisreal\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"climateemergency\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/climateemergency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#climateemergency\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - kqed\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-6958207288175823621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ original sound – kqed\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using data from tide gauges, satellites and computer modeling, the authors were able to project sea level rise with greater certainty up to 2050 than they’d been able to do before, and have extended their projections long into the future. The two leading causes of the rising tides are directly related to the continued burning of fossil fuels: Seas rise as ice sheets and glaciers melt and because ocean water expands as it warms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we keep emissions down, you start to take some of those very rapid, high-impact sea level processes off the table,” said \u003ca href=\"https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/hamlington/\">Ben Hamlington\u003c/a>, one of the report’s authors and a scientist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/\">NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u003c/a> in Southern California. “There’s still quite a bit of uncertainty about the melting of the ice sheets. They could really play a big role in those higher-end scenarios here in California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Hamlington says is significant about this update is that tidal gauge observations almost mirror the intermediate levels of sea level rise of nearly 10 inches on the West Coast by 2050. That suggests the intermediate sea level rise projections, rather than the higher ones, may be more accurate for California. But after the mid-century mark, he says, the “uncertainty range blows up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since real-time tidal gauge observations closely track with climate models, \u003ca href=\"https://climateadapt.ucsd.edu/about/team/mark/\">Mark Merrifield\u003c/a>, director of the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation at the Scripps Institution, says it’s critical to take swift action on climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we assume the worst-case scenarios … we’re going to be facing a sea level rise problem here that will far outpace what we’ve been dealing with in the past,” he said. “There’s literally no end in sight if we keep going on the same trajectory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2050 predictions are slightly lower than those of a few years ago, and that’s because science has improved. However, researchers note that it all depends on carbon dioxide emissions and local factors like subsidence, storm surge, waves and groundwater levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In some cases, it’s going actually to inundate and flood low-lying zones,” said Merrifield. “Places that have been built on reclaimed land, and the water tables going up with the sea level, are areas that are going to be particularly vulnerable as time goes on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Where was God?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Low-lying communities around the lip of the San Francisco Bay, like East Palo Alto on the peninsula, are already vulnerable to nuisance flooding from rain, king tides and contaminated groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>East Palo Alto sits within a federally designated flood zone. According to projections, in 10 years or so, up to two-thirds of the land within city limits may regularly flood. By mid-century, those areas could be frequently underwater during high tides. Flooding of that magnitude would stress major flex points for the entire Bay Area, such as Highway 101 and the Dumbarton Bridge. That would burden many residents already dealing with inequities like homelessness, joblessness or poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1975433\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1975433\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a marigold colored sundress and a long white-haired man in light blue stand and sit in their front yard surrounded by plants and an American Flag waves in the wind. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/RS48319_046_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Dee Uhila and Senita Uhila at their home in East Palo Alto on March 29, 2021. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“If you were to get to know 100 families in East Palo Alto, maybe 50 out of 100 already are right at that point at which savings are so low that … a flood event … could be that tipping point,” said \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/derek-ouyang\">Derek Ouyang\u003c/a>, a program manager and lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://bay.stanford.edu/\">Stanford Future Bay Initiative\u003c/a>, who works with community leaders in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some in East Palo Alto, flooding and climate change are threatening their homes for a second time. Climate refugees here from the Pacific Islands have already fled rising seas, only to face similar threats in a new country several thousand miles away. Appollonia Grey ‘Uhilamoelangi of Samoa, known as Mama Dee in her East Palo Alto community, founded \u003ca href=\"https://anamatangi.org/\">‘Anamatangi Polynesian Voices\u003c/a> as a bridge between the city and its Polynesian residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last two floods over here, the question is, where was God?” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe in prayers. But I lived through so many disasters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in East Palo Alto — and commuters across the Dumbarton Bridge — will be protected, in part, once a new, high levee is built, separating a portion of the city from a creek nearby that connects to the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating flood protection for existing communities like East Palo Alto is essential because the new federal report found that moderate flooding, which already happens during king tides or storms, will likely arise 10 times more often by mid-century than it does today.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We’re not prepared’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While sea level rise predictions have become more definitive up to 2050, Zack Wasserman, chair of the San Francisco \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/\">Bay Conservation and Development Commission\u003c/a>, or BCDC, says the forecasts only confirm what the agency already knows: A slow-moving disaster is coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The difference in potential damage between 7 feet and 10 feet [past the year 2100] has some significance, but today, we’re not prepared for either,” he said of the more extreme climate models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wasserman says the slight adjustment in the near term gives BCDC a little more time to prepare and involve more agencies, cities and counties into a Bay Area-wide plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This report just demonstrates the need for us to continue our efforts and, to some extent, to accelerate our efforts,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/contact-us/\">Jessica Fain\u003c/a>, director of planning for the agency, says she’s glad the projections extend to 2150. This allows her team to plan even further into the future, which is vital because the state agency is spearheading a regional sea level rise adaptation plan, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Bay Adapt\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s 70 years away, the lifetime of a person who was born today,” she said. “So, having these further-out numbers to think about is really valuable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Planning with confidence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California sea level planners are taking the new update seriously. Kelsey Ducklow, a coastal resilience coordinator at the California Coastal Commission, says it will likely take a year to incorporate the recent federal data into the state’s climate plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having more confidence in what the sea level rise impacts are going to be over the next 30 years gives more confidence about the actions that we can take,” Ducklow said of the more secure levels of sea level rise projected by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973928\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973928\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level.jpg\" alt=\"A four-lane highway with water on either side and hazy blue sky above and mirroring in the plane of water. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1279\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-sea-level-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Dumbarton Bridge near the East Palo Alto shoreline and other Bay Area infrastructure are at major risk of flooding as sea level rise accelerates. \u003ccite>(JJ Harris/Techboogie/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But she admits that any projects in play in California — highways, homes, buildings — have life spans beyond the 2050 time frame and are why it’s essential to plan for the more extreme projections after mid-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Susheel Adusumilli, from the Scripps Institution, is collecting data to rework the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20180314/Item3_Exhibit-A_OPC_SLR_Guidance-rd3.pdf\">2018 sea level rise guidance\u003c/a>. He says rising tides could be worse for some regions of California, like Foster City in San Mateo County, where he says the land is sinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also says that the California update, to come in 2023, needs to detail how Black, Middle Eastern, Latino and Asian communities will suffer economically because of rising tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California’s a rich state, and if California adapts to sea level rise in an equitable way … it will be heard around the world,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An aggressive approach\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sea level rise planners in San Mateo County are readying the entire shoreline — from East Palo Alto to Brisbane — for 10 feet of extra water above today’s high tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This level of protection goes well above the new federal predictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an aggressive number so that in this century, we’re not going to see overtopping if we pick that number,” said Materman of OneShoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To protect the hundreds of thousands of people, tech giants and infrastructure from San Mateo County that support the entire Bay Area, Materman says choosing not to be conservative when planning for rising tides is a no-brainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Forty years from now, I don’t want people to look back on our agency and say, ‘Oh, you trusted a report back in 2022, which under-assumed what the damage would be. So, now we have to go in and raise everything,’” he said. “That’s not what we’re about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "California Utilities Have Donated $1.67 Million to Grassroots Groups Fighting Rooftop Solar Power",
"headTitle": "California Utilities Have Donated $1.67 Million to Grassroots Groups Fighting Rooftop Solar Power | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>In the fight over California’s rooftop solar policy, a coalition that claims to represent lower-income consumers, seniors and environmental leaders is running ads warning about a cost shift that forces consumers to subsidize solar for people who live in mansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This message, from Affordable Clean Energy for All, is meant to influence the debate as California regulators consider rules that would sharply reduce the financial benefits of owning rooftop systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Affordable Clean Energy for All is not a grassroots movement. It is a public relations campaign sponsored by big utility companies that stand to benefit from policies that hurt rooftop solar. Many of the 100-plus groups that make up the coalition have received charitable donations or other financial support from the utilities. Few of them wanted to talk about the campaign when contacted by Inside Climate News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utilities’ campaign is using what watchdog groups say is a familiar playbook from across the country, with community groups providing a relatable face for advocacy messages that align with those of the utilities. If the result is a policy that hurts rooftop solar, that could be a big setback for California’s push to get to net-zero emissions, an effort that is counting on a continued expansion of solar and other customer-owned energy systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as some environmentalists question the coalition’s motives, the group’s message resonates with some consumers because there is little dispute that upper- and middle-income households have gotten a disproportionately large share of solar subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, many community groups say inequities can be addressed in a way that accelerates building rooftop solar and energy storage, with an emphasis on helping people who struggle the most to pay utility bills and are more likely than others to feel the effects of a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is “poppycock” for the utilities to claim to be the ones standing up for equity, said the Rev. Ambrose Carroll, a pastor of an Oakland church and executive director of Green the Church, a nonprofit that works with Black churches on environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very disingenuous and it is a move of power to, on a whim, decide to co-sign for the name of equity and put its name onto something,” Carroll said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His organization is one of the co-founders of the Coalition for Environmental Equity and Economics, or CEEE, which sees rooftop solar as an essential part of democratizing the energy system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For groups like his, Affordable Clean Energy for All is pure “Astroturf,” or fake grassroots, and the latest of many examples of utilities using their philanthropy to nudge community groups to take stances that may be contrary to the groups’ interests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978425\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"678\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic-160x167.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nIndeed, there has been a pattern of groups who represent lower-income consumers and communities of color agreeing to sign on as supporters for utilities’ agendas, said Esperanza Vielma, executive director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. Her organization is another co-founder of CEEE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not blaming those people who are part of that coalition,” she said, about Affordable Clean Energy for All. “I am blaming [the utilities] for using them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement made on behalf of Affordable Clean Energy for All, spokesperson Kathy Fairbanks called the Astroturf label “ridiculous,” and said that each coalition member chose to join “based on the best interests of the constituencies they represent. To suggest otherwise is offensive and demeaning to these organizations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our coalition was established to educate and engage diverse organizations whose memberships are negatively impacted by the state’s 25-year-old rooftop subsidy,” Fairbanks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She added that the coalition’s members support rooftop solar. “This policy discussion has never been about whether rooftop solar will or should continue in California. It’s about how much the subsidies should be and who should pay for them,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Affordable Energy for All has sponsored television and radio ads, and a website, FixtheCostShift.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A major flaw in California policy is forcing consumers who can’t afford rooftop solar to subsidize wealthier homeowners who can,” a narrator says in a television ad showing a mansion with solar panels, followed by images of beleaguered consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coalition spent nearly $840,000 on television and radio ads to air in California from mid-January through late February, according to data compiled by Kantar/CMAG. Christine Arena, a former public relations and marketing executive and founder of a social media impact company, said that figure isn’t unusual, but called it an “aggressive” messaging campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A big step backward’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is the nation’s leader in rooftop solar and home to influential solar business and advocacy groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state helped to build its market for rooftop solar with decades of incentive programs. One long-standing incentive is “net metering,” which means that customers with rooftop solar can sell excess electricity back to the grid and receive a utility bill credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California utility regulators have said that the continued growth of rooftop solar has meant that consumers with solar are paying low utility bills, which leads to a shift in which non-solar customers are paying more to help cover the costs of maintaining the grid. The Public Advocates Office, an independent consumer advocate within the California Public Utilities Commission, has estimated that current solar policies lead to billions of dollars of subsidies for rooftop solar owners that are paid for by other consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the benefits have gone to middle- or upper-income households, but solar is becoming more accessible to people with lower incomes, according to several studies, including one issued last year by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Public Utilities Commission has spent the last few years working on new rules that would aim to reduce or eliminate this cost shift. In December, the panel released a proposed decision that would cut the rates paid to rooftop solar owners for excess electricity and impose a new monthly charge on them that would be the highest in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal is in line with what the state’s major electric utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison — have long wanted. Utilities have campaigned against rooftop solar because they view it as competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the backlash has been strong, with environmental and business groups saying the plan would decimate the rooftop solar industry and damage the push under California law to get to net-zero emissions by 2045. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is among the people urging the commission to reject the proposal. In a recent New York Times op-ed, he said the PUC proposal would make “solar more expensive for everyone” and do “nothing to help our most vulnerable.” He also said it represented “a big step backward” in meeting the state’s emissions goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groups representing the solar industry and environmental advocates have said in filings that the utilities and the Public Advocates Office are overestimating the cost shift and are not grasping the importance of rooftop solar as part of a broader strategy to reduce emissions. The solar and environmental groups have proposed their own revisions to net metering rules, which they say would reduce the cost shift while doing less harm to the solar industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission’s proposal would cause lasting damage to the industry. The market research firm Wood Mackenzie issued a report last month saying the California plan will make rooftop solar much more expensive for customers, which would cut the state’s rooftop solar market in half by 2024 compared to what it would have been otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has concerns about the commission’s proposal. He can’t order changes by the commission, which is an independent body, but he did appoint four of the five members, and his comments are likely to have an influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, the commission said it would not vote on the proposal at its Feb. 10 meeting and that the issue was being put on hold until further notice. This is because one of the commissioners has asked for extra time to review the voluminous testimony and consider making changes to the plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is in this context — a controversial proposal for rooftop solar in the place where rooftop solar is popular — that utilities are working to convince officials and the public that their side is the one standing up for people who struggle to pay utility bills, while the solar industry wants to protect its bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Charitable donations worth $1.67 million to coalition members\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Affordable Clean Energy for All announced its formation in a news release on Feb. 24, 2021, describing itself as a “diverse group of clean energy, seniors, faith-based, community and business groups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The initial release quoted leaders of two groups in the coalition, the California Alliance for Retired Americans and Asians in Energy. It didn’t mention the names of the electricity utilities. (Susie Y. Wong, founder and president of Asians in Energy, said in an email that the organization was an early coalition supporter and is now “neutral” and listening to both sides of the debate.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gil Jaramillo, executive director of the Tulare Kings Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in California’s Central Valley, recalls that he started receiving emails from the coalition about a year ago. Its stated mission — to protect lower-income energy consumers — sounded worthy of support, so he signed on, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairbanks, the spokesperson for Affordable Clean Energy, is a partner in a Sacramento public relations firm that says one of its specialties is “grassroots advocacy.” PG&E and Southern California Edison have paid the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past two years, according to lobbying disclosure forms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Affordable Clean Energy for All didn’t highlight its ties to utilities, but it didn’t hide them either. The three utilities were all listed as members of the organization, among a list of more than 100 organizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a July hearing before the public utilities commission, Carla Peterman, an executive vice president for PG&E, said under cross-examination that she was aware of Affordable Clean Energy for All and that her company had donated to the group. Asked about donations by PG&E to the organizations that are members of the coalition, she said she didn’t have that information available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the donations are public record. A review of the most recent disclosures by utilities of their charitable giving, from 2020, shows that 71 members of the coalition received $1.67 million in donations or some other form of financial support from at least one of the electric utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-three members did not receive money from the utilities, at least not in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The financial ties between the utilities and the members of the coalition are well known by organizations that are part of the case before the commission, and have been reported by the media, including in a Los Angeles Times story in November about the broader debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of members has fluctuated and now is about 125, which includes members listed on the coalition’s website and organizations that are not listed as members but whose leaders signed a Feb. 2 letter to the commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contacted for comment, the utilities referred questions to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Voice to the voiceless’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over several days, Inside Climate News contacted nearly all of the social justice and community advocacy groups listed as coalition members. Most did not respond, though a few either said they didn’t want to discuss their involvement or referred requests for comment to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Rev. Frank Jackson Jr., chair and CEO of Village Solutions Foundation, a coalition member based in Southern California, emailed a statement saying Affordable Clean Energy for All provides a “voice to the voiceless,” adding that while his organization supports rooftop solar, “it’s wrong that people from low-income, our most vulnerable, least able to afford it, communities are paying more in their electric bills to cover the costs for who can, most afford, to take advantage of the benefits of solar panels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked whether Southern California Edison’s recent $50,000 donation to his group influenced his support for the coalition, Jackson said that it was not a factor and that his sole motivation for joining was to relieve the strain of rising utility bills on the lower-income and senior populations he serves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, The Arc of Riverside County’s executive director, Erin Stream, stated in an email that her organization supports ideas that create a more affordable life for the developmentally disabled people they serve, adding that any further questions should go to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Disparate views on equity and energy\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In addition to community groups, Affordable Clean Energy for All includes heavyweights of the business community, like the California Chamber of Commerce, and labor unions, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, whose employees work for the utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coalition and the utilities are far from alone in supporting big changes to net metering. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental advocacy organization, and The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocate, are among the other prominent groups that say there is a harmful cost shift taking place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other side are solar business groups and other environmental advocates, including the California Solar and Storage Association and the Sierra Club, and several coalitions of community groups. The largest coalition is Save California Solar, which includes hundreds of individuals and groups. (Fairbanks, in her emailed statement, noted that utility companies haven’t given only to Affordable Clean Energy for All members. Southern California Edison, she said, had contributed funding to three organizations aligned with Save California Solar.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both sides have made the case that their views would bring more equity to the energy system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, some community organizations have not fully embraced either side and are talking in a more nuanced way about how to make the energy system more equitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The communities we organize with and advocate alongside speak on their own behalf,” said a letter released last year by nine environmental justice organizations, including the California Environmental Justice Alliance. “Our voices will not be co-opted by external parties and interests that do not directly represent us or speak for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hiding behind community groups?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Utilities have shown a pattern of using charitable donations to encourage community groups to support the utilities’ policy priorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group, has investigated these practices, including in a 2019 report, “Strings Attached: How Utilities Use Charitable Giving to Influence Politics and Increase Investor Profits.” The authors found dozens of examples of well-respected community groups that received money from utilities and then took actions to support the utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report did not look closely at California, but David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said he sees the signs of a familiar dynamic in the rooftop solar debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utilities “hide behind groups whom they’re paying to speak on their behalf,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambrose Carroll, the executive director of Green the Church, said he and his organization view rooftop solar as essential for building a fairer energy system. But he added that solar policy is not near the top of the list of concerns in the Black church and Black communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nowhere in our conversation, nowhere on the ground level, are people looking around and saying, ‘Well, there are people in other communities getting solar and now our bills are going up.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He warns that any group should be careful about claiming to speak for a community, and that people should be skeptical when powerful companies are saying they are the ones who have a community’s best interests at heart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "California Utilities Have Donated $1.67 Million to Grassroots Groups Fighting Rooftop Solar Power",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the fight over California’s rooftop solar policy, a coalition that claims to represent lower-income consumers, seniors and environmental leaders is running ads warning about a cost shift that forces consumers to subsidize solar for people who live in mansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This message, from Affordable Clean Energy for All, is meant to influence the debate as California regulators consider rules that would sharply reduce the financial benefits of owning rooftop systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Affordable Clean Energy for All is not a grassroots movement. It is a public relations campaign sponsored by big utility companies that stand to benefit from policies that hurt rooftop solar. Many of the 100-plus groups that make up the coalition have received charitable donations or other financial support from the utilities. Few of them wanted to talk about the campaign when contacted by Inside Climate News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utilities’ campaign is using what watchdog groups say is a familiar playbook from across the country, with community groups providing a relatable face for advocacy messages that align with those of the utilities. If the result is a policy that hurts rooftop solar, that could be a big setback for California’s push to get to net-zero emissions, an effort that is counting on a continued expansion of solar and other customer-owned energy systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as some environmentalists question the coalition’s motives, the group’s message resonates with some consumers because there is little dispute that upper- and middle-income households have gotten a disproportionately large share of solar subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, many community groups say inequities can be addressed in a way that accelerates building rooftop solar and energy storage, with an emphasis on helping people who struggle the most to pay utility bills and are more likely than others to feel the effects of a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is “poppycock” for the utilities to claim to be the ones standing up for equity, said the Rev. Ambrose Carroll, a pastor of an Oakland church and executive director of Green the Church, a nonprofit that works with Black churches on environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very disingenuous and it is a move of power to, on a whim, decide to co-sign for the name of equity and put its name onto something,” Carroll said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His organization is one of the co-founders of the Coalition for Environmental Equity and Economics, or CEEE, which sees rooftop solar as an essential part of democratizing the energy system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For groups like his, Affordable Clean Energy for All is pure “Astroturf,” or fake grassroots, and the latest of many examples of utilities using their philanthropy to nudge community groups to take stances that may be contrary to the groups’ interests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978425\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"678\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/ICN_AffordableCleanEnergy-graphic-160x167.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nIndeed, there has been a pattern of groups who represent lower-income consumers and communities of color agreeing to sign on as supporters for utilities’ agendas, said Esperanza Vielma, executive director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. Her organization is another co-founder of CEEE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not blaming those people who are part of that coalition,” she said, about Affordable Clean Energy for All. “I am blaming [the utilities] for using them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement made on behalf of Affordable Clean Energy for All, spokesperson Kathy Fairbanks called the Astroturf label “ridiculous,” and said that each coalition member chose to join “based on the best interests of the constituencies they represent. To suggest otherwise is offensive and demeaning to these organizations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our coalition was established to educate and engage diverse organizations whose memberships are negatively impacted by the state’s 25-year-old rooftop subsidy,” Fairbanks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She added that the coalition’s members support rooftop solar. “This policy discussion has never been about whether rooftop solar will or should continue in California. It’s about how much the subsidies should be and who should pay for them,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Affordable Energy for All has sponsored television and radio ads, and a website, FixtheCostShift.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A major flaw in California policy is forcing consumers who can’t afford rooftop solar to subsidize wealthier homeowners who can,” a narrator says in a television ad showing a mansion with solar panels, followed by images of beleaguered consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coalition spent nearly $840,000 on television and radio ads to air in California from mid-January through late February, according to data compiled by Kantar/CMAG. Christine Arena, a former public relations and marketing executive and founder of a social media impact company, said that figure isn’t unusual, but called it an “aggressive” messaging campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A big step backward’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is the nation’s leader in rooftop solar and home to influential solar business and advocacy groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state helped to build its market for rooftop solar with decades of incentive programs. One long-standing incentive is “net metering,” which means that customers with rooftop solar can sell excess electricity back to the grid and receive a utility bill credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California utility regulators have said that the continued growth of rooftop solar has meant that consumers with solar are paying low utility bills, which leads to a shift in which non-solar customers are paying more to help cover the costs of maintaining the grid. The Public Advocates Office, an independent consumer advocate within the California Public Utilities Commission, has estimated that current solar policies lead to billions of dollars of subsidies for rooftop solar owners that are paid for by other consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the benefits have gone to middle- or upper-income households, but solar is becoming more accessible to people with lower incomes, according to several studies, including one issued last year by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Public Utilities Commission has spent the last few years working on new rules that would aim to reduce or eliminate this cost shift. In December, the panel released a proposed decision that would cut the rates paid to rooftop solar owners for excess electricity and impose a new monthly charge on them that would be the highest in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal is in line with what the state’s major electric utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison — have long wanted. Utilities have campaigned against rooftop solar because they view it as competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the backlash has been strong, with environmental and business groups saying the plan would decimate the rooftop solar industry and damage the push under California law to get to net-zero emissions by 2045. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is among the people urging the commission to reject the proposal. In a recent New York Times op-ed, he said the PUC proposal would make “solar more expensive for everyone” and do “nothing to help our most vulnerable.” He also said it represented “a big step backward” in meeting the state’s emissions goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groups representing the solar industry and environmental advocates have said in filings that the utilities and the Public Advocates Office are overestimating the cost shift and are not grasping the importance of rooftop solar as part of a broader strategy to reduce emissions. The solar and environmental groups have proposed their own revisions to net metering rules, which they say would reduce the cost shift while doing less harm to the solar industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission’s proposal would cause lasting damage to the industry. The market research firm Wood Mackenzie issued a report last month saying the California plan will make rooftop solar much more expensive for customers, which would cut the state’s rooftop solar market in half by 2024 compared to what it would have been otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has concerns about the commission’s proposal. He can’t order changes by the commission, which is an independent body, but he did appoint four of the five members, and his comments are likely to have an influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, the commission said it would not vote on the proposal at its Feb. 10 meeting and that the issue was being put on hold until further notice. This is because one of the commissioners has asked for extra time to review the voluminous testimony and consider making changes to the plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is in this context — a controversial proposal for rooftop solar in the place where rooftop solar is popular — that utilities are working to convince officials and the public that their side is the one standing up for people who struggle to pay utility bills, while the solar industry wants to protect its bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Charitable donations worth $1.67 million to coalition members\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Affordable Clean Energy for All announced its formation in a news release on Feb. 24, 2021, describing itself as a “diverse group of clean energy, seniors, faith-based, community and business groups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The initial release quoted leaders of two groups in the coalition, the California Alliance for Retired Americans and Asians in Energy. It didn’t mention the names of the electricity utilities. (Susie Y. Wong, founder and president of Asians in Energy, said in an email that the organization was an early coalition supporter and is now “neutral” and listening to both sides of the debate.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gil Jaramillo, executive director of the Tulare Kings Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in California’s Central Valley, recalls that he started receiving emails from the coalition about a year ago. Its stated mission — to protect lower-income energy consumers — sounded worthy of support, so he signed on, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairbanks, the spokesperson for Affordable Clean Energy, is a partner in a Sacramento public relations firm that says one of its specialties is “grassroots advocacy.” PG&E and Southern California Edison have paid the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past two years, according to lobbying disclosure forms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Affordable Clean Energy for All didn’t highlight its ties to utilities, but it didn’t hide them either. The three utilities were all listed as members of the organization, among a list of more than 100 organizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a July hearing before the public utilities commission, Carla Peterman, an executive vice president for PG&E, said under cross-examination that she was aware of Affordable Clean Energy for All and that her company had donated to the group. Asked about donations by PG&E to the organizations that are members of the coalition, she said she didn’t have that information available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the donations are public record. A review of the most recent disclosures by utilities of their charitable giving, from 2020, shows that 71 members of the coalition received $1.67 million in donations or some other form of financial support from at least one of the electric utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-three members did not receive money from the utilities, at least not in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The financial ties between the utilities and the members of the coalition are well known by organizations that are part of the case before the commission, and have been reported by the media, including in a Los Angeles Times story in November about the broader debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of members has fluctuated and now is about 125, which includes members listed on the coalition’s website and organizations that are not listed as members but whose leaders signed a Feb. 2 letter to the commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contacted for comment, the utilities referred questions to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Voice to the voiceless’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over several days, Inside Climate News contacted nearly all of the social justice and community advocacy groups listed as coalition members. Most did not respond, though a few either said they didn’t want to discuss their involvement or referred requests for comment to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Rev. Frank Jackson Jr., chair and CEO of Village Solutions Foundation, a coalition member based in Southern California, emailed a statement saying Affordable Clean Energy for All provides a “voice to the voiceless,” adding that while his organization supports rooftop solar, “it’s wrong that people from low-income, our most vulnerable, least able to afford it, communities are paying more in their electric bills to cover the costs for who can, most afford, to take advantage of the benefits of solar panels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked whether Southern California Edison’s recent $50,000 donation to his group influenced his support for the coalition, Jackson said that it was not a factor and that his sole motivation for joining was to relieve the strain of rising utility bills on the lower-income and senior populations he serves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, The Arc of Riverside County’s executive director, Erin Stream, stated in an email that her organization supports ideas that create a more affordable life for the developmentally disabled people they serve, adding that any further questions should go to Fairbanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Disparate views on equity and energy\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In addition to community groups, Affordable Clean Energy for All includes heavyweights of the business community, like the California Chamber of Commerce, and labor unions, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, whose employees work for the utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coalition and the utilities are far from alone in supporting big changes to net metering. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental advocacy organization, and The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocate, are among the other prominent groups that say there is a harmful cost shift taking place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other side are solar business groups and other environmental advocates, including the California Solar and Storage Association and the Sierra Club, and several coalitions of community groups. The largest coalition is Save California Solar, which includes hundreds of individuals and groups. (Fairbanks, in her emailed statement, noted that utility companies haven’t given only to Affordable Clean Energy for All members. Southern California Edison, she said, had contributed funding to three organizations aligned with Save California Solar.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both sides have made the case that their views would bring more equity to the energy system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, some community organizations have not fully embraced either side and are talking in a more nuanced way about how to make the energy system more equitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The communities we organize with and advocate alongside speak on their own behalf,” said a letter released last year by nine environmental justice organizations, including the California Environmental Justice Alliance. “Our voices will not be co-opted by external parties and interests that do not directly represent us or speak for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hiding behind community groups?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Utilities have shown a pattern of using charitable donations to encourage community groups to support the utilities’ policy priorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group, has investigated these practices, including in a 2019 report, “Strings Attached: How Utilities Use Charitable Giving to Influence Politics and Increase Investor Profits.” The authors found dozens of examples of well-respected community groups that received money from utilities and then took actions to support the utilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report did not look closely at California, but David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said he sees the signs of a familiar dynamic in the rooftop solar debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utilities “hide behind groups whom they’re paying to speak on their behalf,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambrose Carroll, the executive director of Green the Church, said he and his organization view rooftop solar as essential for building a fairer energy system. But he added that solar policy is not near the top of the list of concerns in the Black church and Black communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nowhere in our conversation, nowhere on the ground level, are people looking around and saying, ‘Well, there are people in other communities getting solar and now our bills are going up.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He warns that any group should be careful about claiming to speak for a community, and that people should be skeptical when powerful companies are saying they are the ones who have a community’s best interests at heart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant ",
"headTitle": "A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>After years of controversy, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board assured the public in the fall that eating California crops grown with oil field wastewater “creates no identifiable increased health risks,” based on studies commissioned as part of an extensive Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a review of the science and interviews with a public health scientist affiliated with the project and other experts show that there is scant evidence to support the board’s safety claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='right' citation='Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board']‘The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately.’[/pullquote]The “neutral, third-party consultant” the board retained to conduct the studies, GSI Environmental, has regularly worked for the oil industry. That work includes marshaling evidence to help Chevron, Kern County’s biggest provider of produced water, and other oil giants defend their interests in high-stakes lawsuits around the country and globe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSI did not tell water board officials about its ties to the oil industry, which shared the roughly $3.4 million in costs for the firm’s studies and related work with the water districts that benefit from the distribution of wastewater from oil extraction, known as “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One member of the board’s Food Safety Expert Panel that reviewed GSI’s studies was nominated by Chevron and initially paid by the oil industry, and a second panel member worked as a consultant for an oil company selling produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the expert panel’s own review concluded that GSI’s studies could not answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='left' citation='Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney, Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Law Institute']‘This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes.’[/pullquote]Thomas Borch of Colorado State University, a leading expert on treating and reusing produced water for crop irrigation who was not involved in the project, said that based on the data GSI had and the way they designed the experiments, “they were not able to draw the conclusions they did. Period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, said in a statement via email that his firm agreed with the water board that the studies were performed in “the most technically sound manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clay Rodgers, the water board official who oversaw the Food Safety Project, said he promised the board that if any evidence were ever discovered that produced water was harming people consuming crops, “we would stop it immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the water board’s direction, GSI compiled a list of hundreds of chemicals used in oil operations, then focused on those that might pose health risks. But an absence of information to assess safety dogged the project from the start. Many of the chemicals had never been studied before, or lacked critical details about their use, the board’s panel of experts noted, because the oil companies said doing so would reveal trade secrets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Already there was a data gap there because some of those chemicals don’t have reliable toxicity information,” said John Fleming, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings of the board and its expert panel found no food safety or public health concern, said David Ansolabehere, general manager of the Cawelo Water District, which has taken produced water from Chevron for decades. “Cawelo will continue to test the water based on the regional board’s permit requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978392\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"White steam rises off gray water at a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron's Kern River Oil Field. In the foreground and behind the oval reservoir are brown fields. A long pipeline extends from the far right of the photo to the edge of the reservoir.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steam rises from a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field. Chevron treats the wastewater, then transfers it via pipeline to the reservoir, where it’s blended with surface water and/or groundwater and sent to irrigation canals. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chevron tested for all additives used in the Kern River field for which a testing method approved by the Environmental Protection Agency exists, said Jonathan Harshman, communications advisor for Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley Business Unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet more than a fifth of the chemicals GSI identified — and 60% of those deemed most likely to pose a health risk — lacked both toxicity information and approved testing methods. The water board conceded that the data gaps left “potentially significant unknowns” about the chemicals’ safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they say this is safe,” Fleming said, “it’s based on what chemicals they were able to test.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the “no identifiable increased health risks” assertion applies to just a fraction of potential chemicals in produced water applied to crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Oil’s profligate water use\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In early August, during one of the driest summers on record, Wasco farmer Nate Siemens received a troubling notice from his irrigation district, which is regulated by the Central Valley water board. “Please be aware that this water includes some amount of reclaimed oilfield production water,” it said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978401\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978401\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Almond farmer Nate Siemens stands in front of a large tree on his farm. He's wearing a red and black plaid shirt over a black hoodie, and a silver and gold ball cap. Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family's Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry's wastewater.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family’s Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry’s wastewater. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross, Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant with the Rodale Institute, was shocked. Siemens needed that water. But he’s transitioning his family’s Fat Uncle Farms to organic and wasn’t keen on using the oil industry’s wastewater to irrigate his almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s farming roots in the region predate the rise of Kern County’s oil industry, which produces more than 70% of the state’s oil. He was well aware that climate-polluting pump jacks operate among corporate farms growing miles of water-intensive almonds and pistachios, California’s most valuable export crops. But he had no idea just how entrenched oil operations had become in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kernag.com/caap/crop-reports/crop20_29/crop2020.pdf\">the county’s $7.6 billion agricultural industry\u003c/a> until he received that notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 30 miles southeast of Siemens’s farm, thousands of densely packed pump jacks stretch as far as the eye can see toward the horizon, bobbing robotically as they suck oil and water from wells carved into the denuded landscape of the Kern River Oil Field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pump jacks have pried more than 2 billion barrels from the field since oil was discovered here in 1899. But wresting Kern’s notoriously viscous crude from receding oil reserves requires injecting ever increasing amounts of water and hot steam underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978382\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"690\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst-160x170.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nThat water returns to the surface along with groundwater. The mixture contains arsenic, uranium and other naturally occurring toxic elements, along with potentially hundreds of chemicals used in the extraction process. Since 1985, the ratio of water to oil recovered has more than doubled, from seven barrels of water per barrel of oil to 18 barrels today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a region with less than nine inches of rain in a normal year — the definition of a desert — getting enough water is a perennial concern. Nearly 30 years ago, Chevron struck what a former Cawelo Water District manager called a “win-win” deal to deliver some of the massive amounts of wastewater produced every day to farmers’ fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, more than 38,000 acre-feet of produced water from Chevron and other oil companies hydrates California farmland, including roughly 11% of Kern County’s irrigated farmland. That’s enough to cover about 38,000 football fields with a foot of water, or more than 12.4 billion gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater-160x143.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nChevron treats produced water from its Kern River Oil Field by removing oil from water through gravity separation, then skimming off solids and residual oil before filtering it through walnut hulls. The water then travels several miles by pipeline to a Cawelo holding pond, where it’s blended with surface and groundwater and sent to irrigation canals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first time Seth Shonkoff, a public health scientist with the nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers (PSE) for Healthy Energy and a member of the expert panel, visited the Cawelo holding pond several years ago, he smelled an “extraordinarily strong” whiff of asphalt and crude oil. The same odors were much less offensive when he visited the pond with the panel a few years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either there’s natural variability in the water, Shonkoff said, or someone did something different before experts came to evaluate the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='right' citation='Thomas Borch, Colorado State University']‘We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it. We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.’[/pullquote]Chevron claims that recycling produced water for irrigation allows the company to operate in a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/protecting-the-environment\">sustainable manner\u003c/a>,” by minimizing reliance on fresh water. Yet the massive energy requirements of the extraction process make Kern’s oil one of the world’s most climate-polluting fossil fuels, and Chevron one of California’s top greenhouse gas emitters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has this green reputation, but if you scratch the surface on the oil industry in the state, you quickly discover that that’s not the case at all,” said Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes,” Kretzmann said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Unfit for purpose \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley water board said it focused on crops grown in oil wastewater to address public concerns, which included petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, protests outside the state Capitol and a bill to label food grown with the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) introduced the bill in 2015, after learning that farmers could get organic certification for shunning pesticides while using produced water, and consumers would never know. “I thought that was a real problem,” said Gatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same year, \u003ca href=\"https://sd10.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-03-06-threat-groundwater-posed-improperly-sited-oil-injection-wells-be-explored-senate\">legislators called hearings\u003c/a> to increase scrutiny of oil companies after learning their practices posed risks to protected groundwater, including potential drinking water and irrigation supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately,” said Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, who oversaw the Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Testing crops for harmful chemicals to figure out whether they’re safe to eat may seem logical, but techniques to analyze food for oil-related chemicals are “light years” behind those for detecting the compounds in water and soil, Shonkoff said. He raised the problem repeatedly at panel meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the panel agreed. Its first recommendation to the board was to discontinue crop sampling. It would be far more productive to focus on produced water and irrigated soil, the panel said, using approaches that can reveal the toxicity of the water and soil itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Shonkoff said, “most of the work that was done to test things for chemicals was done in food. Unfortunately, that was, in my professional opinion, a pretty big waste of time and resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data GSI compiled — including the list of chemicals and their hazard profiles — was “way too limited” to draw conclusions about lack of toxicity, said Borch, the Colorado State University professor and produced water expert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean it’s toxic,” said Borch. But there was no way they could conclude that produced water posed no identifiable health risks based on the data they had and their experimental approach, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978406\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg\" alt='A sign is posted behind a chain link fence, protected with strands of barbed wire. The sign, in Spanish and English, reads \"Danger. Hot Water. Keep Away.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron relies on steam injections to extract Kern County’s tarry crude oil from aging formations, then sends the hot wastewater north to the Cawelo Water District via pipeline. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That leaves Siemens, who’s transitioning to organic, in a tough spot. Although produced water isn’t specifically defined under organic standards, organic farmers can’t use water that contains arsenic, a constituent of Kern’s produced water, and most synthetic compounds, like those used in oil and gas operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens stopped watering his orchard for a few weeks after his district notified him about the produced water. “And the trees suffered,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the almond harvest approached, Siemens couldn’t risk losing the trees. He used just enough of the water to keep them alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” he said. “We just didn’t have time to do the research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if Siemens had done the research, it might not have mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it,” said Borch. “We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A failure to disclose\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the biggest hurdles to evaluating the safety of produced water has been oil companies’ unwillingness to reveal key details about the chemicals they put down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before joining the panel, Shonkoff was working on an independent study of fracking for the California Council on Science and Technology, or CCST, when he discovered a dataset he’d never seen before: a list of chemicals used in conventional oil development, from fields in Southern California. At the time, no other location in the country, and maybe the world, required chemical disclosure for conventional operations. The CCST assessment, commissioned by the state, revealed that \u003ca href=\"https://ccst.us/wp-content/uploads/2015SB4-v2ES.pdf\">testing and treatment of produced water used for irrigation might not remove or even detect chemical\u003c/a>s used in fracking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During fracking, operators inject a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep underground to break and then prop open surrounding rock to extract oil or gas. Conventional operations, by contrast, inject high-pressure steam to loosen gooey oil. Wastewater from both conventional and fracking operations falls under the heading of “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Shonkoff dug into the newfound data, and read the permits and regulations for Kern County’s produced water, he realized Chevron and other oil companies could put nearly any additives they wanted down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the water board prohibits using water from fracked wells for irrigation, fracking and conventional operations employ many of the same chemicals, Shonkoff told the board at the panel’s first public meeting. And most compounds used in conventional extraction processes in Kern County, he said, lack the information needed to assess safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s imperative that oil companies disclose not just which chemicals they use in oil and gas production but also the volume and frequency of their use, Shonkoff said. Until then, he said, “I’m not quite sure that we can say with any real level of certainty that this is safe or unsafe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers of the water board said he’d obtained a list of all the chemical compounds oil companies use. But to avoid trade secret information, he said, the board could not get the recipe, which details how often a chemical is used and how much goes down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers said he felt the highest priority was to get a list he could share with the panel members and the public and compensated for not getting the recipe by assuming all the chemicals were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But knowing the hazard associated with a chemical depends on knowing that recipe, the panel concluded. It also requires knowing chemicals’ breakdown products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chemicals are injected under intense heat and pressure into oil reservoirs, where they interact with scores of other compounds, before they’re pulled back to the surface and exposed to air. All these conditions can affect a chemical’s toxicity. And scientists have no good tools to understand how chemical interactions increase toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This assumption that we should be looking for the chemicals that were added to oil and gas operations, and the assumption that they will continue to be those same chemicals after all the processes that they go through, is too big of a leap to make,” Shonkoff said. “Of course, you’re not going to find them, because they most certainly have transformed into other types of chemical constituents by the time things are being monitored and tested for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some chemical additives might degrade into harmless substances, but others can prove more toxic. Shonkoff pointed to glutaraldehyde, a chemical widely used to kill microorganisms that gum up oil and gas extraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glutaraldehyde is toxic to people, he said. Some of its breakdown products are even more toxic, some are less toxic and others are completely unknown because they haven’t been studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we’re talking about hundreds of chemicals, many of which we don’t have good toxicological information on,” Shonkoff said, “the idea that you can really understand the toxicological dimensions of their daughter products, and their transformation products in the presence of other chemicals, is outstripping what we know scientifically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a plant’s own metabolism can affect a chemical’s toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plants could take up chemicals in one form and turn them into something else that’s more harmful, said Fleming of the Center for Biological Diversity. But if you’re just testing for a list of chemicals added to the well, he said, you’re testing for the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, agreed to answer questions only by email. Asked about the focus on testing crops, Scofield offered a carefully worded statement that ended: “We agree with the Water Board and their scientific advisor that this direct testing was the most technically sound manner to address the questions posed in the study.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about the failure to address chemicals’ breakdown products, he responded with the exact same statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a really big assumption baked into the GSI work,” said Shonkoff. The studies assume that the chemicals remain in the same form from the oil field to a consumer’s plate and that it’s sufficient to monitor those particular chemicals, he said. “And that’s obviously incorrect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Still waiting for answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California supplies 99% of the world’s almonds and pistachios, mostly from Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water board regulators say nothing has received more scrutiny than the oil field water that irrigates those crops. “We know more about that produced water than probably any other produced water in the world,” said Rodgers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the evidence is still so scarce, said Colorado State’s Borch, “you can argue both sides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are no established tools to do a “real toxicity analysis,” Borch said, and there’s “not a good framework” to evaluate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a study of treated produced water released into a stream for irrigation in Wyoming, Borch and his colleagues found that most of the chemicals they detected had no health safety standard. There were likely other chemicals and breakdown products “with unknown impacts” that had escaped detection, they noted in the 2020 study, \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S0048969720301170\">published in Science of the Total Environment\u003c/a>. In a related study published later that year, Borch’s team \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S004896972030454X\">assessed the potential of treated produced water to cause cancer\u003c/a>. Several different tests showed that the water caused increased mutation rates — an indication of cancer risk — even though most chemicals were present in low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many stakeholders stand to benefit if produced water can be reused safely, the scientists wrote. But if the practice is expanded prematurely, they warned, it could harm water quality as well as the health of soil, livestock, and crops and people who eat them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are still using benchmarks for water quality that were not developed with oil field wastewater in mind, Borch said, even though the complexity and chemical makeup of produced water is very different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And simply looking to see whether chemicals are present, as the GSI studies did, doesn’t say anything about toxicity. Many compounds in the wastewater may be present in concentrations low enough to escape detection, said Borch. But that doesn’t mean they’re not toxic, he said: “It just means you don’t have the method that allows for extraction and analysis of the compounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper published in December, Borch and his colleagues presented a model for taking a holistic \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsestengg.1c00248\">approach that exposes cells and lab organisms to produced water to detect harmful responses\u003c/a>, along the lines Shonkoff had recommended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch’s “adverse outcome” approach is also likely to catch the breakdown products the Food Safety Panel identified as a major testing inadequacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a similar approach, led by its Region 8 office in Colorado, as part of a national program to study the safety of produced water, said Tricia Pfeiffer, an environmental engineer in Region 8’s Technical Assistance Branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effort is addressing the need to harness cutting-edge approaches for evaluating oil-related contaminants, and their byproducts, in produced water intended for reuse. That includes enlisting tools to analyze human cells to identify any worrisome changes caused by chemicals in produced water while applying complementary approaches to detect toxic constituents in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is actual research,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s way more complicated than doing something that already has an analytical method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we grapple with climate change issues, she said, “we’re looking for alternative water sources. And as a researcher, my biggest goal with this project is to help fill data gaps and make sure that we’re protective of human health and the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch said the technology exists to remove all sorts of contaminants from water, but it’s far more expensive than the low-cost methods used by Kern County oil companies. If people aren’t willing to pay the real costs of growing crops in a water-scarce region, he said, “maybe we shouldn’t even produce almonds because they use so much water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choosing less water-intensive crops is critical to keeping land productive, said Siemens, the Wasco farmer who was shocked to learn that his water district was sending him oil field wastewater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens is moving away from thirsty almonds to dry-farming olives, mulberries and figs, focusing on farming in ways that suit the region. Like raising goats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Goats would be happy to eat all these weeds out there,” Siemens said, pointing to the field behind his house. And lots of people in the valley would be happy to eat goat meat, he said. “You can go to any taqueria in the area and buy \u003cem>carne de cabra\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s vision of sustainable farming does not include taking the wastewater of an industry whose greenhouse gas emissions have helped fuel California’s relentless droughts and contaminated its precious groundwater supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just trying to meet a USDA organic standard,” Siemens said. “We’re trying to increase the vitality of this land for the future. Our kids live here, and I hope my grandkids will live here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means protecting the soil and aquifers that helped turn Kern County into one of the richest agricultural regions in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the results of a truly independent analysis of whether oil field-produced water is fit to irrigate crops sent around the world, Pfeiffer said, is still years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anne Marshall-Chalmers, an Inside Climate News fellow, contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Studies in Kern County, performed by oil industry consultants, cannot answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with 'produced water,' the board's own panel of experts concedes.",
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"description": "Studies in Kern County, performed by oil industry consultants, cannot answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with 'produced water,' the board's own panel of experts concedes.",
"title": "A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant | KQED",
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"headline": "A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>After years of controversy, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board assured the public in the fall that eating California crops grown with oil field wastewater “creates no identifiable increased health risks,” based on studies commissioned as part of an extensive Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a review of the science and interviews with a public health scientist affiliated with the project and other experts show that there is scant evidence to support the board’s safety claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The “neutral, third-party consultant” the board retained to conduct the studies, GSI Environmental, has regularly worked for the oil industry. That work includes marshaling evidence to help Chevron, Kern County’s biggest provider of produced water, and other oil giants defend their interests in high-stakes lawsuits around the country and globe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSI did not tell water board officials about its ties to the oil industry, which shared the roughly $3.4 million in costs for the firm’s studies and related work with the water districts that benefit from the distribution of wastewater from oil extraction, known as “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One member of the board’s Food Safety Expert Panel that reviewed GSI’s studies was nominated by Chevron and initially paid by the oil industry, and a second panel member worked as a consultant for an oil company selling produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the expert panel’s own review concluded that GSI’s studies could not answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Thomas Borch of Colorado State University, a leading expert on treating and reusing produced water for crop irrigation who was not involved in the project, said that based on the data GSI had and the way they designed the experiments, “they were not able to draw the conclusions they did. Period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, said in a statement via email that his firm agreed with the water board that the studies were performed in “the most technically sound manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clay Rodgers, the water board official who oversaw the Food Safety Project, said he promised the board that if any evidence were ever discovered that produced water was harming people consuming crops, “we would stop it immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the water board’s direction, GSI compiled a list of hundreds of chemicals used in oil operations, then focused on those that might pose health risks. But an absence of information to assess safety dogged the project from the start. Many of the chemicals had never been studied before, or lacked critical details about their use, the board’s panel of experts noted, because the oil companies said doing so would reveal trade secrets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Already there was a data gap there because some of those chemicals don’t have reliable toxicity information,” said John Fleming, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings of the board and its expert panel found no food safety or public health concern, said David Ansolabehere, general manager of the Cawelo Water District, which has taken produced water from Chevron for decades. “Cawelo will continue to test the water based on the regional board’s permit requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978392\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"White steam rises off gray water at a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron's Kern River Oil Field. In the foreground and behind the oval reservoir are brown fields. A long pipeline extends from the far right of the photo to the edge of the reservoir.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steam rises from a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field. Chevron treats the wastewater, then transfers it via pipeline to the reservoir, where it’s blended with surface water and/or groundwater and sent to irrigation canals. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chevron tested for all additives used in the Kern River field for which a testing method approved by the Environmental Protection Agency exists, said Jonathan Harshman, communications advisor for Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley Business Unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet more than a fifth of the chemicals GSI identified — and 60% of those deemed most likely to pose a health risk — lacked both toxicity information and approved testing methods. The water board conceded that the data gaps left “potentially significant unknowns” about the chemicals’ safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they say this is safe,” Fleming said, “it’s based on what chemicals they were able to test.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the “no identifiable increased health risks” assertion applies to just a fraction of potential chemicals in produced water applied to crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Oil’s profligate water use\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In early August, during one of the driest summers on record, Wasco farmer Nate Siemens received a troubling notice from his irrigation district, which is regulated by the Central Valley water board. “Please be aware that this water includes some amount of reclaimed oilfield production water,” it said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978401\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978401\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Almond farmer Nate Siemens stands in front of a large tree on his farm. He's wearing a red and black plaid shirt over a black hoodie, and a silver and gold ball cap. Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family's Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry's wastewater.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family’s Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry’s wastewater. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross, Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant with the Rodale Institute, was shocked. Siemens needed that water. But he’s transitioning his family’s Fat Uncle Farms to organic and wasn’t keen on using the oil industry’s wastewater to irrigate his almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s farming roots in the region predate the rise of Kern County’s oil industry, which produces more than 70% of the state’s oil. He was well aware that climate-polluting pump jacks operate among corporate farms growing miles of water-intensive almonds and pistachios, California’s most valuable export crops. But he had no idea just how entrenched oil operations had become in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kernag.com/caap/crop-reports/crop20_29/crop2020.pdf\">the county’s $7.6 billion agricultural industry\u003c/a> until he received that notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 30 miles southeast of Siemens’s farm, thousands of densely packed pump jacks stretch as far as the eye can see toward the horizon, bobbing robotically as they suck oil and water from wells carved into the denuded landscape of the Kern River Oil Field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pump jacks have pried more than 2 billion barrels from the field since oil was discovered here in 1899. But wresting Kern’s notoriously viscous crude from receding oil reserves requires injecting ever increasing amounts of water and hot steam underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978382\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"690\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst-160x170.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nThat water returns to the surface along with groundwater. The mixture contains arsenic, uranium and other naturally occurring toxic elements, along with potentially hundreds of chemicals used in the extraction process. Since 1985, the ratio of water to oil recovered has more than doubled, from seven barrels of water per barrel of oil to 18 barrels today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a region with less than nine inches of rain in a normal year — the definition of a desert — getting enough water is a perennial concern. Nearly 30 years ago, Chevron struck what a former Cawelo Water District manager called a “win-win” deal to deliver some of the massive amounts of wastewater produced every day to farmers’ fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, more than 38,000 acre-feet of produced water from Chevron and other oil companies hydrates California farmland, including roughly 11% of Kern County’s irrigated farmland. That’s enough to cover about 38,000 football fields with a foot of water, or more than 12.4 billion gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater-160x143.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nChevron treats produced water from its Kern River Oil Field by removing oil from water through gravity separation, then skimming off solids and residual oil before filtering it through walnut hulls. The water then travels several miles by pipeline to a Cawelo holding pond, where it’s blended with surface and groundwater and sent to irrigation canals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first time Seth Shonkoff, a public health scientist with the nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers (PSE) for Healthy Energy and a member of the expert panel, visited the Cawelo holding pond several years ago, he smelled an “extraordinarily strong” whiff of asphalt and crude oil. The same odors were much less offensive when he visited the pond with the panel a few years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either there’s natural variability in the water, Shonkoff said, or someone did something different before experts came to evaluate the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it. We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Chevron claims that recycling produced water for irrigation allows the company to operate in a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/protecting-the-environment\">sustainable manner\u003c/a>,” by minimizing reliance on fresh water. Yet the massive energy requirements of the extraction process make Kern’s oil one of the world’s most climate-polluting fossil fuels, and Chevron one of California’s top greenhouse gas emitters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has this green reputation, but if you scratch the surface on the oil industry in the state, you quickly discover that that’s not the case at all,” said Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes,” Kretzmann said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Unfit for purpose \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley water board said it focused on crops grown in oil wastewater to address public concerns, which included petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, protests outside the state Capitol and a bill to label food grown with the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) introduced the bill in 2015, after learning that farmers could get organic certification for shunning pesticides while using produced water, and consumers would never know. “I thought that was a real problem,” said Gatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same year, \u003ca href=\"https://sd10.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-03-06-threat-groundwater-posed-improperly-sited-oil-injection-wells-be-explored-senate\">legislators called hearings\u003c/a> to increase scrutiny of oil companies after learning their practices posed risks to protected groundwater, including potential drinking water and irrigation supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately,” said Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, who oversaw the Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Testing crops for harmful chemicals to figure out whether they’re safe to eat may seem logical, but techniques to analyze food for oil-related chemicals are “light years” behind those for detecting the compounds in water and soil, Shonkoff said. He raised the problem repeatedly at panel meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the panel agreed. Its first recommendation to the board was to discontinue crop sampling. It would be far more productive to focus on produced water and irrigated soil, the panel said, using approaches that can reveal the toxicity of the water and soil itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Shonkoff said, “most of the work that was done to test things for chemicals was done in food. Unfortunately, that was, in my professional opinion, a pretty big waste of time and resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data GSI compiled — including the list of chemicals and their hazard profiles — was “way too limited” to draw conclusions about lack of toxicity, said Borch, the Colorado State University professor and produced water expert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean it’s toxic,” said Borch. But there was no way they could conclude that produced water posed no identifiable health risks based on the data they had and their experimental approach, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978406\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg\" alt='A sign is posted behind a chain link fence, protected with strands of barbed wire. The sign, in Spanish and English, reads \"Danger. Hot Water. Keep Away.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron relies on steam injections to extract Kern County’s tarry crude oil from aging formations, then sends the hot wastewater north to the Cawelo Water District via pipeline. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That leaves Siemens, who’s transitioning to organic, in a tough spot. Although produced water isn’t specifically defined under organic standards, organic farmers can’t use water that contains arsenic, a constituent of Kern’s produced water, and most synthetic compounds, like those used in oil and gas operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens stopped watering his orchard for a few weeks after his district notified him about the produced water. “And the trees suffered,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the almond harvest approached, Siemens couldn’t risk losing the trees. He used just enough of the water to keep them alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” he said. “We just didn’t have time to do the research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if Siemens had done the research, it might not have mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it,” said Borch. “We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A failure to disclose\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the biggest hurdles to evaluating the safety of produced water has been oil companies’ unwillingness to reveal key details about the chemicals they put down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before joining the panel, Shonkoff was working on an independent study of fracking for the California Council on Science and Technology, or CCST, when he discovered a dataset he’d never seen before: a list of chemicals used in conventional oil development, from fields in Southern California. At the time, no other location in the country, and maybe the world, required chemical disclosure for conventional operations. The CCST assessment, commissioned by the state, revealed that \u003ca href=\"https://ccst.us/wp-content/uploads/2015SB4-v2ES.pdf\">testing and treatment of produced water used for irrigation might not remove or even detect chemical\u003c/a>s used in fracking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During fracking, operators inject a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep underground to break and then prop open surrounding rock to extract oil or gas. Conventional operations, by contrast, inject high-pressure steam to loosen gooey oil. Wastewater from both conventional and fracking operations falls under the heading of “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Shonkoff dug into the newfound data, and read the permits and regulations for Kern County’s produced water, he realized Chevron and other oil companies could put nearly any additives they wanted down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the water board prohibits using water from fracked wells for irrigation, fracking and conventional operations employ many of the same chemicals, Shonkoff told the board at the panel’s first public meeting. And most compounds used in conventional extraction processes in Kern County, he said, lack the information needed to assess safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s imperative that oil companies disclose not just which chemicals they use in oil and gas production but also the volume and frequency of their use, Shonkoff said. Until then, he said, “I’m not quite sure that we can say with any real level of certainty that this is safe or unsafe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers of the water board said he’d obtained a list of all the chemical compounds oil companies use. But to avoid trade secret information, he said, the board could not get the recipe, which details how often a chemical is used and how much goes down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers said he felt the highest priority was to get a list he could share with the panel members and the public and compensated for not getting the recipe by assuming all the chemicals were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But knowing the hazard associated with a chemical depends on knowing that recipe, the panel concluded. It also requires knowing chemicals’ breakdown products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chemicals are injected under intense heat and pressure into oil reservoirs, where they interact with scores of other compounds, before they’re pulled back to the surface and exposed to air. All these conditions can affect a chemical’s toxicity. And scientists have no good tools to understand how chemical interactions increase toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This assumption that we should be looking for the chemicals that were added to oil and gas operations, and the assumption that they will continue to be those same chemicals after all the processes that they go through, is too big of a leap to make,” Shonkoff said. “Of course, you’re not going to find them, because they most certainly have transformed into other types of chemical constituents by the time things are being monitored and tested for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some chemical additives might degrade into harmless substances, but others can prove more toxic. Shonkoff pointed to glutaraldehyde, a chemical widely used to kill microorganisms that gum up oil and gas extraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glutaraldehyde is toxic to people, he said. Some of its breakdown products are even more toxic, some are less toxic and others are completely unknown because they haven’t been studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we’re talking about hundreds of chemicals, many of which we don’t have good toxicological information on,” Shonkoff said, “the idea that you can really understand the toxicological dimensions of their daughter products, and their transformation products in the presence of other chemicals, is outstripping what we know scientifically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a plant’s own metabolism can affect a chemical’s toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plants could take up chemicals in one form and turn them into something else that’s more harmful, said Fleming of the Center for Biological Diversity. But if you’re just testing for a list of chemicals added to the well, he said, you’re testing for the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, agreed to answer questions only by email. Asked about the focus on testing crops, Scofield offered a carefully worded statement that ended: “We agree with the Water Board and their scientific advisor that this direct testing was the most technically sound manner to address the questions posed in the study.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about the failure to address chemicals’ breakdown products, he responded with the exact same statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a really big assumption baked into the GSI work,” said Shonkoff. The studies assume that the chemicals remain in the same form from the oil field to a consumer’s plate and that it’s sufficient to monitor those particular chemicals, he said. “And that’s obviously incorrect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Still waiting for answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California supplies 99% of the world’s almonds and pistachios, mostly from Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water board regulators say nothing has received more scrutiny than the oil field water that irrigates those crops. “We know more about that produced water than probably any other produced water in the world,” said Rodgers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the evidence is still so scarce, said Colorado State’s Borch, “you can argue both sides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are no established tools to do a “real toxicity analysis,” Borch said, and there’s “not a good framework” to evaluate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a study of treated produced water released into a stream for irrigation in Wyoming, Borch and his colleagues found that most of the chemicals they detected had no health safety standard. There were likely other chemicals and breakdown products “with unknown impacts” that had escaped detection, they noted in the 2020 study, \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S0048969720301170\">published in Science of the Total Environment\u003c/a>. In a related study published later that year, Borch’s team \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S004896972030454X\">assessed the potential of treated produced water to cause cancer\u003c/a>. Several different tests showed that the water caused increased mutation rates — an indication of cancer risk — even though most chemicals were present in low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many stakeholders stand to benefit if produced water can be reused safely, the scientists wrote. But if the practice is expanded prematurely, they warned, it could harm water quality as well as the health of soil, livestock, and crops and people who eat them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are still using benchmarks for water quality that were not developed with oil field wastewater in mind, Borch said, even though the complexity and chemical makeup of produced water is very different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And simply looking to see whether chemicals are present, as the GSI studies did, doesn’t say anything about toxicity. Many compounds in the wastewater may be present in concentrations low enough to escape detection, said Borch. But that doesn’t mean they’re not toxic, he said: “It just means you don’t have the method that allows for extraction and analysis of the compounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper published in December, Borch and his colleagues presented a model for taking a holistic \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsestengg.1c00248\">approach that exposes cells and lab organisms to produced water to detect harmful responses\u003c/a>, along the lines Shonkoff had recommended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch’s “adverse outcome” approach is also likely to catch the breakdown products the Food Safety Panel identified as a major testing inadequacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a similar approach, led by its Region 8 office in Colorado, as part of a national program to study the safety of produced water, said Tricia Pfeiffer, an environmental engineer in Region 8’s Technical Assistance Branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effort is addressing the need to harness cutting-edge approaches for evaluating oil-related contaminants, and their byproducts, in produced water intended for reuse. That includes enlisting tools to analyze human cells to identify any worrisome changes caused by chemicals in produced water while applying complementary approaches to detect toxic constituents in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is actual research,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s way more complicated than doing something that already has an analytical method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we grapple with climate change issues, she said, “we’re looking for alternative water sources. And as a researcher, my biggest goal with this project is to help fill data gaps and make sure that we’re protective of human health and the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch said the technology exists to remove all sorts of contaminants from water, but it’s far more expensive than the low-cost methods used by Kern County oil companies. If people aren’t willing to pay the real costs of growing crops in a water-scarce region, he said, “maybe we shouldn’t even produce almonds because they use so much water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choosing less water-intensive crops is critical to keeping land productive, said Siemens, the Wasco farmer who was shocked to learn that his water district was sending him oil field wastewater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens is moving away from thirsty almonds to dry-farming olives, mulberries and figs, focusing on farming in ways that suit the region. Like raising goats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Goats would be happy to eat all these weeds out there,” Siemens said, pointing to the field behind his house. And lots of people in the valley would be happy to eat goat meat, he said. “You can go to any taqueria in the area and buy \u003cem>carne de cabra\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s vision of sustainable farming does not include taking the wastewater of an industry whose greenhouse gas emissions have helped fuel California’s relentless droughts and contaminated its precious groundwater supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just trying to meet a USDA organic standard,” Siemens said. “We’re trying to increase the vitality of this land for the future. Our kids live here, and I hope my grandkids will live here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means protecting the soil and aquifers that helped turn Kern County into one of the richest agricultural regions in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the results of a truly independent analysis of whether oil field-produced water is fit to irrigate crops sent around the world, Pfeiffer said, is still years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anne Marshall-Chalmers, an Inside Climate News fellow, contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "With Snowpack in Decline, California's 'Weather Whiplash' Could Mean Alternating Drought and Flooding",
"headTitle": "With Snowpack in Decline, California’s ‘Weather Whiplash’ Could Mean Alternating Drought and Flooding | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is deep into its rainy season, inching toward a make-or-break moment in building the Sierra Nevada snowpack that millions of Californians rely on for drinking water. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening here is that the state is experiencing a phenomenon called weather whiplash. Warming temperatures are deepening California’s already natural weather pattern: wet, then super-dry conditions that can be accentuated by heat waves, which can melt precious snow reservoirs early and cause flooding. After multiple atmospheric rivers in December and a virtually dry January, the state is oscillating between climate extremes in real time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On New Year’s Day, the \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2021/Dec-21/DWR-12-30-21-Snow-Survey\">statewide snowpack was 160% of normal\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for that date. But a month later, the \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2022/Feb-22/Snow-Survey-February-2022\">snowpack fell to 92% of normal\u003c/a>, and while that sounds relatively high, it’s been much sunnier and warmer at high elevations. Still, Sean de Guzman, snow survey manager with the California Department of Water Resources, says only about an inch of the water that’s within the snowpack has been lost. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Our climate is experiencing these volatile shifts from wet to dry year after year and even month after month,” he said. “That one dry month of January basically wiped out whatever head start we had.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s even more daunting is there’s little to no snow or rain forecast for weeks, smack-dab in the middle of what’s supposed to be the wettest time of year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1488232082136436736?s=20&t=JU_yp8MNm4e3CBnSQ8pzYg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We all need to be prepared for another consecutive dry year,” de Guzman said. “We are coming into February — that third (and) last month of that wet period — and the first half of it, we’re not going to be getting anything. So that’s why we’re starting to get more concerned.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With nearly the entire \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">state still in a moderate drought\u003c/a>, California is staring down the prospect of a severe third year of drought, says \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/newshaajami\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Newsha Ajami\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, who studies water resiliency and is the chief development officer for research at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re sort of hitting records very quickly, back and forth,” she said. “If you live in the Bay Area, because we depend on water that comes from the Sierra, things that happen up there can impact our water availability and water security. So, that’s why we all should care about it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the great potential that this third year of drought will deepen, Ajami says water agencies and Californians need to be strategic about how we use the little water we have stored. The majority of the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain\">reservoirs are well below their historical average\u003c/a> for this time of year, including the largest reservoirs like Shasta and Oroville. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We don’t know what’s going to happen next, and just because we had one or two storms doesn’t mean we’re out of the drought,” she said of December atmospheric rivers that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11898885/atmospheric-river-brings-heavy-rain-parts-of-bay-area-under-flood-advisory\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">flooded parts of the Bay Area\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “I just want to reemphasize the fact that our ecosystem, our groundwater levels, and our water system generally have been going through so much stress.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/CA_DWR/status/1488610869940416512?s=20&t=JU_yp8MNm4e3CBnSQ8pzYg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cities across Santa Clara County are already feeling the stress of two years of dry times, made worse by the region’s main reservoir being out of commission due to seismic retrofitting. \u003ca href=\"https://valleywateralert.org/scvwd/rgi.php\">Reservoirs within the Santa Clara Valley Water District\u003c/a>, serving more than 2 million residents, are \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">26%\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> full, said Gary Kremen, chair of the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“More than half of the water we use is imported hundreds of miles away, and the source of that is the snowpack,” Kremen said. “When the snowpack is good, generally that’s very good for us. And when it’s down below average, that’s not as good.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kremen says despite the worsening state of drought, water use in December increased by 4% from 2019 levels. He says residents need to live as if no more rain is in the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I know folks kind of had enough hearing from the government saying, ‘Do this or do that,’ but just like the virus, it’s important,” he said. “We’re hoping conservation will work, so we don’t have to need restrictions. But we can’t count on that. That’s why it’s super important to save every drop.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘More rainfall and less snow’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the state is locked in a dry pattern, state water officials are also worried about the opposite. Scientists forecast that as the climate continues to warm, much of California’s snow will fall as rain, causing massive flooding. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Department of Water Resources will be updating its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Flood-Management/Flood-Planning-and-Studies/Central-Valley-Flood-Protection-Plan\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Central Valley Flood Protection Plan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sometime in March with new projections of what flooding could be like in a warmer climate. Mike Mierzwa, the state’s floodplain manager, says it will showcase how warming temperatures will lead to an exponential rise in flooding.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snow typically melts slowly into rivers that run down from deep in the mountains, but that’s gradually changing as the climate warms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978344\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978344 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-1536x864.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warmer air can hold more moisture — which can lead to heavier rain or snow depending on the temperature. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Climate Central)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“With climate change, you’re going to have more and more rainfall and less snow. So, that means more water all at once,” said Mierzwa.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One-hundred-year flood events along the San Joaquin River could grow in severity by as much as fivefold over the next half-century, causing billions of dollars in damage to large population centers like Stockton and small towns like Firebaugh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Not taking action, hundreds of lives per year could be lost,” Mierzwa said. “When a big event happens, it could be an event on the order of what happened in New Orleans.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Warming temperatures will also increase the size of minor floods that happen every five to 10 years. And even those floods can be deadly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mierzwa says DWR will propose solutions for a far wetter future in places like Stockton. These range from raising levees, making room in reservoirs, and flooding farms or parks when flows are high. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978351\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978351 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded.jpg\" alt=\"A view overlooking a flooded valley with a raised meandering road through it, light-brown mountains in the background and fluffy white clouds above them. \" width=\"960\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-768x486.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water floods a restored floodplain at Dos Rios Ranch Preserve near Modesto. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of River Partners)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Cain, the conservation director for the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://riverpartners.org/\">River Partners\u003c/a>, would like to see \u003ca href=\"https://riverpartners.org/news/california-spent-decades-trying-to-keep-central-valley-floods-at-bay-now-it-looks-to-welcome-them-back/\">large land areas opened up for rivers to spill into during huge rain events.\u003c/a> Bypasses have helped protect places like Sacramento from flooding, but further south, he says, Stockton needs ways for the river to escape without harming people or property during big flood events. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The Sacramento Valley has seen huge investments in the levee and flood bypass system over the 19th and 20th centuries, and by contrast, the San Joaquin Valley is that poor stepchild [that] hasn’t gotten the attention,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stockton is one of the places most vulnerable to a significant flood in all of California. On the south side of the city, next to Interstate 5, the Van Buskirk Levee holds back an arm of the San Joaquin River from hundreds of homes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a longtime environmental advocate and Stockton resident, \u003ca href=\"https://www.restorethedelta.org/board-members-staff/\">Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla\u003c/a> is worried this levee could easily overtop or fail, flooding a neighborhood of primarily Black and Brown working-class residents’ homes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978345\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978345 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\" A view down a long, earthen, rocky levee that runs alongside a green river about the same width, with scrabbly green trees on all verges, beneath a clear, sunny, blue sky.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stockton sits on the edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As the climate warms, the region likely will become more susceptible to flooding. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is correct, we’re going to have overtopping of levees on both sides here,” she said. “To leave this side of the city with such an inadequate levee is just morally wrong.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Protecting Stockton’s 300,000 people will take remedies such as flooding farms in the worst storms, and will need to include strengthening levees, which is already happening in some parts of the city. But so far there is no real solution set in stone for the Van Buskirk Levee, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.sjafca.org/Home/Components/StaffDirectory/StaffDirectory/14/55\">Chris Elias\u003c/a>, executive director of the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Priority 1 is life safety, then property — because they don’t want to cause dislocation to people’s lives — and then the economy,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The new projections from state water officials likely will complicate reinforcing the levee, and he says progress is trickling, not flowing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We are working very closely with the city to look at what the options are and how we can collaborate for a win-win-win solution,” he added. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for a solution to be a win for all Stocktonians, Elias says it must protect lower-income neighborhoods just beyond this existing mound of dirt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is deep into its rainy season, inching toward a make-or-break moment in building the Sierra Nevada snowpack that millions of Californians rely on for drinking water. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening here is that the state is experiencing a phenomenon called weather whiplash. Warming temperatures are deepening California’s already natural weather pattern: wet, then super-dry conditions that can be accentuated by heat waves, which can melt precious snow reservoirs early and cause flooding. After multiple atmospheric rivers in December and a virtually dry January, the state is oscillating between climate extremes in real time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On New Year’s Day, the \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2021/Dec-21/DWR-12-30-21-Snow-Survey\">statewide snowpack was 160% of normal\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for that date. But a month later, the \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2022/Feb-22/Snow-Survey-February-2022\">snowpack fell to 92% of normal\u003c/a>, and while that sounds relatively high, it’s been much sunnier and warmer at high elevations. Still, Sean de Guzman, snow survey manager with the California Department of Water Resources, says only about an inch of the water that’s within the snowpack has been lost. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Our climate is experiencing these volatile shifts from wet to dry year after year and even month after month,” he said. “That one dry month of January basically wiped out whatever head start we had.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s even more daunting is there’s little to no snow or rain forecast for weeks, smack-dab in the middle of what’s supposed to be the wettest time of year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We all need to be prepared for another consecutive dry year,” de Guzman said. “We are coming into February — that third (and) last month of that wet period — and the first half of it, we’re not going to be getting anything. So that’s why we’re starting to get more concerned.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With nearly the entire \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">state still in a moderate drought\u003c/a>, California is staring down the prospect of a severe third year of drought, says \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/newshaajami\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Newsha Ajami\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, who studies water resiliency and is the chief development officer for research at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re sort of hitting records very quickly, back and forth,” she said. “If you live in the Bay Area, because we depend on water that comes from the Sierra, things that happen up there can impact our water availability and water security. So, that’s why we all should care about it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the great potential that this third year of drought will deepen, Ajami says water agencies and Californians need to be strategic about how we use the little water we have stored. The majority of the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain\">reservoirs are well below their historical average\u003c/a> for this time of year, including the largest reservoirs like Shasta and Oroville. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We don’t know what’s going to happen next, and just because we had one or two storms doesn’t mean we’re out of the drought,” she said of December atmospheric rivers that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11898885/atmospheric-river-brings-heavy-rain-parts-of-bay-area-under-flood-advisory\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">flooded parts of the Bay Area\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “I just want to reemphasize the fact that our ecosystem, our groundwater levels, and our water system generally have been going through so much stress.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cities across Santa Clara County are already feeling the stress of two years of dry times, made worse by the region’s main reservoir being out of commission due to seismic retrofitting. \u003ca href=\"https://valleywateralert.org/scvwd/rgi.php\">Reservoirs within the Santa Clara Valley Water District\u003c/a>, serving more than 2 million residents, are \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">26%\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> full, said Gary Kremen, chair of the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“More than half of the water we use is imported hundreds of miles away, and the source of that is the snowpack,” Kremen said. “When the snowpack is good, generally that’s very good for us. And when it’s down below average, that’s not as good.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kremen says despite the worsening state of drought, water use in December increased by 4% from 2019 levels. He says residents need to live as if no more rain is in the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I know folks kind of had enough hearing from the government saying, ‘Do this or do that,’ but just like the virus, it’s important,” he said. “We’re hoping conservation will work, so we don’t have to need restrictions. But we can’t count on that. That’s why it’s super important to save every drop.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘More rainfall and less snow’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the state is locked in a dry pattern, state water officials are also worried about the opposite. Scientists forecast that as the climate continues to warm, much of California’s snow will fall as rain, causing massive flooding. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Department of Water Resources will be updating its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Flood-Management/Flood-Planning-and-Studies/Central-Valley-Flood-Protection-Plan\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Central Valley Flood Protection Plan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sometime in March with new projections of what flooding could be like in a warmer climate. Mike Mierzwa, the state’s floodplain manager, says it will showcase how warming temperatures will lead to an exponential rise in flooding.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snow typically melts slowly into rivers that run down from deep in the mountains, but that’s gradually changing as the climate warms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978344\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978344 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/2022Snow_Explainer_en_title_lg-1536x864.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warmer air can hold more moisture — which can lead to heavier rain or snow depending on the temperature. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Climate Central)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“With climate change, you’re going to have more and more rainfall and less snow. So, that means more water all at once,” said Mierzwa.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One-hundred-year flood events along the San Joaquin River could grow in severity by as much as fivefold over the next half-century, causing billions of dollars in damage to large population centers like Stockton and small towns like Firebaugh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Not taking action, hundreds of lives per year could be lost,” Mierzwa said. “When a big event happens, it could be an event on the order of what happened in New Orleans.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Warming temperatures will also increase the size of minor floods that happen every five to 10 years. And even those floods can be deadly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mierzwa says DWR will propose solutions for a far wetter future in places like Stockton. These range from raising levees, making room in reservoirs, and flooding farms or parks when flows are high. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978351\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978351 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded.jpg\" alt=\"A view overlooking a flooded valley with a raised meandering road through it, light-brown mountains in the background and fluffy white clouds above them. \" width=\"960\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/dos_rios_ranch_complete_and_flooded-768x486.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water floods a restored floodplain at Dos Rios Ranch Preserve near Modesto. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of River Partners)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Cain, the conservation director for the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://riverpartners.org/\">River Partners\u003c/a>, would like to see \u003ca href=\"https://riverpartners.org/news/california-spent-decades-trying-to-keep-central-valley-floods-at-bay-now-it-looks-to-welcome-them-back/\">large land areas opened up for rivers to spill into during huge rain events.\u003c/a> Bypasses have helped protect places like Sacramento from flooding, but further south, he says, Stockton needs ways for the river to escape without harming people or property during big flood events. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The Sacramento Valley has seen huge investments in the levee and flood bypass system over the 19th and 20th centuries, and by contrast, the San Joaquin Valley is that poor stepchild [that] hasn’t gotten the attention,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stockton is one of the places most vulnerable to a significant flood in all of California. On the south side of the city, next to Interstate 5, the Van Buskirk Levee holds back an arm of the San Joaquin River from hundreds of homes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a longtime environmental advocate and Stockton resident, \u003ca href=\"https://www.restorethedelta.org/board-members-staff/\">Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla\u003c/a> is worried this levee could easily overtop or fail, flooding a neighborhood of primarily Black and Brown working-class residents’ homes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978345\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978345 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\" A view down a long, earthen, rocky levee that runs alongside a green river about the same width, with scrabbly green trees on all verges, beneath a clear, sunny, blue sky.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/IMG_3900-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stockton sits on the edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As the climate warms, the region likely will become more susceptible to flooding. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is correct, we’re going to have overtopping of levees on both sides here,” she said. “To leave this side of the city with such an inadequate levee is just morally wrong.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Protecting Stockton’s 300,000 people will take remedies such as flooding farms in the worst storms, and will need to include strengthening levees, which is already happening in some parts of the city. But so far there is no real solution set in stone for the Van Buskirk Levee, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.sjafca.org/Home/Components/StaffDirectory/StaffDirectory/14/55\">Chris Elias\u003c/a>, executive director of the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Priority 1 is life safety, then property — because they don’t want to cause dislocation to people’s lives — and then the economy,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The new projections from state water officials likely will complicate reinforcing the levee, and he says progress is trickling, not flowing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We are working very closely with the city to look at what the options are and how we can collaborate for a win-win-win solution,” he added. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for a solution to be a win for all Stocktonians, Elias says it must protect lower-income neighborhoods just beyond this existing mound of dirt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Ancient River Beds Could Hold the Solution to California's Water Woes",
"headTitle": "Ancient River Beds Could Hold the Solution to California’s Water Woes | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The “water detectives” that author Erica Gies followed are all asking the same question — she calls it “revolutionary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The question is: What does water want?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Water wants more access to its slow phases,” Gies said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her forthcoming book, “\u003ca href=\"https://slowwater.world/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and De\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://slowwater.world/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">luge\u003c/span>\u003c/a>,” details these detectives — water researchers who are part of what Gies calls the “slow water movement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=small citation='Author Erica Gies']‘Putting the water in these paleo valleys could help to restore the health of the groundwater system. More water in rivers for fish, more water available to hydrate plants, reducing the severity of wildfires.’[/pullquote]That idea goes something like this: Modern societies control water, often speeding it off the land, reducing the time it spends in wetlands, floodplains and other slow-phase ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That creates all kinds of problems,” Gies told KQED’s Brian Watt. “We build cities on those wetlands and then they flood because the water still wants to go there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slow-water practitioners are trying to reverse this cycle, an endeavor Gies says is especially important in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why? Volatility. That’s what Californians can expect from their water in coming decades, according to research that predicts \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0140-y\">warming temperatures will exacerbate the state’s cycle\u003c/a> of flooding and drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gies says California’s development decisions — how it builds cities, its agriculture and water management — are using up its groundwater and destroying its fragile wetlands.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> [aside postID='science_1502420' \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">label=\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">'Nature Provides Its Own Flood Control. Time to Use It?']\u003c/span>She found a potential solution (championed by UC Davis’s Graham Fogg, one of her water detectives): vast ancient riverbeds cut by glaciers thousands of years ago that now lie underneath California’s Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her latest \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/article/capturing-the-flood-in-californias-ancient-underground-waterways/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">cover story\u003c/span> in Bay Nature magazine\u003c/a> is all about these ancient riverbeds. Gies spoke with KQED’s Watt about their potential to help California with its water problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Brian Watt\u003c/strong>: The first line of your piece reads, “Tens of thousands of years ago, California’s Sierra Nevada mountains wore upon their shoulders the ancestors of today’s rivers.” That’s quite a picture. Do a little more painting for us here. How did these valleys come to be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Erica Gies\u003c/strong>: There were several phases of glaciers coming down from the north and then going back up. When the glaciers melt, they create quite a bit of powerful water, pushing downstream gravel, sand, other debris and cutting these really large canyons a mile wide, a hundred feet deep. As the glacial cycle progressed, sea levels rose, the water slowed, there was less ice melting, and all of that debris lost momentum and then backfilled those cut canyons with coarse cobble. And then over time, silt came down over it, creating the valley floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do we really know that they’re there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My main source in this article is \u003ca href=\"https://lawr.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/fogg-graham\">hydrogeologist Graham Fogg\u003c/a>, professor emeritus at UC Davis. He’s been tracking these for decades. He says there’s a predictability in these glacial cycles. He knows that every major stream coming off of the Sierra has these paleo valleys. That’s how he knows generally that they exist, but only three of them have been discovered over about 25 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds like the process of finding them has been really slow?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People use well logs; when people look for water, oil and gas, they drill with a hollow bit, bringing up a tube of sediment. You can see what happened from a geological perspective. Researchers were looking through 10,000 of these well logs trying to find the paleo valleys. Very time-consuming. But more recently, the Department of Water Resources has funded research for something called \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/Data-and-Tools/AEM\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">airborne electromagnetic surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Basically, they fly a helicopter over the ground with this machinery underneath it, an instrument that uses an electrical current to generate a magnetic field that sends data to researchers about where there’s clay, which is 65% to 80% of the underground. But also where there’s this cobble, which are the places where the water flows much more rapidly than in the clay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>These underground valleys could actually be of some use to the state?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That’s right. [The state] needs to think longer-term about it because that water comes in the wet years. With climate change, we’re getting bigger atmospheric river rainstorms and we’re seeing more flooding. [California needs to] capture this water to prevent it from flooding homes and businesses and to move it above these special paleo valleys. They’ll absorb the water very quickly, preventing flooding and then, in a slower time scale, that water will seep into the surrounding clays, raising the water table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That could do all kinds of beneficial things?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Basically, the way that we’ve managed water in California has dramatically upset natural hydrology. The Central Valley used to flood almost every year. That’s a floodplain, meant to absorb floods. But we’ve levied it. We’ve moved the water south. We’ve done all this hyper-engineering so the water isn’t sitting on the land in the same way. And then we’ve made that worse by pumping groundwater. And as we’ve seen, the water table has fallen many feet below ground. That groundwater and surface water are the same water. They’re linked. When we pump groundwater, that’s not a new supply of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re actually reducing surface water, and a healthy groundwater system feeds springs, creeks that flow year-round, and wetlands. Putting the water in these paleo valleys could help to restore the health of the groundwater system. More water in rivers for fish, more water available to hydrate plants, reducing the severity of wildfires. Water would be higher also for people who were pumping it or taking it out of rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you want people to know about water?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the world doesn’t reduce carbon emissions, which of course we need to do, we can still improve our drought and flooding situations locally by making space for slow water. These water detectives are advocating for an un-engineering that allows space for our water to slow on the land. There are a lot of ways that we can do that within our existing human habitat. And that’s what my book is about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The “water detectives” that author Erica Gies followed are all asking the same question — she calls it “revolutionary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The question is: What does water want?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Water wants more access to its slow phases,” Gies said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her forthcoming book, “\u003ca href=\"https://slowwater.world/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and De\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://slowwater.world/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">luge\u003c/span>\u003c/a>,” details these detectives — water researchers who are part of what Gies calls the “slow water movement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Putting the water in these paleo valleys could help to restore the health of the groundwater system. More water in rivers for fish, more water available to hydrate plants, reducing the severity of wildfires.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That idea goes something like this: Modern societies control water, often speeding it off the land, reducing the time it spends in wetlands, floodplains and other slow-phase ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That creates all kinds of problems,” Gies told KQED’s Brian Watt. “We build cities on those wetlands and then they flood because the water still wants to go there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slow-water practitioners are trying to reverse this cycle, an endeavor Gies says is especially important in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why? Volatility. That’s what Californians can expect from their water in coming decades, according to research that predicts \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0140-y\">warming temperatures will exacerbate the state’s cycle\u003c/a> of flooding and drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gies says California’s development decisions — how it builds cities, its agriculture and water management — are using up its groundwater and destroying its fragile wetlands.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>She found a potential solution (championed by UC Davis’s Graham Fogg, one of her water detectives): vast ancient riverbeds cut by glaciers thousands of years ago that now lie underneath California’s Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her latest \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/article/capturing-the-flood-in-californias-ancient-underground-waterways/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">cover story\u003c/span> in Bay Nature magazine\u003c/a> is all about these ancient riverbeds. Gies spoke with KQED’s Watt about their potential to help California with its water problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Brian Watt\u003c/strong>: The first line of your piece reads, “Tens of thousands of years ago, California’s Sierra Nevada mountains wore upon their shoulders the ancestors of today’s rivers.” That’s quite a picture. Do a little more painting for us here. How did these valleys come to be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Erica Gies\u003c/strong>: There were several phases of glaciers coming down from the north and then going back up. When the glaciers melt, they create quite a bit of powerful water, pushing downstream gravel, sand, other debris and cutting these really large canyons a mile wide, a hundred feet deep. As the glacial cycle progressed, sea levels rose, the water slowed, there was less ice melting, and all of that debris lost momentum and then backfilled those cut canyons with coarse cobble. And then over time, silt came down over it, creating the valley floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do we really know that they’re there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My main source in this article is \u003ca href=\"https://lawr.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/fogg-graham\">hydrogeologist Graham Fogg\u003c/a>, professor emeritus at UC Davis. He’s been tracking these for decades. He says there’s a predictability in these glacial cycles. He knows that every major stream coming off of the Sierra has these paleo valleys. That’s how he knows generally that they exist, but only three of them have been discovered over about 25 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds like the process of finding them has been really slow?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People use well logs; when people look for water, oil and gas, they drill with a hollow bit, bringing up a tube of sediment. You can see what happened from a geological perspective. Researchers were looking through 10,000 of these well logs trying to find the paleo valleys. Very time-consuming. But more recently, the Department of Water Resources has funded research for something called \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/Data-and-Tools/AEM\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">airborne electromagnetic surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Basically, they fly a helicopter over the ground with this machinery underneath it, an instrument that uses an electrical current to generate a magnetic field that sends data to researchers about where there’s clay, which is 65% to 80% of the underground. But also where there’s this cobble, which are the places where the water flows much more rapidly than in the clay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>These underground valleys could actually be of some use to the state?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That’s right. [The state] needs to think longer-term about it because that water comes in the wet years. With climate change, we’re getting bigger atmospheric river rainstorms and we’re seeing more flooding. [California needs to] capture this water to prevent it from flooding homes and businesses and to move it above these special paleo valleys. They’ll absorb the water very quickly, preventing flooding and then, in a slower time scale, that water will seep into the surrounding clays, raising the water table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That could do all kinds of beneficial things?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Basically, the way that we’ve managed water in California has dramatically upset natural hydrology. The Central Valley used to flood almost every year. That’s a floodplain, meant to absorb floods. But we’ve levied it. We’ve moved the water south. We’ve done all this hyper-engineering so the water isn’t sitting on the land in the same way. And then we’ve made that worse by pumping groundwater. And as we’ve seen, the water table has fallen many feet below ground. That groundwater and surface water are the same water. They’re linked. When we pump groundwater, that’s not a new supply of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re actually reducing surface water, and a healthy groundwater system feeds springs, creeks that flow year-round, and wetlands. Putting the water in these paleo valleys could help to restore the health of the groundwater system. More water in rivers for fish, more water available to hydrate plants, reducing the severity of wildfires. Water would be higher also for people who were pumping it or taking it out of rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you want people to know about water?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the world doesn’t reduce carbon emissions, which of course we need to do, we can still improve our drought and flooding situations locally by making space for slow water. These water detectives are advocating for an un-engineering that allows space for our water to slow on the land. There are a lot of ways that we can do that within our existing human habitat. And that’s what my book is about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s an all-hands-on-deck decade for the climate — and experts say we all need to step up. But how do you manage that, as a busy person, trying to pay the rent, during a pandemic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s one formula from marine biologist \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson\u003c/a>: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977319\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1977319 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1020x1020.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1020x1020.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-800x800.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-768x768.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1536x1536.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-2048x2048.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1920x1920.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’re bringing you stories of people who are doing that. This is the first in a series about Bay Area people new to climate action.Dr. Ashley McClure describes herself as “a mom, primary care doctor and medical community climate organizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She co-founded \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatehealthnow.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Health Now\u003c/a>, a group of California health professionals advocating for climate action through a lens of health and equity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group aims to decarbonize health care, communicate climate change as a health emergency, and partner with community-based organizations to assist their climate justice campaigns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with McClure about Climate Health Now, which has more than 500 members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Klivans: Tell me about your climate awakening.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Ashley McClure\u003c/strong>: It was August, 2018. I was nursing my then 2-month-old daughter, Callalucia. She [had] just fallen asleep while I was sitting, so I didn’t want to move. I just happened upon the \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Sequel-Truth-Power/dp/B07481RLPH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“Inconvenient Truth” sequel\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And at that moment, the climate crisis of 2 degrees Celsius and megatons of carbon and all these intellectual understandings — being a new mom and that fierce love and willingness to do anything — tears fell down my cheeks onto her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her life is so threatened by inaction: by my inaction, by our collective inaction. This is about the safety of everyone we love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always thought the experts had the climate crisis figured out; the experts will take care of it. But my job is being a doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I realized the experts know what’s wrong, but they don’t have the power to make the changes that we need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We all have a role to play in this catastrophe that threatens the safety of all of our loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d you relate to climate action before?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been a vegetarian for decades and I recycled and stuff, but [addressing climate change] was about my personal choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured, if I do my part, somebody else is going to do their part and experts are going to be leading the solutions. And once I realized that no one’s really watching the store, my sense of obligation became about much more than myself and my family; it’s about the collective fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where did you start when it came to taking action? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://citizensclimatelobby.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Citizens’ Climate Lobby\u003c/a> was my first climate home. But I realized in just a few months that it wasn’t using my greatest tool: being a physician.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/01/11/americas-most-least-trusted-professions-infographic/?sh=265a8ed37e94\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">If people are polled\u003c/a>, they usually rate nurses as the most trusted professionals, then doctors, and then pharmacists. So that social trust is what we have to give to the climate movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started networking and finding health professional colleagues who are also climate-concerned. Then around the youth climate strikes in September of 2019, I organized a big day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We set up an urgent climate care clinic with a big banner in front of [U.S.] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s office in San Francisco. We wore our white coats and had signs that said: ‘Climate change is a health emergency.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We handed out medical excuse notes for all the students who were striking, saying as physicians, we support these children striking. The climate crisis is making asthma and heat worse. These compromise the health of kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also had meetings with Speaker Pelosi’s office, then-Senator [Kamala] Harris’s office, Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and Congresswoman Barbara Lee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And this led you and your co-founder, Dr. Amanda Millstein, to start your own organization? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We did a lot of soul-searching and discussed with mentors and colleagues whether we should join other groups. After careful conversation, we decided that there was a need [to create a new one]. There wasn’t a state-level group in California for doctors and nurses to bridge into the climate movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does Climate Health Now do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s an example: Environmental justice groups have been working for years to get the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to require East Bay refineries to decrease the amount of particulate matter they produce. Particulate matter is a toxin that we breathe. It increases our risk of heart attacks, strokes and all-cause mortality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The refineries were saying that to install these retrofits would be really expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We joined in conversation with the community groups who had been leading this fight and asked them, ‘What can we do to help?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they said, ‘Have a press conference and have meetings with as many of the 24 air district board members as you can.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have a press conference? We didn’t learn about that in medical school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But my partner, Dr. Amanda Millstein, pulled this off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was really powerful because we were working with community groups and we won. This was a historic vote of the communities winning. That’s a model of what we want to do across the whole state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Editor’s note: Chevron’s Richmond refinery and the \u003c/em>\u003cem>PBF\u003c/em> \u003cem>Energy\u003c/em>\u003cem>–\u003c/em>\u003cem>owned\u003c/em> \u003cem>refinery\u003c/em> \u003cem>in\u003c/em> \u003cem>Martinez\u003c/em> — \u003cem>two refineries facing regulations — questioned the environmental benefits of the rule change, arguing it \u003c/em>\u003cem>would cost jobs and raise gas prices. The board overseeing the agency voted for the regulations last July.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11876301/bay-area-refineries-must-dramatically-cut-pollution-air-district-says-in-historic-vote\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> You can read more of KQED’s reporting on the issue\u003c/a>).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We get a lot of health care workers saying, ‘This isn’t in our lane.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I have a colleague who says this, I go to the science. That’s our shared language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science really clearly shows that in this moment, the greatest public health crisis is burning fossil fuels. The number of people in the world who die from fossil fuel-related air pollution every year is \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487#preview-section-introduction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">8 [million] to 9 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the chronic disease management we’ve worked so hard on pales in comparison to the consequences of burning fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change is not exactly in most of our lanes, but it’s also going to determine the outcome of all of our lanes. So we have to all expand our lanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a lot of late nights, early mornings, and lunch hours packed with meetings. But it’s given me my way more than I’ve given it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What have you gained from this work? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The community organizing I’m doing around climate is where I have found the most meaningful friendships I have. It’s become a new community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using my voice as a physician has breathed new life into my sense of meaning as a physician. It’s not just about that one-on-one interaction in my clinics. It’s about my place as a healer in society. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s an all-hands-on-deck decade for the climate — and experts say we all need to step up. But how do you manage that, as a busy person, trying to pay the rent, during a pandemic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s one formula from marine biologist \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson\u003c/a>: Consider what you’re good at, what you love, and what in the climate world needs doing. Your climate sweet spot is where those things intersect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1977319\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1977319 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1020x1020.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1020x1020.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-800x800.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-768x768.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1536x1536.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-2048x2048.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/10/Square-1920x1920.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has created this Venn diagram to help people find their place in climate action. \u003ccite>(Courtesy The All We Can Save Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’re bringing you stories of people who are doing that. This is the first in a series about Bay Area people new to climate action.Dr. Ashley McClure describes herself as “a mom, primary care doctor and medical community climate organizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She co-founded \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatehealthnow.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Health Now\u003c/a>, a group of California health professionals advocating for climate action through a lens of health and equity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group aims to decarbonize health care, communicate climate change as a health emergency, and partner with community-based organizations to assist their climate justice campaigns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Laura Klivans spoke with McClure about Climate Health Now, which has more than 500 members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Klivans: Tell me about your climate awakening.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Ashley McClure\u003c/strong>: It was August, 2018. I was nursing my then 2-month-old daughter, Callalucia. She [had] just fallen asleep while I was sitting, so I didn’t want to move. I just happened upon the \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Sequel-Truth-Power/dp/B07481RLPH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“Inconvenient Truth” sequel\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And at that moment, the climate crisis of 2 degrees Celsius and megatons of carbon and all these intellectual understandings — being a new mom and that fierce love and willingness to do anything — tears fell down my cheeks onto her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her life is so threatened by inaction: by my inaction, by our collective inaction. This is about the safety of everyone we love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always thought the experts had the climate crisis figured out; the experts will take care of it. But my job is being a doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I realized the experts know what’s wrong, but they don’t have the power to make the changes that we need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We all have a role to play in this catastrophe that threatens the safety of all of our loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d you relate to climate action before?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been a vegetarian for decades and I recycled and stuff, but [addressing climate change] was about my personal choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured, if I do my part, somebody else is going to do their part and experts are going to be leading the solutions. And once I realized that no one’s really watching the store, my sense of obligation became about much more than myself and my family; it’s about the collective fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where did you start when it came to taking action? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://citizensclimatelobby.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Citizens’ Climate Lobby\u003c/a> was my first climate home. But I realized in just a few months that it wasn’t using my greatest tool: being a physician.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/01/11/americas-most-least-trusted-professions-infographic/?sh=265a8ed37e94\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">If people are polled\u003c/a>, they usually rate nurses as the most trusted professionals, then doctors, and then pharmacists. So that social trust is what we have to give to the climate movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started networking and finding health professional colleagues who are also climate-concerned. Then around the youth climate strikes in September of 2019, I organized a big day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We set up an urgent climate care clinic with a big banner in front of [U.S.] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s office in San Francisco. We wore our white coats and had signs that said: ‘Climate change is a health emergency.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We handed out medical excuse notes for all the students who were striking, saying as physicians, we support these children striking. The climate crisis is making asthma and heat worse. These compromise the health of kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also had meetings with Speaker Pelosi’s office, then-Senator [Kamala] Harris’s office, Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and Congresswoman Barbara Lee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And this led you and your co-founder, Dr. Amanda Millstein, to start your own organization? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We did a lot of soul-searching and discussed with mentors and colleagues whether we should join other groups. After careful conversation, we decided that there was a need [to create a new one]. There wasn’t a state-level group in California for doctors and nurses to bridge into the climate movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does Climate Health Now do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s an example: Environmental justice groups have been working for years to get the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to require East Bay refineries to decrease the amount of particulate matter they produce. Particulate matter is a toxin that we breathe. It increases our risk of heart attacks, strokes and all-cause mortality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The refineries were saying that to install these retrofits would be really expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We joined in conversation with the community groups who had been leading this fight and asked them, ‘What can we do to help?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they said, ‘Have a press conference and have meetings with as many of the 24 air district board members as you can.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have a press conference? We didn’t learn about that in medical school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But my partner, Dr. Amanda Millstein, pulled this off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was really powerful because we were working with community groups and we won. This was a historic vote of the communities winning. That’s a model of what we want to do across the whole state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Editor’s note: Chevron’s Richmond refinery and the \u003c/em>\u003cem>PBF\u003c/em> \u003cem>Energy\u003c/em>\u003cem>–\u003c/em>\u003cem>owned\u003c/em> \u003cem>refinery\u003c/em> \u003cem>in\u003c/em> \u003cem>Martinez\u003c/em> — \u003cem>two refineries facing regulations — questioned the environmental benefits of the rule change, arguing it \u003c/em>\u003cem>would cost jobs and raise gas prices. The board overseeing the agency voted for the regulations last July.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11876301/bay-area-refineries-must-dramatically-cut-pollution-air-district-says-in-historic-vote\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> You can read more of KQED’s reporting on the issue\u003c/a>).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What challenges have you come up against?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We get a lot of health care workers saying, ‘This isn’t in our lane.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I have a colleague who says this, I go to the science. That’s our shared language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science really clearly shows that in this moment, the greatest public health crisis is burning fossil fuels. The number of people in the world who die from fossil fuel-related air pollution every year is \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487#preview-section-introduction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">8 [million] to 9 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the chronic disease management we’ve worked so hard on pales in comparison to the consequences of burning fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change is not exactly in most of our lanes, but it’s also going to determine the outcome of all of our lanes. So we have to all expand our lanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you juggle this new work with your life?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a lot of late nights, early mornings, and lunch hours packed with meetings. But it’s given me my way more than I’ve given it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What have you gained from this work? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The community organizing I’m doing around climate is where I have found the most meaningful friendships I have. It’s become a new community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using my voice as a physician has breathed new life into my sense of meaning as a physician. It’s not just about that one-on-one interaction in my clinics. It’s about my place as a healer in society. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California Court OKs Controversial Newark Housing Plan Along Its Climate-Vulnerable Wetlands",
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"content": "\u003cp>A California district court has sided with the city of Newark and developer \u003ca href=\"https://www.sobrato.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Sobrato Organization\u003c/a> in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups who challenged a plan to build hundreds of two-story tract homes along fragile wetlands in Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists said the dwellings would be built in a federal flood zone and could succumb to rising seas in coming decades, arguing that the project’s environmental review was inadequate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s 1st District Court of Appeal disagreed and \u003ca href=\"https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A162045.PDF\">ruled that the city and developers could move forward\u003c/a> with permitting plans for Sanctuary West: 469 single-family, market-rate homes on four elevated peninsulas close to Newark’s shoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The City’s potential responses to environmental conditions between 50 and 80 years from now cannot be considered part of the current project,” the ruling said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate models show this area underwater as warming \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1977890/the-bay-is-rising-newark-residents-wonder-why-the-city-plans-to-develop-its-shoreline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">temperatures push bay water higher\u003c/a>. After reviewing the state’s latest climate science, the developer and city now plan to raise the homes above projected floodwater levels and limit the project to areas adjacent to the wetland itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists have questioned whether the city should build in this upland area, where wetlands would naturally migrate as tides rise, and say it could rob the city of natural flood protections in the future. Environmentalists \u003ca href=\"https://snwsavenewarkwetlands.kinsta.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Activists-Redouble-Efforts-to-Protect-At-Risk-SF-Bay-Wetlands-CCCR-07-13-2021.pdf\">challenged the project with multiple lawsuits\u003c/a> in an effort to strengthen environmental mitigations — or derail the project entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The range of projections for sea levels by that time are wide and sea levels at different ends of those projections could warrant significantly different responses,” the ruling said. “Because the City currently can only dimly guess what measures will be needed to respond to conditions several generations from now, the City was not required to analyze the impacts of the adaptive pathways as part of this project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court said that “sea level rise is not an impact on the environment caused by the project,” and noted that the state’s landmark conservation law, the California Environmental Quality Act, requires strict analysis of a project’s impact on the environment, and not the environment’s impact on a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jana Sokale, with \u003ca href=\"https://savenewarkwetlands.org/about-us/\">The Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge\u003c/a>, one of the environmental groups that sued, said the decision is shortsighted and doesn’t take the threat of rising sea levels seriously. She believes building 3,000-square-foot homes in an area that climate models show could flood puts residents on the front line of climate change and leaves them on the hook for adapting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing, and Earth is telling us that every year in big ways — and we just are not listening,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newark residents like Sokale say the decision to continue with a community on one of the last Bay Area wetlands — sponges that soak up floodwaters — shows that local, regional and state agencies aren’t taking climate change as the crisis it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Laws and regulations around the bay and within California are inadequate to protect these lands in the face of climate change,” she said. “The laws have not grasped what is ahead for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sobrato Organization did not respond to KQED’s request for comment. Newark officials were not immediately available.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The next step: permitting\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>To avoid some state regulations, the developer positioned Sanctuary West out of the purview of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, or BCDC: 100 feet from the shoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The developer looked at BCDC and said, ‘I’m going to move the project out of your jurisdiction.’ There’s nothing that [we] can do with regard to that development project,” said Larry Goldzband, executive director of BCDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials at \u003ca href=\"https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/\">The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board\u003c/a> say they intend to make it difficult for developers to build along Newark’s wetlands. Last winter, the board received nearly \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bayrefuge/status/1362798232124805132?s=21\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">5,000 petitions\u003c/a> from residents who urged them to challenge the project. Environmental groups are still \u003ca href=\"https://savenewarkwetlands.org/take-action/\">calling for the permanent protection and restoration\u003c/a> of both the wetland and upland areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ezraromero/status/1470629613311201284\">a letter to the developer\u003c/a> dated May 2020, the board said the group’s plan to raise the potential homes out of the floodplain with more than a million cubic yards of dirt will “alter the existing wetland hydrology” and that the housing would disrupt endangered species, recreation and wildlife habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview with KQED, Xavier Fernandez, planning manager for the board, said The Sobrato Organization should expect permitting to be very expensive. He says the board would like to push the project further into the existing city footprint or have the developer “not build it at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the agency official’s vocal concerns, because of their limited jurisdiction they can’t outright reject the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BCDC outlined a potential fix to the regulatory loophole in a new regional sea level rise adaptation plan, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Bay\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Adapt.\u003c/a> The plan would require broad regional cooperation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency says there are opportunities for new policies that better interpret the future effects of climate change and rising seas. One option: expanding BCDC’s jurisdiction beyond 100 feet from the shoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that would require a change to the agency’s jurisdiction, which would take years and require conversations with all the agencies, cities, counties and people involved.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A California district court has sided with the city of Newark and developer \u003ca href=\"https://www.sobrato.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Sobrato Organization\u003c/a> in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups who challenged a plan to build hundreds of two-story tract homes along fragile wetlands in Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists said the dwellings would be built in a federal flood zone and could succumb to rising seas in coming decades, arguing that the project’s environmental review was inadequate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s 1st District Court of Appeal disagreed and \u003ca href=\"https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A162045.PDF\">ruled that the city and developers could move forward\u003c/a> with permitting plans for Sanctuary West: 469 single-family, market-rate homes on four elevated peninsulas close to Newark’s shoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The City’s potential responses to environmental conditions between 50 and 80 years from now cannot be considered part of the current project,” the ruling said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate models show this area underwater as warming \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1977890/the-bay-is-rising-newark-residents-wonder-why-the-city-plans-to-develop-its-shoreline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">temperatures push bay water higher\u003c/a>. After reviewing the state’s latest climate science, the developer and city now plan to raise the homes above projected floodwater levels and limit the project to areas adjacent to the wetland itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists have questioned whether the city should build in this upland area, where wetlands would naturally migrate as tides rise, and say it could rob the city of natural flood protections in the future. Environmentalists \u003ca href=\"https://snwsavenewarkwetlands.kinsta.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Activists-Redouble-Efforts-to-Protect-At-Risk-SF-Bay-Wetlands-CCCR-07-13-2021.pdf\">challenged the project with multiple lawsuits\u003c/a> in an effort to strengthen environmental mitigations — or derail the project entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The range of projections for sea levels by that time are wide and sea levels at different ends of those projections could warrant significantly different responses,” the ruling said. “Because the City currently can only dimly guess what measures will be needed to respond to conditions several generations from now, the City was not required to analyze the impacts of the adaptive pathways as part of this project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court said that “sea level rise is not an impact on the environment caused by the project,” and noted that the state’s landmark conservation law, the California Environmental Quality Act, requires strict analysis of a project’s impact on the environment, and not the environment’s impact on a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jana Sokale, with \u003ca href=\"https://savenewarkwetlands.org/about-us/\">The Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge\u003c/a>, one of the environmental groups that sued, said the decision is shortsighted and doesn’t take the threat of rising sea levels seriously. She believes building 3,000-square-foot homes in an area that climate models show could flood puts residents on the front line of climate change and leaves them on the hook for adapting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing, and Earth is telling us that every year in big ways — and we just are not listening,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newark residents like Sokale say the decision to continue with a community on one of the last Bay Area wetlands — sponges that soak up floodwaters — shows that local, regional and state agencies aren’t taking climate change as the crisis it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Laws and regulations around the bay and within California are inadequate to protect these lands in the face of climate change,” she said. “The laws have not grasped what is ahead for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sobrato Organization did not respond to KQED’s request for comment. Newark officials were not immediately available.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The next step: permitting\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>To avoid some state regulations, the developer positioned Sanctuary West out of the purview of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, or BCDC: 100 feet from the shoreline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The developer looked at BCDC and said, ‘I’m going to move the project out of your jurisdiction.’ There’s nothing that [we] can do with regard to that development project,” said Larry Goldzband, executive director of BCDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials at \u003ca href=\"https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/\">The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board\u003c/a> say they intend to make it difficult for developers to build along Newark’s wetlands. Last winter, the board received nearly \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bayrefuge/status/1362798232124805132?s=21\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">5,000 petitions\u003c/a> from residents who urged them to challenge the project. Environmental groups are still \u003ca href=\"https://savenewarkwetlands.org/take-action/\">calling for the permanent protection and restoration\u003c/a> of both the wetland and upland areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ezraromero/status/1470629613311201284\">a letter to the developer\u003c/a> dated May 2020, the board said the group’s plan to raise the potential homes out of the floodplain with more than a million cubic yards of dirt will “alter the existing wetland hydrology” and that the housing would disrupt endangered species, recreation and wildlife habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview with KQED, Xavier Fernandez, planning manager for the board, said The Sobrato Organization should expect permitting to be very expensive. He says the board would like to push the project further into the existing city footprint or have the developer “not build it at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the agency official’s vocal concerns, because of their limited jurisdiction they can’t outright reject the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BCDC outlined a potential fix to the regulatory loophole in a new regional sea level rise adaptation plan, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Bay\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\">Adapt.\u003c/a> The plan would require broad regional cooperation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency says there are opportunities for new policies that better interpret the future effects of climate change and rising seas. 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},
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"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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},
"californiareport": {
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
},
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},
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"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
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"meta": {
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"source": "WNYC"
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"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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