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"content": "\u003cp>California on Friday scaled back a proposal to mandate Lyft and Uber to use more electric vehicles on their platforms, with regulators acknowledging that demand for ride-hailing services has cratered during the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board now wants to require that electric or zero-emission vehicles provide 60% of the miles driven on ride-service trips by 2030, agency staff \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/CMS%20Workshop%205_Public%20.pdf\">announced\u003c/a> during a livestreamed workshop Friday. That’s down from 70%-80%, the figure stipulated in early draft regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state hopes requiring cleaner cars on ride-hailing platforms will spur innovation in electric vehicles and reduce the emissions of planet-warming gases in a small but rapidly growing part of the state’s transportation sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vehicles driving for Transportation Network Company, as companies like Lyft and Uber are called in California, represented about 1% of greenhouse gas emissions from small vehicles driving on state roads in 2018, according to \u003ca href=\"https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CARB/bulletins/2959d74\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CARB\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Lyft and Uber are weathering a storm of events that have ravaged their businesses: the coronavirus pandemic, the ensuing recession and people’s fear of riding in a car with a stranger while the coronavirus continues to rapidly spread in many communities across California and the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators cited a projection that demand for Uber and Lyft rides won’t rebound to previous levels until 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People driving for Lyft and Uber use newer and more efficient cars than are owned by the public at large, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Ride-Hailing%27s-Climate-Risks.pdf\">research\u003c/a> has shown that the average ride-hailing trip emits several times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the transportation it supplants, mostly because of all the miles driven between pickups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Substituting an electric vehicle for a conventional car or truck used in the ride-hailing business can achieve nearly three times the reduction in carbon emissions of an electric vehicle that replaces a private car, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0632-7?proof=trueIn\">research\u003c/a> from UC Davis published in the journal \u003cem>Nature Energy\u003c/em>. \u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1966119/lyft-sets-target-for-electric-vehicles-ahead-of-a-clean-air-mandate\">said\u003c/a> it wants every vehicle on its platform to be electric by 2030, but critics \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@adam.winer/lyft-announcement-on-electrification-shows-why-consumers-need-stronger-state-standards-60c4074bb2bc\">point\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@adam.winer/lyft-announcement-on-electrification-shows-why-consumers-need-stronger-state-standards-60c4074bb2bc\">out\u003c/a> the goal is nonbinding, and Lyft’s leaders have been noncommittal about actually blocking gasoline-powered vehicles on its platform.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California on Friday scaled back a proposal to mandate Lyft and Uber to use more electric vehicles on their platforms, with regulators acknowledging that demand for ride-hailing services has cratered during the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board now wants to require that electric or zero-emission vehicles provide 60% of the miles driven on ride-service trips by 2030, agency staff \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/CMS%20Workshop%205_Public%20.pdf\">announced\u003c/a> during a livestreamed workshop Friday. That’s down from 70%-80%, the figure stipulated in early draft regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state hopes requiring cleaner cars on ride-hailing platforms will spur innovation in electric vehicles and reduce the emissions of planet-warming gases in a small but rapidly growing part of the state’s transportation sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vehicles driving for Transportation Network Company, as companies like Lyft and Uber are called in California, represented about 1% of greenhouse gas emissions from small vehicles driving on state roads in 2018, according to \u003ca href=\"https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CARB/bulletins/2959d74\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CARB\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Lyft and Uber are weathering a storm of events that have ravaged their businesses: the coronavirus pandemic, the ensuing recession and people’s fear of riding in a car with a stranger while the coronavirus continues to rapidly spread in many communities across California and the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators cited a projection that demand for Uber and Lyft rides won’t rebound to previous levels until 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People driving for Lyft and Uber use newer and more efficient cars than are owned by the public at large, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Ride-Hailing%27s-Climate-Risks.pdf\">research\u003c/a> has shown that the average ride-hailing trip emits several times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the transportation it supplants, mostly because of all the miles driven between pickups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Substituting an electric vehicle for a conventional car or truck used in the ride-hailing business can achieve nearly three times the reduction in carbon emissions of an electric vehicle that replaces a private car, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0632-7?proof=trueIn\">research\u003c/a> from UC Davis published in the journal \u003cem>Nature Energy\u003c/em>. \u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1966119/lyft-sets-target-for-electric-vehicles-ahead-of-a-clean-air-mandate\">said\u003c/a> it wants every vehicle on its platform to be electric by 2030, but critics \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@adam.winer/lyft-announcement-on-electrification-shows-why-consumers-need-stronger-state-standards-60c4074bb2bc\">point\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@adam.winer/lyft-announcement-on-electrification-shows-why-consumers-need-stronger-state-standards-60c4074bb2bc\">out\u003c/a> the goal is nonbinding, and Lyft’s leaders have been noncommittal about actually blocking gasoline-powered vehicles on its platform.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Biden Climate Change Plan Calls for Carbon-Free Energy by 2035",
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"content": "\u003cp>Joe Biden released a plan Tuesday aimed at combating climate change and spurring economic growth in part by overhauling America’s energy industry, with a proposal to achieve entirely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will discuss the proposal later Tuesday near his home in Wilmington, Delaware. It marks his latest effort to build out a legislative agenda with measures that could animate progressives who may be skeptical of Biden, who waged a more centrist campaign during the Democratic primary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan reflects ideas embraced by some of Biden’s more progressive allies during the primary, like Jay Inslee, whose campaign centered on the issue of climate change. The Washington governor first proposed achieving entirely carbon-free electricity by 2035. But it doesn’t go as far as the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal from progressives in Congress that calls for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden’s plan does align with a climate bill spearheaded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in reducing emissions to zero by 2050, however. And it goes farther than that bill on achieving a carbon-neutral power sector. House Democrats’ proposal sets a 2040 deadline for that goal, while Biden’s aims to achieve it five years faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals, a significant acceleration of the $1.7 trillion over 10 years he proposed spending in his climate plan during the primary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal doesn’t include specifics on how it would be paid for. Senior campaign officials who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said it would require a mix of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and deficit spending aimed at stimulating the economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike several of his Democratic rivals in the primary, Biden makes no mention of banning dirtier-burning coal or prohibiting fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas that triggered a natural gas boom in the United States over the last decade. The issue is politically sensitive in some key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, and during the primary Biden limited his opposition to new fracking permits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden’s new plan instead describes an easing out of burning of oil and gas and coal, through more efficient vehicles and public transport and buildings and power plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of an all-out ban on climate-damaging fossil fuels, he talks about carbon capture technologies to catch coal and petroleum pollution from power plant smokestacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden also embraces nuclear power, unlike some other Democratic opponents earlier. He calls for pumping up research on still-developing power technologies like hydrogen power and grid-size storage to stash power from solar and wind, overcoming a key drawback of those carbon-free energy sources now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier Democratic rivals found themselves targeted by ad campaigns from the petroleum industry after calling for aggressive ramp downs of fossil fuel use. Biden avoids even mentioning fossil fuels in his plan, referring simply to “clean energy” from alternate or cleaned-up sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan places a heavy emphasis on updating America’s infrastructure, and includes investments in improving energy efficiency in buildings and housing as well as promoting production of electric vehicles and conservation efforts in the agriculture industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also includes a portion focused on environmental justice, including a requirement that 40% of the money he wants to spend on clean energy deployment, reduction of legacy pollution and other investments, will go to historically disadvantaged communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Donald Trump campaign surrogates on Tuesday described Biden’s energy plan as a waste of taxpayer money and sought to compare it to the Obama administration’s clean energy loan guarantee program created as part of the 2009 stimulus effort to bolster an economy reeling from the Great Recession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies that benefited from that program, including solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which won a $528 million taxpayer-backed loan guarantee, collapsed after receiving federal subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is Solyndra on steroids,” said Republican House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, in a call with reporters organized by the Trump campaign about the Biden energy plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Joe Biden has been here before, you can see his track record.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a Monday evening fundraising call with renewable energy executives, Biden pledged to make an irreversible impact on the nation’s efforts to combat climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“God willing I win and even if I serve eight years, I want to make sure we put down such a marker that it’s impossible for the next president to turn it around,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senior campaign officials said Tuesday morning that the plan includes planks that could be achieved by executive action, and others that would require legislation. The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the campaign’s thinking, said many of the energy measures would be included in the first stimulus package Biden plans to bring to Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would likely face steep opposition from elected Republicans. Democrats need to pick up at least three seats to take back the Senate, and Biden has pledged to campaign hard to help Democrats win back control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he argued during his Monday evening fundraiser that the current “historic set of crises — a pandemic, an economic crisis and systemic racism” would make it “easier” to pass major reforms like his climate plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change, Biden said, “is the existential threat to humanity, and it is real. It is real. And it is urgent, and the public is becoming aware of it. And it may be the very answer to get us out of this economic situation we’re in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Joe Biden released a plan Tuesday aimed at combating climate change and spurring economic growth in part by overhauling America’s energy industry, with a proposal to achieve entirely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will discuss the proposal later Tuesday near his home in Wilmington, Delaware. It marks his latest effort to build out a legislative agenda with measures that could animate progressives who may be skeptical of Biden, who waged a more centrist campaign during the Democratic primary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan reflects ideas embraced by some of Biden’s more progressive allies during the primary, like Jay Inslee, whose campaign centered on the issue of climate change. The Washington governor first proposed achieving entirely carbon-free electricity by 2035. But it doesn’t go as far as the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal from progressives in Congress that calls for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden’s plan does align with a climate bill spearheaded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in reducing emissions to zero by 2050, however. And it goes farther than that bill on achieving a carbon-neutral power sector. House Democrats’ proposal sets a 2040 deadline for that goal, while Biden’s aims to achieve it five years faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals, a significant acceleration of the $1.7 trillion over 10 years he proposed spending in his climate plan during the primary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal doesn’t include specifics on how it would be paid for. Senior campaign officials who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said it would require a mix of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and deficit spending aimed at stimulating the economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike several of his Democratic rivals in the primary, Biden makes no mention of banning dirtier-burning coal or prohibiting fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas that triggered a natural gas boom in the United States over the last decade. The issue is politically sensitive in some key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, and during the primary Biden limited his opposition to new fracking permits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden’s new plan instead describes an easing out of burning of oil and gas and coal, through more efficient vehicles and public transport and buildings and power plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of an all-out ban on climate-damaging fossil fuels, he talks about carbon capture technologies to catch coal and petroleum pollution from power plant smokestacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biden also embraces nuclear power, unlike some other Democratic opponents earlier. He calls for pumping up research on still-developing power technologies like hydrogen power and grid-size storage to stash power from solar and wind, overcoming a key drawback of those carbon-free energy sources now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier Democratic rivals found themselves targeted by ad campaigns from the petroleum industry after calling for aggressive ramp downs of fossil fuel use. Biden avoids even mentioning fossil fuels in his plan, referring simply to “clean energy” from alternate or cleaned-up sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan places a heavy emphasis on updating America’s infrastructure, and includes investments in improving energy efficiency in buildings and housing as well as promoting production of electric vehicles and conservation efforts in the agriculture industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also includes a portion focused on environmental justice, including a requirement that 40% of the money he wants to spend on clean energy deployment, reduction of legacy pollution and other investments, will go to historically disadvantaged communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Donald Trump campaign surrogates on Tuesday described Biden’s energy plan as a waste of taxpayer money and sought to compare it to the Obama administration’s clean energy loan guarantee program created as part of the 2009 stimulus effort to bolster an economy reeling from the Great Recession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies that benefited from that program, including solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which won a $528 million taxpayer-backed loan guarantee, collapsed after receiving federal subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is Solyndra on steroids,” said Republican House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, in a call with reporters organized by the Trump campaign about the Biden energy plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Joe Biden has been here before, you can see his track record.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a Monday evening fundraising call with renewable energy executives, Biden pledged to make an irreversible impact on the nation’s efforts to combat climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“God willing I win and even if I serve eight years, I want to make sure we put down such a marker that it’s impossible for the next president to turn it around,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senior campaign officials said Tuesday morning that the plan includes planks that could be achieved by executive action, and others that would require legislation. The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the campaign’s thinking, said many of the energy measures would be included in the first stimulus package Biden plans to bring to Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would likely face steep opposition from elected Republicans. Democrats need to pick up at least three seats to take back the Senate, and Biden has pledged to campaign hard to help Democrats win back control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he argued during his Monday evening fundraiser that the current “historic set of crises — a pandemic, an economic crisis and systemic racism” would make it “easier” to pass major reforms like his climate plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change, Biden said, “is the existential threat to humanity, and it is real. It is real. And it is urgent, and the public is becoming aware of it. And it may be the very answer to get us out of this economic situation we’re in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Modest Fish at the Center of the Mighty Colorado River Water Rights Battle",
"headTitle": "The Modest Fish at the Center of the Mighty Colorado River Water Rights Battle | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charismatic is hardly the best word to describe the humpback chub, a fish with a frowny eel face jammed onto a sportfish body in a way that suggests evolution has a sense of humor. Nor did tastiness build a fan base for this “trash fish” across its natural habitat throughout the Colorado River Basin. But, in 1973, the humpback chub became famous by winning federal protection under the \u003ca href=\"https://www.coloradoriverrecovery.org/general-information/the-fish/humpback-chub.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Endangered Species Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Researchers in the Grand Canyon now spend weeks at a time, several times a year, monitoring humpback chub, which has become central to an ecosystem science program with implications for millions of Westerners who rely on Colorado River water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dennis Harris, who guides an electrofishing boat for a research contractor, is part of the science crew that briefed me last year at the world’s largest known humpback chub hangout, just below the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado in Arizona. He spun a yarn about what fish say upon their return to home waters — how they survived an alien abduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They scooped me up in a net and took me to the Mother Ship and stuck me with a piece of glass and brought me back here,'” Harris said, throwing his head back and splaying his arms to imitate fish stunned by the electric current.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967000 alignnone\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"712\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver-160x163.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And all their friends go, ‘Yeah, right.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Funny as that sounds, the humpback chub’s experience is surprisingly meaningful now, as its river habitat deep in the iconic, redrock canyon becomes the subject of new scrutiny. New negotiations about the Colorado’s future begin later this year in a world that has fundamentally changed since foundational water agreements were drawn up, back when the river was flush and the entire basin was treated like a giant network of irrigation ditches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, nearly a century after the original Colorado River Compact was forged, river stakeholders also find themselves in alien terrain as they try to reconcile an old management scheme with new realities, such as tribal rights, environmental protection and, especially, climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘The Pie is Getting Smaller’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">About 40 million people in seven states and Mexico rely on the Colorado River for irrigation, drinking and even hydropower. Most of the water is used in agriculture to irrigate more than 5.5 million acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, the Colorado is shrinking. Average river flows have dropped \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016WR019638\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">19% \u003c/a>over the last century. About half of the decline is blamed on global warming, and scientists project that unchecked climate change could nearly triple flow reductions by the century’s end. Meanwhile, basin tribes want to tap into allocations they haven’t been able to use because they lack means to store and pipe the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">And thanks to research mandated by the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act, the fate of the chub and the canyon ecology are factors that will also need to be considered in the yet-to-be-scheduled negotiations. Ultimately, everyone’s worried about losing their share of the Colorado River, of going home with partly empty buckets because there’s just not enough water to go around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The pie is getting smaller,” said Jack Schmidt, director of Utah State University’s \u003ca href=\"https://qcnr.usu.edu/coloradoriver/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for Colorado River Studies\u003c/a>, noting that more users sharing less water increases pressure to revamp water agreements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">To understand what he means, here’s a quick primer on Colorado River allocations beginning with the term “acre feet.” It’s roughly the water needed to fill a football field a foot deep or about 326,000 gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under original agreements, including the Colorado River Compact, Schmidt’s “pie” amounted to 17.5 million acre feet of water, which has proven to be an overestimation of “average” flows because the calculation was made when the river was unusually full. So over the last two decades, thanks in part to climate change and drought, the size of that pie has shrunk to an average annual flow of about 12.5 million acre feet. In short, the pie is about one-third smaller on average than when water users divvied up the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have to come to terms with the fact that they can’t keep the size of that [accustomed] slice when the whole pie is getting smaller,” said Schmidt.\u003cbr>\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967001 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"821\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought-160x248.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having once led the humpback chub “alien abductions” and the rest of the scientific program at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, Schmidt is now studying how climate change might affect not just the endangered fish species and the basin environment overall, but also traditional river flows and hydropower output. And, although he says environmental concerns in the canyon typically have been “an afterthought” in how the river is managed, he hopes the research becomes central during upcoming negotiations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Opportunities to tinker with river management plans are coming up fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Water Rights: A Dramatic Struggle\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The U.S. Interior Department must begin updating plans for managing the river, and convene all the states that rely on it, by the end of the year under the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/strategies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colorado River Interim Guidelines\u003c/a>, one of the agreements that determine how much water is allocated for each stakeholder to use or develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like everything about Colorado River management, it’s legally complex and controlled by a deeply entrenched power structure involving the seven basin states, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, and established users in agriculture and municipalities that have assigned positions in the line to the spigot — spots known as “water rights.” Dry as it might sound, it’s dramatic stuff, grist for a neo-noir thriller like the 1974 film, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinatown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chinatown\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">But even the guidelines, which were implemented in 2007, have fallen short in the new, drier West. Last year, Congress approved a pair of \u003ca href=\"https://www.usbr.gov/dcp/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Drought Contingency Plans\u003c/a>, requiring varying levels of conservation to be implemented, state-by-state, whenever water levels sank too low at Lake Powell or Lake Mead, the ginormous storage reservoirs for Colorado River water. Both lakes dropped to emergency levels within months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The original compact guarantees certain water volumes to the lower basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California. The upper basin states — Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico — historically haven’t used all of their allocations, but plan to develop theirs, too. For example, Utah is pressing forward with a \u003ca href=\"https://lpputah.org/?utm_source=Online&utm_medium=Google%20AdWords&utm_campaign=LPP2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">multibillion-dollar project\u003c/a> to pipe 86,000 acre feet halfway across the state to the fast-growing southwestern part of the state. A diversion of water from the Utah-Wyoming border to Colorado’s populous Front Range — killed and resurrected so many times it’s called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.greeleytribune.com/2019/01/06/a-zombie-pipeline-rises-from-the-dead-in-effort-to-bring-more-water-to-front-range/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“zombie pipeline” \u003c/a>— would use 55,000 acre feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, Schmidt said: “I am actually very hopeful. I believe that climate change and the real need to renegotiate agreements have brought us together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The role of global warming as a motivator for revisiting the water allocations probably can’t be overstated. The average temperature in the Southwest has already risen twice as fast as the global average and future temperatures are projected to increase as much as \u003ca href=\"https://source.colostate.edu/climate-change-shrinking-colorado-river/\">9.5 degrees\u003c/a> Fahrenheit by 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate change is just one reason Daryl Vigil, water director for the Jicarilla Apache Nation and interim director of the Ten Tribes Partnership, is determined to see tribes \u003ca href=\"https://indiancountrytoday.com/opinion/water-is-life-it-s-time-5Qzqa2pSRku-hfrYiYjEDg\">at the table\u003c/a> in the next round of negotiations. He says the 29 basin tribes have priority rights to about 20 percent of the Colorado River’s water, but were snubbed by current users from past Colorado River talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1966999 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"723\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes-160x219.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">“The system is going to protect itself, to perpetuate what it already does because it benefits those who already are doing OK” he said. “Familiar story, right?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The exclusion, which amounts to environmental racism, means tens of thousands of indigenous people have not been able to access their water and tap into the associated economic opportunities, such as selling their water rights and using the water for energy projects, he said. Instead, other stakeholders are using tribal water without paying for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another reason the tribes should be part of the decision making, he said, is because of their experience — thousands of years of dealing with water scarcity in the region — and their cultural views about the environment belong in any critical conversations about the Colorado. Otherwise the future looks “pretty catastrophic to us,” Vigil told High Country News this spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When we start talking about climate change,” he said, “absolutely pushing to make sure that we’re thinking about a mindset of how we fit into nature, rather than nature fitting into us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Humpback Chub Science Informs Decision\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The humpback chub helps illustrate Vigil’s point that water is living, that the river basin is more than a plumbing system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Preserving the chub’s DNA — and data about what’s enabled the fish to survive 3 million to 5 million years of life in the basin — did not become a priority until the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act. Experimental releases at Glen Canyon Dam, studies about predation, water chemistry, temperature changes and insects have helped revive populations, and now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/22/2020-00512/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-reclassification-of-the-humpback-chub-from-endangered\">downlist\u003c/a> the humpback chub from endangered to threatened status.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center, directed by Scott VanderKooi, has led efforts to monitor environmental balance while dam operations continue to generate energy and regulate reservoir levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the pandemic prompted the closure of the river to boating this spring, several scientific trips had to be scrapped or postponed, he explained. They included cultural resource monitoring, the juvenile humpback chub “abductions” and an important three-year test of ways to boost insect life along the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“For short-term changes, we’re missing some data,” VanderKooi said. “But for looking at these longer-term trends, we’re confident that we’ll have enough information to determine whether or not the experiment was successful and whether we were able to instigate those changes in the aquatic ecosystem that we believe will occur by altering these flows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Fleck described a long history of ignoring science in managing basin water in the recent book, “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River,” co-authored with Eric Kuhn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1967002\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 924px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967002\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"924\" height=\"355\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0.png 924w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-800x307.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-160x61.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-768x295.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 924px) 100vw, 924px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Populations of humpback chub have stabilized in the Colorado River Basin, and earlier this year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed changing the legal status from “endangered” to “threatened.” The fate of this species is tied to operations of the Glen Canyon Dam which irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland and provides water to around 40 million people. \u003ccite>(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re in the midst of this huge experiment that’s really open-ended in terms of how we manage this river going forward, and we need all of this science to inform it,” he said. “You can’t just … say, ‘Well, we’re going to ignore that piece,’ because you’re going to have these unintended consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fleck said the people deciding the basin’s fate need information about the trade-offs. And data from Grand Canyon research will help them understand not only how to preserve a “sacred space” in American culture but also how to continue relying on a resource essential to the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s hard to imagine that those funny-faced fish have much to teach us. But, in a sense, they already have. Those “alien abductions” of humpback chub deep in the redrock canyon have generated scientific understanding that we’ve used to slow the species’ slide toward extinction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The chub’s story shows how probing natural systems on a small scale can lead to workable solutions. Now the question is whether that lesson will be scaled up and how well the next Colorado River management plan takes climate into account. In the end, research can only bring focus to the Colorado’s real-world questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data alone won’t decide the river’s future. Only people can do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">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/icn-weekly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003cem>This story is part of a project covering the Colorado River basin and water in the West, and was produced by InsideClimate News in collaboration with public radio station KUNC.\u003c/em>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Why the frowny, eel-faced \"trash fish\" is at the heart of upcoming water rights negotiations.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charismatic is hardly the best word to describe the humpback chub, a fish with a frowny eel face jammed onto a sportfish body in a way that suggests evolution has a sense of humor. Nor did tastiness build a fan base for this “trash fish” across its natural habitat throughout the Colorado River Basin. But, in 1973, the humpback chub became famous by winning federal protection under the \u003ca href=\"https://www.coloradoriverrecovery.org/general-information/the-fish/humpback-chub.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Endangered Species Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Researchers in the Grand Canyon now spend weeks at a time, several times a year, monitoring humpback chub, which has become central to an ecosystem science program with implications for millions of Westerners who rely on Colorado River water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dennis Harris, who guides an electrofishing boat for a research contractor, is part of the science crew that briefed me last year at the world’s largest known humpback chub hangout, just below the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado in Arizona. He spun a yarn about what fish say upon their return to home waters — how they survived an alien abduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They scooped me up in a net and took me to the Mother Ship and stuck me with a piece of glass and brought me back here,'” Harris said, throwing his head back and splaying his arms to imitate fish stunned by the electric current.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967000 alignnone\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"712\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChubColoradoRiver-160x163.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And all their friends go, ‘Yeah, right.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Funny as that sounds, the humpback chub’s experience is surprisingly meaningful now, as its river habitat deep in the iconic, redrock canyon becomes the subject of new scrutiny. New negotiations about the Colorado’s future begin later this year in a world that has fundamentally changed since foundational water agreements were drawn up, back when the river was flush and the entire basin was treated like a giant network of irrigation ditches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, nearly a century after the original Colorado River Compact was forged, river stakeholders also find themselves in alien terrain as they try to reconcile an old management scheme with new realities, such as tribal rights, environmental protection and, especially, climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘The Pie is Getting Smaller’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">About 40 million people in seven states and Mexico rely on the Colorado River for irrigation, drinking and even hydropower. Most of the water is used in agriculture to irrigate more than 5.5 million acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, the Colorado is shrinking. Average river flows have dropped \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016WR019638\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">19% \u003c/a>over the last century. About half of the decline is blamed on global warming, and scientists project that unchecked climate change could nearly triple flow reductions by the century’s end. Meanwhile, basin tribes want to tap into allocations they haven’t been able to use because they lack means to store and pipe the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">And thanks to research mandated by the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act, the fate of the chub and the canyon ecology are factors that will also need to be considered in the yet-to-be-scheduled negotiations. Ultimately, everyone’s worried about losing their share of the Colorado River, of going home with partly empty buckets because there’s just not enough water to go around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The pie is getting smaller,” said Jack Schmidt, director of Utah State University’s \u003ca href=\"https://qcnr.usu.edu/coloradoriver/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for Colorado River Studies\u003c/a>, noting that more users sharing less water increases pressure to revamp water agreements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">To understand what he means, here’s a quick primer on Colorado River allocations beginning with the term “acre feet.” It’s roughly the water needed to fill a football field a foot deep or about 326,000 gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under original agreements, including the Colorado River Compact, Schmidt’s “pie” amounted to 17.5 million acre feet of water, which has proven to be an overestimation of “average” flows because the calculation was made when the river was unusually full. So over the last two decades, thanks in part to climate change and drought, the size of that pie has shrunk to an average annual flow of about 12.5 million acre feet. In short, the pie is about one-third smaller on average than when water users divvied up the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have to come to terms with the fact that they can’t keep the size of that [accustomed] slice when the whole pie is getting smaller,” said Schmidt.\u003cbr>\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967001 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"821\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinDrought-160x248.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having once led the humpback chub “alien abductions” and the rest of the scientific program at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, Schmidt is now studying how climate change might affect not just the endangered fish species and the basin environment overall, but also traditional river flows and hydropower output. And, although he says environmental concerns in the canyon typically have been “an afterthought” in how the river is managed, he hopes the research becomes central during upcoming negotiations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Opportunities to tinker with river management plans are coming up fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Water Rights: A Dramatic Struggle\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The U.S. Interior Department must begin updating plans for managing the river, and convene all the states that rely on it, by the end of the year under the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/strategies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colorado River Interim Guidelines\u003c/a>, one of the agreements that determine how much water is allocated for each stakeholder to use or develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like everything about Colorado River management, it’s legally complex and controlled by a deeply entrenched power structure involving the seven basin states, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, and established users in agriculture and municipalities that have assigned positions in the line to the spigot — spots known as “water rights.” Dry as it might sound, it’s dramatic stuff, grist for a neo-noir thriller like the 1974 film, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinatown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chinatown\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">But even the guidelines, which were implemented in 2007, have fallen short in the new, drier West. Last year, Congress approved a pair of \u003ca href=\"https://www.usbr.gov/dcp/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Drought Contingency Plans\u003c/a>, requiring varying levels of conservation to be implemented, state-by-state, whenever water levels sank too low at Lake Powell or Lake Mead, the ginormous storage reservoirs for Colorado River water. Both lakes dropped to emergency levels within months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The original compact guarantees certain water volumes to the lower basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California. The upper basin states — Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico — historically haven’t used all of their allocations, but plan to develop theirs, too. For example, Utah is pressing forward with a \u003ca href=\"https://lpputah.org/?utm_source=Online&utm_medium=Google%20AdWords&utm_campaign=LPP2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">multibillion-dollar project\u003c/a> to pipe 86,000 acre feet halfway across the state to the fast-growing southwestern part of the state. A diversion of water from the Utah-Wyoming border to Colorado’s populous Front Range — killed and resurrected so many times it’s called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.greeleytribune.com/2019/01/06/a-zombie-pipeline-rises-from-the-dead-in-effort-to-bring-more-water-to-front-range/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“zombie pipeline” \u003c/a>— would use 55,000 acre feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, Schmidt said: “I am actually very hopeful. I believe that climate change and the real need to renegotiate agreements have brought us together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The role of global warming as a motivator for revisiting the water allocations probably can’t be overstated. The average temperature in the Southwest has already risen twice as fast as the global average and future temperatures are projected to increase as much as \u003ca href=\"https://source.colostate.edu/climate-change-shrinking-colorado-river/\">9.5 degrees\u003c/a> Fahrenheit by 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate change is just one reason Daryl Vigil, water director for the Jicarilla Apache Nation and interim director of the Ten Tribes Partnership, is determined to see tribes \u003ca href=\"https://indiancountrytoday.com/opinion/water-is-life-it-s-time-5Qzqa2pSRku-hfrYiYjEDg\">at the table\u003c/a> in the next round of negotiations. He says the 29 basin tribes have priority rights to about 20 percent of the Colorado River’s water, but were snubbed by current users from past Colorado River talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1966999 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"723\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/ColoradoRiverBasinTribes-160x219.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">“The system is going to protect itself, to perpetuate what it already does because it benefits those who already are doing OK” he said. “Familiar story, right?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The exclusion, which amounts to environmental racism, means tens of thousands of indigenous people have not been able to access their water and tap into the associated economic opportunities, such as selling their water rights and using the water for energy projects, he said. Instead, other stakeholders are using tribal water without paying for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another reason the tribes should be part of the decision making, he said, is because of their experience — thousands of years of dealing with water scarcity in the region — and their cultural views about the environment belong in any critical conversations about the Colorado. Otherwise the future looks “pretty catastrophic to us,” Vigil told High Country News this spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When we start talking about climate change,” he said, “absolutely pushing to make sure that we’re thinking about a mindset of how we fit into nature, rather than nature fitting into us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Humpback Chub Science Informs Decision\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The humpback chub helps illustrate Vigil’s point that water is living, that the river basin is more than a plumbing system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Preserving the chub’s DNA — and data about what’s enabled the fish to survive 3 million to 5 million years of life in the basin — did not become a priority until the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act. Experimental releases at Glen Canyon Dam, studies about predation, water chemistry, temperature changes and insects have helped revive populations, and now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/22/2020-00512/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-reclassification-of-the-humpback-chub-from-endangered\">downlist\u003c/a> the humpback chub from endangered to threatened status.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center, directed by Scott VanderKooi, has led efforts to monitor environmental balance while dam operations continue to generate energy and regulate reservoir levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the pandemic prompted the closure of the river to boating this spring, several scientific trips had to be scrapped or postponed, he explained. They included cultural resource monitoring, the juvenile humpback chub “abductions” and an important three-year test of ways to boost insect life along the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“For short-term changes, we’re missing some data,” VanderKooi said. “But for looking at these longer-term trends, we’re confident that we’ll have enough information to determine whether or not the experiment was successful and whether we were able to instigate those changes in the aquatic ecosystem that we believe will occur by altering these flows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Fleck described a long history of ignoring science in managing basin water in the recent book, “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River,” co-authored with Eric Kuhn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1967002\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 924px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1967002\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"924\" height=\"355\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0.png 924w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-800x307.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-160x61.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/07/HumpbackChub.USFWS__0-768x295.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 924px) 100vw, 924px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Populations of humpback chub have stabilized in the Colorado River Basin, and earlier this year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed changing the legal status from “endangered” to “threatened.” The fate of this species is tied to operations of the Glen Canyon Dam which irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland and provides water to around 40 million people. \u003ccite>(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re in the midst of this huge experiment that’s really open-ended in terms of how we manage this river going forward, and we need all of this science to inform it,” he said. “You can’t just … say, ‘Well, we’re going to ignore that piece,’ because you’re going to have these unintended consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fleck said the people deciding the basin’s fate need information about the trade-offs. And data from Grand Canyon research will help them understand not only how to preserve a “sacred space” in American culture but also how to continue relying on a resource essential to the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s hard to imagine that those funny-faced fish have much to teach us. But, in a sense, they already have. Those “alien abductions” of humpback chub deep in the redrock canyon have generated scientific understanding that we’ve used to slow the species’ slide toward extinction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The chub’s story shows how probing natural systems on a small scale can lead to workable solutions. Now the question is whether that lesson will be scaled up and how well the next Colorado River management plan takes climate into account. In the end, research can only bring focus to the Colorado’s real-world questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data alone won’t decide the river’s future. Only people can do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">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/icn-weekly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003cem>This story is part of a project covering the Colorado River basin and water in the West, and was produced by InsideClimate News in collaboration with public radio station KUNC.\u003c/em>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">House Democrats unveiled a sweeping plan for climate action last week that embraces much of the ambition of the Green New Deal, while avoiding the use of the name and steering clear of calls for abrupt bans on fossil fuel development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='medium' citation='U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla.']‘To the young people who have urged us to act fearlessly, we have heard you.’[/pullquote]Instead, the package of more than 120 pieces of legislation seeks to drive a transition to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, achieved by reaching into every corner of the U.S. economy with new investments, standards and incentives favoring clean energy, jobs creation, lands protection and environmental justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report drew criticism both from those who want to see a more rapid retreat from fossil fuels, and those who think the Democrats should have sought more common ground with the GOP. While the plan has no chance of coming to fruition in the current Congress, its endorsement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and moderate Democrats sets a marker for what is possible if the Democrats gain control of the government next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To the young people who have urged us to act fearlessly, we have heard you,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, who led development of the 500-page report by the panel’s Democrats. Castor and panel member Rep. A. Donald McEachin, D-Va., are both members of a task force appointed by former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumed presidential nominee, to advise him and party platform writers on climate policy this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an indication of how far the Democratic Party’s center of gravity on climate has moved in two years, the report won some praise from the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which had been critical of Pelosi and skeptical that Castor’s committee would have sufficient power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The plan is “a real sign that young people are changing politics in this country and the establishment is scrambling to catch up,” said Lauren Maunus, Sunrise’s legislative manager, in a prepared statement. “This plan is more ambitious than anything we have seen from Democratic leadership so far, but it still needs to go further to match the full scale of the crisis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although Sunrise didn’t get into specifics, other groups on the left said they would have liked to see a ban on fracking, a ban on exports and imports of fossil fuels, and an immediate halt to new fossil fuel infrastructure such as pipelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This climate proposal inexplicably and inexcusably fails to call for a halt to the extraction of fossil fuels,” said Mitch Jones, policy director of Food & Water Action. “It is simply not an adequate attempt to deal with the crisis we actually face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The road map, which draws on information gathered in more than 100 hearings by Castor’s panel and other House committees, calls for all cars sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2035 and electricity to be net-zero emissions by 2040. The plan calls for massive jobs programs, including a Civilian Conservation Corps, investments in infrastructure and the cleanup of abandoned mines, as well as tax credits to spur more manufacturing of clean energy components domestically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention to the disproportionate effects of climate change and environmental hazards on minority communities is an underlying theme of the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The plan would aim a surge of environmental enforcement actions at overburdened communities of color. It would also include enactment of a clean and efficient energy overhaul of the nation’s public housing, a $180 billion, 10-year program introduced in Congress late last year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the avatar of the Green New Deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report calls for a price on carbon, but asserts that carbon pricings would be insufficient on its own. “Carbon pricing is not a silver bullet,” the report said. The report said that low- and moderate-income communities would need to benefit from any carbon pricing policy, and that a carbon market should be paired with policy to “achieve measurable air pollution reductions from facilities located in environmental justice (EJ) communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">House Democrats also made clear their opposition to political trade-offs that would weaken the hand of those coping with the fallout of global warming damages. For example, the report said Congress should not give liability protection to fossil fuel companies in return for their support of a climate bill. That issue is especially salient nationally, with more than 20 lawsuits underway by state and local governments and others over climate damages, including \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24062020/minnesota-climate-change-lawsuit-exxon-mobil-api-koch-industries\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">actions filed in the past week\u003c/a> by Minnesota and the District of Columbia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some critics took aim at the Democrats for putting out a report that no Republican members of the committee had signed onto. Rich Powell, executive director of ClearPath Action, a group that is supportive of nuclear energy, carbon capture investments, and other climate action ideas that could win Republican support, said the House majority missed an opportunity for bipartisanship. Powell said the report was “effectively a rewrite of the Green New Deal, leading us further away from real, practical solutions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Castor said that she believed that many of the ideas in the report — including investments in next-generation nuclear technology and carbon removal technology — would have GOP support. But, she said she expected that the Republican members of the climate committee would be producing their own report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It would make it a lot easier to make bipartisan progress if our Republican colleagues would accept the imperative of breaking from fossil fuels,” added Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., another committee member. “There continues to be a bit of a disconnect here, where they say that they are ready to talk about climate, but the ideas they put on the table revolve around fossil fuel, and the science is quite clear, we’ve got to make a dramatic break from fossil fuel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another committee member, Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., a former energy efficiency entrepreneur and \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12112018/election-congress-climate-change-environment-activists-osasio-cortez-casten-tlaib-escobar-levin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one of several scientists who won office in 2018\u003c/a>, said he believes that bipartisanship should not be the goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What we set out to do was to solve the problem as is scientifically necessary,” he said. “It is tragic that the answer to that question is not synonymous with what can be done on a bipartisan basis. But our kids, our grandkids do not give a damn about whether it was bipartisan. They care about whether we gave them a planet that is habitable.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">House Democrats unveiled a sweeping plan for climate action last week that embraces much of the ambition of the Green New Deal, while avoiding the use of the name and steering clear of calls for abrupt bans on fossil fuel development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Instead, the package of more than 120 pieces of legislation seeks to drive a transition to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, achieved by reaching into every corner of the U.S. economy with new investments, standards and incentives favoring clean energy, jobs creation, lands protection and environmental justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report drew criticism both from those who want to see a more rapid retreat from fossil fuels, and those who think the Democrats should have sought more common ground with the GOP. While the plan has no chance of coming to fruition in the current Congress, its endorsement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and moderate Democrats sets a marker for what is possible if the Democrats gain control of the government next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To the young people who have urged us to act fearlessly, we have heard you,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, who led development of the 500-page report by the panel’s Democrats. Castor and panel member Rep. A. Donald McEachin, D-Va., are both members of a task force appointed by former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumed presidential nominee, to advise him and party platform writers on climate policy this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an indication of how far the Democratic Party’s center of gravity on climate has moved in two years, the report won some praise from the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which had been critical of Pelosi and skeptical that Castor’s committee would have sufficient power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The plan is “a real sign that young people are changing politics in this country and the establishment is scrambling to catch up,” said Lauren Maunus, Sunrise’s legislative manager, in a prepared statement. “This plan is more ambitious than anything we have seen from Democratic leadership so far, but it still needs to go further to match the full scale of the crisis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although Sunrise didn’t get into specifics, other groups on the left said they would have liked to see a ban on fracking, a ban on exports and imports of fossil fuels, and an immediate halt to new fossil fuel infrastructure such as pipelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This climate proposal inexplicably and inexcusably fails to call for a halt to the extraction of fossil fuels,” said Mitch Jones, policy director of Food & Water Action. “It is simply not an adequate attempt to deal with the crisis we actually face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The road map, which draws on information gathered in more than 100 hearings by Castor’s panel and other House committees, calls for all cars sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2035 and electricity to be net-zero emissions by 2040. The plan calls for massive jobs programs, including a Civilian Conservation Corps, investments in infrastructure and the cleanup of abandoned mines, as well as tax credits to spur more manufacturing of clean energy components domestically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention to the disproportionate effects of climate change and environmental hazards on minority communities is an underlying theme of the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The plan would aim a surge of environmental enforcement actions at overburdened communities of color. It would also include enactment of a clean and efficient energy overhaul of the nation’s public housing, a $180 billion, 10-year program introduced in Congress late last year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the avatar of the Green New Deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report calls for a price on carbon, but asserts that carbon pricings would be insufficient on its own. “Carbon pricing is not a silver bullet,” the report said. The report said that low- and moderate-income communities would need to benefit from any carbon pricing policy, and that a carbon market should be paired with policy to “achieve measurable air pollution reductions from facilities located in environmental justice (EJ) communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">House Democrats also made clear their opposition to political trade-offs that would weaken the hand of those coping with the fallout of global warming damages. For example, the report said Congress should not give liability protection to fossil fuel companies in return for their support of a climate bill. That issue is especially salient nationally, with more than 20 lawsuits underway by state and local governments and others over climate damages, including \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24062020/minnesota-climate-change-lawsuit-exxon-mobil-api-koch-industries\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">actions filed in the past week\u003c/a> by Minnesota and the District of Columbia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some critics took aim at the Democrats for putting out a report that no Republican members of the committee had signed onto. Rich Powell, executive director of ClearPath Action, a group that is supportive of nuclear energy, carbon capture investments, and other climate action ideas that could win Republican support, said the House majority missed an opportunity for bipartisanship. Powell said the report was “effectively a rewrite of the Green New Deal, leading us further away from real, practical solutions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Castor said that she believed that many of the ideas in the report — including investments in next-generation nuclear technology and carbon removal technology — would have GOP support. But, she said she expected that the Republican members of the climate committee would be producing their own report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It would make it a lot easier to make bipartisan progress if our Republican colleagues would accept the imperative of breaking from fossil fuels,” added Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., another committee member. “There continues to be a bit of a disconnect here, where they say that they are ready to talk about climate, but the ideas they put on the table revolve around fossil fuel, and the science is quite clear, we’ve got to make a dramatic break from fossil fuel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another committee member, Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., a former energy efficiency entrepreneur and \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12112018/election-congress-climate-change-environment-activists-osasio-cortez-casten-tlaib-escobar-levin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one of several scientists who won office in 2018\u003c/a>, said he believes that bipartisanship should not be the goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What we set out to do was to solve the problem as is scientifically necessary,” he said. “It is tragic that the answer to that question is not synonymous with what can be done on a bipartisan basis. But our kids, our grandkids do not give a damn about whether it was bipartisan. They care about whether we gave them a planet that is habitable.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Lyft Has Lofty Climate Goals; Experts Want Concrete Actions",
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco-based ride-hailing company Lyft has \u003ca href=\"https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/leading-the-transition-to-zero-emissions\">announced\u003c/a> a goal of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles on its platform by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan includes its entire fleet of vehicles, which consists mostly of personal cars used by people who drive fewer than 10 hours per week in their spare time, the company says. Lyft also rents vehicles to drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft said it was setting the goal to reduce the planet warming-gases produced by the transportation sector; these make up almost a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Environmental\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Protection\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Agency\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement comes while California is in the early stages of considering whether to impose climate regulations on ride-hailing companies like Lyft and its larger rival, Uber. And as electric vehicles are growing in popularity in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board recently \u003ca href=\"https://gcc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fww2.arb.ca.gov%2Four-work%2Fprograms%2Fclean-miles-standard%2Fclean-miles-standard-meetings-workshops&data=02%7C01%7Cdave.clegern%40arb.ca.gov%7C3e12746d13e44b2d544008d812fc4bf0%7C9de5aaee778840b1a438c0ccc98c87cc%7C0%7C0%7C637280222106910376&sdata=XCrUGFMDYgaVtWYKJVht92RoRhdDGn2KXUJxydPoqyk%3D&reserved=0\">shared\u003c/a> early versions of a potential regulation to require ride-hailing companies to ensure 70%-80% of miles be driven in electric or other zero-emission vehicles by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“CARB is pleased to see this commitment from Lyft and we applaud their leadership in moving in this direction,” said Dave Clegern, a spokeperson for the agency, in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EVs could represent a “large share of the market” in 2030, according to Severin Borenstein, professor of energy economics at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric vehicles could be so dominant that market pressure might compel a transition from gas-powered vehicles no matter what the environmental aims of a company are, he said, adding, “it’s possible that they would have done this anyway absent some sort of policy commitment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Transportation Network Company vehicles, as they are called by California, are typically newer and more efficient than the average private vehicle, one \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Ride-Hailing%27s-Climate-Risks.pdf\">study\u003c/a> from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the trips emit 69% \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">more\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">carbon\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">dioxide\u003c/a> on average than those taken in the types of transportation they displace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study’s researchers analyzed previously released data and prior academic studies from the companies. The study found about 42% of the miles driven by ride-hailing vehicles occurred between pickups, with only the driver in the car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CARB staff came to a similar \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-12/SB%201014%20-%20Base%20year%20Emissions%20Inventory_December_2019.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery\">conclusion\u003c/a>. They examined emissions from Uber and Lyft rides for 2018 and found them to be “approximately 50 percent higher than the statewide passenger vehicle fleet average.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft acknowledged this in a white paper outlining the company’s plan to reach the zero-emission vehicle target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don Anair, research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program and an author of the group’s ride-hailing report, said Lyft’s announcement is a “step in the right direction if they implement and achieve their commitments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With any corporate announcement, it’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of living up to that commitment,” he said. “We would be looking towards concrete actions in the near term by Lyft to begin implementing this. The big announcement — a hundred percent by 2030 — it’s a good, clear, long-term target, but it’s not something that in 2029, you can all of a sudden begin to make steps to achieve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft co-founder and president, John Zimmer, said in a conference call with reporters that the company \u003cem>“\u003c/em>could either be part of the problem with the type of scale that we have, or we could be part of the solution. And we 100 percent intend to be part of the solution.\u003cem>”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To implement the policy, the company is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund. Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of the environmental group’s business partnership program, said that Lyft’s “investors, employees, customers and the rising youth movement” all wanted immediate action on climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially as this current administration continues to denigrate and divide,” she said. “That means there’s a tremendous opportunity for the private sector to fill the void of leadership on climate, and Lyft’s announcement of 100 percent EVs by 2030 is a key step to filling that void.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A transition to electric vehicles on the Lyft platform would cut 16 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Encouraging millions of individuals to switch their personal vehicles from gas to electric in the next ten years will require unprecedented leadership from policymakers and regulators to align market rules and incentives for businesses and consumers alike,” said the company white paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business climate in California for Lyft and Uber has gotten tougher over the past nine months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Berkeley’s Borenstein says the passage last September of AB 5, a law that categorizes drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, has injected uncertainty into the ride-hailing business model and makes it harder for companies to maintain a grip on how people move around. The coronavirus pandemic has also cratered \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/the-results-are-in-for-the-sharing-economy-they-are-ugly.html\">demand\u003c/a> for rides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a question of how big a role ride-hailing services will be playing by 2030,” he said. “Lyft is making a commitment for a long time in the future. It is not binding; lots of things can change by then.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco-based ride-hailing company Lyft has \u003ca href=\"https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/leading-the-transition-to-zero-emissions\">announced\u003c/a> a goal of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles on its platform by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan includes its entire fleet of vehicles, which consists mostly of personal cars used by people who drive fewer than 10 hours per week in their spare time, the company says. Lyft also rents vehicles to drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft said it was setting the goal to reduce the planet warming-gases produced by the transportation sector; these make up almost a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Environmental\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Protection\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation\">Agency\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement comes while California is in the early stages of considering whether to impose climate regulations on ride-hailing companies like Lyft and its larger rival, Uber. And as electric vehicles are growing in popularity in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board recently \u003ca href=\"https://gcc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fww2.arb.ca.gov%2Four-work%2Fprograms%2Fclean-miles-standard%2Fclean-miles-standard-meetings-workshops&data=02%7C01%7Cdave.clegern%40arb.ca.gov%7C3e12746d13e44b2d544008d812fc4bf0%7C9de5aaee778840b1a438c0ccc98c87cc%7C0%7C0%7C637280222106910376&sdata=XCrUGFMDYgaVtWYKJVht92RoRhdDGn2KXUJxydPoqyk%3D&reserved=0\">shared\u003c/a> early versions of a potential regulation to require ride-hailing companies to ensure 70%-80% of miles be driven in electric or other zero-emission vehicles by 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“CARB is pleased to see this commitment from Lyft and we applaud their leadership in moving in this direction,” said Dave Clegern, a spokeperson for the agency, in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EVs could represent a “large share of the market” in 2030, according to Severin Borenstein, professor of energy economics at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric vehicles could be so dominant that market pressure might compel a transition from gas-powered vehicles no matter what the environmental aims of a company are, he said, adding, “it’s possible that they would have done this anyway absent some sort of policy commitment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Transportation Network Company vehicles, as they are called by California, are typically newer and more efficient than the average private vehicle, one \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Ride-Hailing%27s-Climate-Risks.pdf\">study\u003c/a> from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the trips emit 69% \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">more\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">carbon\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1957560/add-a-worsening-climate-to-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-says-report\">dioxide\u003c/a> on average than those taken in the types of transportation they displace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study’s researchers analyzed previously released data and prior academic studies from the companies. The study found about 42% of the miles driven by ride-hailing vehicles occurred between pickups, with only the driver in the car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CARB staff came to a similar \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-12/SB%201014%20-%20Base%20year%20Emissions%20Inventory_December_2019.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery\">conclusion\u003c/a>. They examined emissions from Uber and Lyft rides for 2018 and found them to be “approximately 50 percent higher than the statewide passenger vehicle fleet average.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft acknowledged this in a white paper outlining the company’s plan to reach the zero-emission vehicle target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don Anair, research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program and an author of the group’s ride-hailing report, said Lyft’s announcement is a “step in the right direction if they implement and achieve their commitments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With any corporate announcement, it’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of living up to that commitment,” he said. “We would be looking towards concrete actions in the near term by Lyft to begin implementing this. The big announcement — a hundred percent by 2030 — it’s a good, clear, long-term target, but it’s not something that in 2029, you can all of a sudden begin to make steps to achieve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lyft co-founder and president, John Zimmer, said in a conference call with reporters that the company \u003cem>“\u003c/em>could either be part of the problem with the type of scale that we have, or we could be part of the solution. And we 100 percent intend to be part of the solution.\u003cem>”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To implement the policy, the company is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund. Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of the environmental group’s business partnership program, said that Lyft’s “investors, employees, customers and the rising youth movement” all wanted immediate action on climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially as this current administration continues to denigrate and divide,” she said. “That means there’s a tremendous opportunity for the private sector to fill the void of leadership on climate, and Lyft’s announcement of 100 percent EVs by 2030 is a key step to filling that void.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A transition to electric vehicles on the Lyft platform would cut 16 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Encouraging millions of individuals to switch their personal vehicles from gas to electric in the next ten years will require unprecedented leadership from policymakers and regulators to align market rules and incentives for businesses and consumers alike,” said the company white paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business climate in California for Lyft and Uber has gotten tougher over the past nine months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Berkeley’s Borenstein says the passage last September of AB 5, a law that categorizes drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, has injected uncertainty into the ride-hailing business model and makes it harder for companies to maintain a grip on how people move around. The coronavirus pandemic has also cratered \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/the-results-are-in-for-the-sharing-economy-they-are-ugly.html\">demand\u003c/a> for rides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a question of how big a role ride-hailing services will be playing by 2030,” he said. “Lyft is making a commitment for a long time in the future. It is not binding; lots of things can change by then.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "San Francisco Could Ban Natural Gas in New Buildings",
"headTitle": "San Francisco Could Ban Natural Gas in New Buildings | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Tuesday, a San Francisco district supervisor unveiled a proposal to ban the use of natural gas in new construction and for major building renovations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The measure, if approved, would eliminate natural gas in nearly all new buildings — from homes to towering commercial buildings —that apply for a permit for construction after Jan. 1, 2021.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco already\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-bans-natural-gas-in-new-city-buildings-may-14984899.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> banned\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> natural gas for any new city building.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote citation='Rafael Mandelman, San Francisco supervisor']‘Critically, an all electric future also means a safer and healthier environment for today’s San Franciscans and for future generations. Many of us will remember the tragic natural gas explosion in San Bruno in 2010 that leveled an entire neighborhood.’[/pullquote]The proposal follows Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1945656/trade-in-your-gas-stove-to-save-the-planet-berkeley-bans-natural-gas\">ban\u003c/a>, the first in the U.S., \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">but San Francisco’s plan will be a bigger lift as natural gas — through heating and cooking — is the \u003ca href=\"https://sfgov.org/scorecards/environment/greenhouse-gas-emissions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leading source of carbon emissions\u003c/a> in the city with towering skyscrapers and more than 880,000 people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natural gas accounts for roughly 40% of San Francisco’s overall emissions of planet-warming gases and 80% of its buildings’ emissions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ordinance could apply to 54,303 homes, or about 65% of the units in San Francisco’s development pipeline, and 32 million square feet of commercial space, city officials said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman outlined the gas ban in a virtual press conference with Debbie Raphael, director of the city’s Department of the Environment, and Patrick O’Riordan, interim director of the city’s Department of Building Inspection.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Building electrification is a critical component to achieving our city’s bold climate action goals, including our commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier,” Mandelman said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natural gas lines leak methane, one of the most potent climate pollutants, directly into the atmosphere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gas lines that break during a major earthquake, construction accident or other moments, also pose a risk of explosion.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Critically, an all electric future also means a safer and healthier environment for today’s San Franciscans and for future generations,” he said. “Many of us will remember the tragic natural gas explosion in San Bruno in 2010 that leveled an entire neighborhood.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Restaurants will have a temporary exemption from the ban and can apply to hook up gas stoves and other cooking equipment through Jan. 1, 2022, according to Cyndy Comerford, climate program manager for the city’s Department of the Environment\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The California Restaurant Association \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11788199/environmentalists-say-natural-gas-industry-behind-restaurant-groups-challenge-to-berkeley-gas-ban\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">challenged\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Berkeley’s natural gas ban, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on San Francisco’s proposal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Tuesday, a San Francisco district supervisor unveiled a proposal to ban the use of natural gas in new construction and for major building renovations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The measure, if approved, would eliminate natural gas in nearly all new buildings — from homes to towering commercial buildings —that apply for a permit for construction after Jan. 1, 2021.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco already\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-bans-natural-gas-in-new-city-buildings-may-14984899.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> banned\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> natural gas for any new city building.\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 proposal follows Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1945656/trade-in-your-gas-stove-to-save-the-planet-berkeley-bans-natural-gas\">ban\u003c/a>, the first in the U.S., \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">but San Francisco’s plan will be a bigger lift as natural gas — through heating and cooking — is the \u003ca href=\"https://sfgov.org/scorecards/environment/greenhouse-gas-emissions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leading source of carbon emissions\u003c/a> in the city with towering skyscrapers and more than 880,000 people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natural gas accounts for roughly 40% of San Francisco’s overall emissions of planet-warming gases and 80% of its buildings’ emissions. \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\">The ordinance could apply to 54,303 homes, or about 65% of the units in San Francisco’s development pipeline, and 32 million square feet of commercial space, city officials said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman outlined the gas ban in a virtual press conference with Debbie Raphael, director of the city’s Department of the Environment, and Patrick O’Riordan, interim director of the city’s Department of Building Inspection.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Building electrification is a critical component to achieving our city’s bold climate action goals, including our commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier,” Mandelman said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natural gas lines leak methane, one of the most potent climate pollutants, directly into the atmosphere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gas lines that break during a major earthquake, construction accident or other moments, also pose a risk of explosion.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Critically, an all electric future also means a safer and healthier environment for today’s San Franciscans and for future generations,” he said. “Many of us will remember the tragic natural gas explosion in San Bruno in 2010 that leveled an entire neighborhood.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Restaurants will have a temporary exemption from the ban and can apply to hook up gas stoves and other cooking equipment through Jan. 1, 2022, according to Cyndy Comerford, climate program manager for the city’s Department of the Environment\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The California Restaurant Association \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11788199/environmentalists-say-natural-gas-industry-behind-restaurant-groups-challenge-to-berkeley-gas-ban\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">challenged\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Berkeley’s natural gas ban, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on San Francisco’s proposal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board on Thursday adopted a suite of unprecedented manufacturing rules meant to create a parade of electric pickup trucks, delivery vans and big rigs riding California’s roads within the next 15 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new regulations require manufacturers to sell electric vehicles as a small part of their total sales beginning in 2024. The percentage will then increase annually until the year 2035, when 55% of all new sales of noncommercial vans and full-size pickup trucks must be electric, along with 75% of buses and commercial delivery vans. The mandate calls for 40% of big-rig tractor sales to be electric by 2035, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[pullquote align='right' citation='Diane Takvorian, CARB board member']‘We should make no mistake, this rule advances racial justice. We need to recognize that these types of heavy-duty vehicles disproportionately impact communities of color and communities around ports, and this rule is going to give some relief.’[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The air resources board \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/board/books/2020/062520/20-6-3-pres.pdf?_ga=2.150124982.167134424.1592239121-482190456.1584483701\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimates\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the rules will save 17.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from spewing into the atmosphere through the year 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Both CARB, in a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-takes-bold-step-reduce-truck-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press release\u003c/a>, and agency chair Mary Nichols called the new rule the first of its kind in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that “Even in the midst of a global pandemic, climate change is still an existential threat — both to our way of life and our children’s health . Communities and children of color are often forced to breathe our most polluted air, and today’s vote moves us closer toward a healthier future for all of our kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">CARB officials say the rules will curb pollution, especially in Richmond, West Oakland, the Inland Empire and other valley neighborhoods that surround California’s busiest ports and lie underneath its interstate freeways, where the most impacted people are \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/ready-work?_ga=2.195482220.1352884747.1593111906-615557934.1587499328&_gac=1.27930574.1589928995.CjwKCAjwh472BRAGEiwAvHVfGtdO5xRYx0dIdwlCC0umFn1siHThWGPay6ooeH4URkwlDVmpYk5ErhoClHYQAvD_BwE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">disproportionately\u003c/span>\u003c/a> immigrants, African Americans and other people of color.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The rules are also designed to help California meet its goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">California met its 2020 climate goal early, but the state is behind in its efforts to reach the next targets, which will require steep cuts in emissions from the transportation sector — one of the most difficult areas to decarbonize, especially in California, the most populous state in the nation, marked by sprawling suburbs and grueling commutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of U.S. fruits and nuts are \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/#:~:text=California's%20agricultural%20abundance%20includes%20more,the%20nation's%20total%20agricultural%20value.\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">grown\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in the state for distribution across the country, often on freight lines and with trucks powered by diesel fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“An electric truck charged on today’s grid in California has 80% lower greenhouse gas emissions when compared with a diesel truck,” said Jimmy O’Dea, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “That’s a big impact. We know the grid is getting cleaner; we have policies in place for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CARB set a new goal of all new trucks sold in California be zero-emission by the year 2045.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>Toxic Smog\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The vast majority of California’s smog-forming pollutants —about 80% — come from cars, trucks and a range of off-road equipment, as do almost all of its toxic diesel emissions and half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Sooty diesel emissions from trucks accumulate in the lungs, causing asthma, cancer and other diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karla Briceño, 30, lives in San Bernardino, a few blocks away from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/ab-617-ab-134/steering-committees/san-bernardino/cerp/ch-5e-railyards-discussion.pdf?sfvrsn=14\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">BNSF railyard\u003c/span>\u003c/a> and a 10-minute walk from Interstate 215. She says large trucks are the backdrop to her life, and she advocated for the board to pass the rules. She worries about the long-term health of her 1-year-old and 5-year-old boys, who have breathing troubles and use inhalers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1966456\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1966456\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karla Briceño \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Karla Briceño)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“How sad is it that my first born has to use an inhaler to go outside and play?” she said. “And we all have to act like this is something that’s normal. This should not be normal for any kid. They should be able to breathe on their own, and (they) should be able to enjoy the air outside and (they) should be able to play in their yards.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cb>‘This Rule Advances Racial Justice’\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">CARB’s rulemaking, which has taken place over two years, has been closely followed by community advocates, environmentalists, industry groups and other states. There were five hours of public comments in advance of the much-anticipated vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“It’s not just about the technology change,” said Andrea Vidaurre, a policy analyst for the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. “It really is rooted in decades of community members saying that what was placed in their communities is endangering their health — the diesel pollution coming from these trucks, the supply chain, goods movement, freight, however you want to call it, whatever gets your package to your door, whatever gets the food to the shelf.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should make no mistake, this rule advances racial justice,” said board member Diane Takvorian. “We need to recognize that these types of heavy-duty vehicles disproportionately impact communities of color and communities around ports, and this rule is going to give some relief.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Industry Offers Mixed Support\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Volvo, GM and other industry manufacturers offered qualified \u003ca href=\"https://www.arb.ca.gov/lists/com-attach/153-act2019-BW0FYlY7WGcAKFMj.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">support\u003c/span>\u003c/a> for the rules and said they embrace a vision of an all-electric future, while expressing concern that the agency is moving too fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are confident in our ability to manufacture sufficient numbers of ZEV trucks, but we doubt the market’s readiness to absorb the volumes proposed in this regulation,” said Dawn Fenton, vice president of government relations for Volvo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Other industry groups like the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association \u003ca href=\"https://www.ttnews.com/articles/carb-board-hears-public-comment-plan-electric-truck-future\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">say\u003c/span>\u003c/a> they support electric vehicles, but argue that the agency is overreaching. They recommended focussing on delivery trucks before making requirements of larger manufacturers, especially during an economic recession caused by the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter to CARB dated March 23, Jed Mandel, the group’s president, asked the agency to delay a decision on the truck rules, saying it’s “imperative that CARB take account of the incredible adverse impacts on manufacturers that have occurred, and that continue to evolve, as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The air resources board \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/board/books/2020/062520/20-6-3-pres.pdf?_ga=2.150124982.167134424.1592239121-482190456.1584483701\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimates\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the rules will save 17.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from spewing into the atmosphere through the year 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Both CARB, in a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-takes-bold-step-reduce-truck-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press release\u003c/a>, and agency chair Mary Nichols called the new rule the first of its kind in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that “Even in the midst of a global pandemic, climate change is still an existential threat — both to our way of life and our children’s health . Communities and children of color are often forced to breathe our most polluted air, and today’s vote moves us closer toward a healthier future for all of our kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">CARB officials say the rules will curb pollution, especially in Richmond, West Oakland, the Inland Empire and other valley neighborhoods that surround California’s busiest ports and lie underneath its interstate freeways, where the most impacted people are \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/ready-work?_ga=2.195482220.1352884747.1593111906-615557934.1587499328&_gac=1.27930574.1589928995.CjwKCAjwh472BRAGEiwAvHVfGtdO5xRYx0dIdwlCC0umFn1siHThWGPay6ooeH4URkwlDVmpYk5ErhoClHYQAvD_BwE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">disproportionately\u003c/span>\u003c/a> immigrants, African Americans and other people of color.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The rules are also designed to help California meet its goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">California met its 2020 climate goal early, but the state is behind in its efforts to reach the next targets, which will require steep cuts in emissions from the transportation sector — one of the most difficult areas to decarbonize, especially in California, the most populous state in the nation, marked by sprawling suburbs and grueling commutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of U.S. fruits and nuts are \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/#:~:text=California's%20agricultural%20abundance%20includes%20more,the%20nation's%20total%20agricultural%20value.\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">grown\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in the state for distribution across the country, often on freight lines and with trucks powered by diesel fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“An electric truck charged on today’s grid in California has 80% lower greenhouse gas emissions when compared with a diesel truck,” said Jimmy O’Dea, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “That’s a big impact. We know the grid is getting cleaner; we have policies in place for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CARB set a new goal of all new trucks sold in California be zero-emission by the year 2045.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>Toxic Smog\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The vast majority of California’s smog-forming pollutants —about 80% — come from cars, trucks and a range of off-road equipment, as do almost all of its toxic diesel emissions and half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Sooty diesel emissions from trucks accumulate in the lungs, causing asthma, cancer and other diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karla Briceño, 30, lives in San Bernardino, a few blocks away from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/ab-617-ab-134/steering-committees/san-bernardino/cerp/ch-5e-railyards-discussion.pdf?sfvrsn=14\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">BNSF railyard\u003c/span>\u003c/a> and a 10-minute walk from Interstate 215. She says large trucks are the backdrop to her life, and she advocated for the board to pass the rules. She worries about the long-term health of her 1-year-old and 5-year-old boys, who have breathing troubles and use inhalers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1966456\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1966456\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/RS43816_Karla_1-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karla Briceño \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Karla Briceño)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“How sad is it that my first born has to use an inhaler to go outside and play?” she said. “And we all have to act like this is something that’s normal. This should not be normal for any kid. They should be able to breathe on their own, and (they) should be able to enjoy the air outside and (they) should be able to play in their yards.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cb>‘This Rule Advances Racial Justice’\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">CARB’s rulemaking, which has taken place over two years, has been closely followed by community advocates, environmentalists, industry groups and other states. There were five hours of public comments in advance of the much-anticipated vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“It’s not just about the technology change,” said Andrea Vidaurre, a policy analyst for the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. “It really is rooted in decades of community members saying that what was placed in their communities is endangering their health — the diesel pollution coming from these trucks, the supply chain, goods movement, freight, however you want to call it, whatever gets your package to your door, whatever gets the food to the shelf.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should make no mistake, this rule advances racial justice,” said board member Diane Takvorian. “We need to recognize that these types of heavy-duty vehicles disproportionately impact communities of color and communities around ports, and this rule is going to give some relief.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Conference Travel and Carbon Emissions: In the Midst of COVID-19, Some People Are Doing the Math",
"headTitle": "Conference Travel and Carbon Emissions: In the Midst of COVID-19, Some People Are Doing the Math | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">Add the American Geophysical Union’s annual Fall Meeting to the list of events going virtual only this year due to COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Last week, AGU \u003ca href=\"https://fromtheprow.agu.org/agu-fall-meeting-is-virtual-mostly-and-remains-global-always/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">announced\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that thousands of Earth scientists, geologists, researchers and science writers will attend the meeting online instead of descending on San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference, which will take place Dec. 7-11, is one of the largest annual scientific gatherings, usually featuring over 1,000 sessions on topics ranging from oceans to outer space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation=\"Kim Cobb, Georgia Tech climate scientist, on AGU's annual Fall Meeting\"]‘You’re talking about a conference that’s responsible for thousands and thousands of tons of carbon in five days. It’s something that we’re going to have to come to grips with.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The AGU joins the \u003ca href=\"https://meetings.aaas.org/aaas-annual-meeting-update/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Association for the Advancement of Science\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://aas.org/posts/news/2020/04/how-aas-will-organize-virtual-scientific-conference\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Astronomical Society\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/we-had-act-how-coronavirus-fears-forced-physics-society-nix-giant-meeting\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Physical Society\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-03-02/coronavirus-cancelled-conferences-list\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">hundreds of other\u003c/span>\u003c/a> scientific organizations eschewing big in-person meetings in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">AGU’s organizers say if they get the go-ahead from San Francisco’s health officers, AGU may host a smaller regional gathering. But participants should still expect networking and poster hall presentations to occur in the digital realm, while sessions and talks will be recorded for attendees to enjoy “on demand” or to “binge watch,” according to the announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">Tens of thousands of people attend AGU each year, not only for the scientific presentations, but to go on field trips to local labs, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1951470/take-a-google-earth-tour-of-the-bay-areas-most-epic-rock-formations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">stunning geologic formations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, meet with colleagues and mentors, and socialize at parties and happy hours hosted by academic journals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These aspects of conferences like AGU are especially important for early-career scientists, who are meeting future collaborators and looking for jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rethinking Large Events\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003cb>\u003c/b>The shift to online gatherings is part of a larger trend in reimagining experiences centered on human interaction at a time when large gatherings are mostly banned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">The pandemic provided a window into a world of diminished driving, as well as speculation about unnecessary office space. In California, stay-at-home orders\u003cspan class=\"s2\"> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963716/coronavirus-forces-huge-number-of-californians-off-road-as-tele-everything-becomes-new-climate-option\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">pushed so many drivers off the road \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/span>that vehicle emissions dropped by as much as 75%, according to a UC Davis\u003cspan class=\"s2\"> \u003ca href=\"https://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/files/content/projects/COVID_CHIPs_Impacts_updated_430.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/span>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While people are starting to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11820003/charts-traffic-is-still-way-down-across-the-bay-area-but-its-making-a-comeback\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">return to the roads\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, state leaders and researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963716/coronavirus-forces-huge-number-of-californians-off-road-as-tele-everything-becomes-new-climate-option\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">hope\u003c/span>\u003c/a> investments in high-speed internet deployment and the transfer of more government functions online — virtual DMV \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-online/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visits\u003c/a>, anyone? — can help California decarbonize transportation. Bay Area technology firms like \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/21/21266570/facebook-remote-work-from-home-mark-zuckerberg-twitter-covid-19-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Facebook \u003c/span>\u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/keeping-our-employees-and-partners-safe-during-coronavirus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Twitter \u003c/span>\u003c/a>that have expanded work-from-home options in the face of the pandemic could be bellwethers for making physical attendance at the office obsolete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>‘A Bleep Ton’ of Emissions\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s conference, promoted with the social media hashtag #AGU20, will be a test of the virtual conference experience. And hold the carbon emissions, please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“Virtual participation in scientific meetings has great potential to increase access, reduce carbon footprints and diversify meeting attendance to the benefit of all participants — and to take attendees beyond conventional meeting spaces, into laboratories or remote field sites,” said Susan Lozier, \u003cspan class=\"s3\">AGU’s \u003c/span>president-elect and council chair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lozier didn’t say if any changes to the conference will be permanent. But the organization acknowledged in its announcement that the virtual meeting will mean “\u003cspan class=\"s2\">our carbon footprint will be less than ever before,” and it noted an emissions calculator would be placed on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calculating the carbon footprint of a conference like AGU is tricky, but in 2019, one academic \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/milankloewer/status/1204383697165856768\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimated\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that to get to the annual meeting and back, roughly 28,000 scientists traveled a combined 151 million miles resulting in 69,300 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That amount of CO2 is the equivalent of the combined yearly carbon output of 1,443 \u003ca href=\"http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet#:~:text=A%20typical%20U.S.%20household%20has,t%20CO2e%2Fyr.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">average American families\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">“That’s a bleep ton, really just a staggering number,” said \u003c/span>Kim Cobb, a climate scientist with Georgia Tech, who has long advocated for conferences like AGU taking steps to reduce the need to travel long distances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“You’re talking about a conference that’s responsible for thousands and thousands of tons of carbon in five days,” she said. “It’s something that we’re going to have to come to grips with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She hopes that science meetings improve virtual participation, consider holding major in-person gatherings biennially instead of annually, and organize smaller satellite gatherings instead of one central conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">The pandemic, she says, is providing an opportunity to think about a “vision for conferences that could be done partly remotely or fully remotely.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, scaling back live meetings would have an economic impact, especially for cities like San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During AGU, the cafes, restaurants, hotels and other businesses in the South of Market neighborhood where the conference is located brim with attendees toting conference badges and spending money. An Oxford Economic \u003ca href=\"https://insights.eventscouncil.org/Full-Article/ArtMID/398/ArticleID/1445/2018-Global-Economic-Significance-of-Business-Events\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> commissioned by the Events Industry Council estimates that billions of people attend conferences worldwide annually, spending over a trillion dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">A group of 12 academics \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/04/18/12-scholars-share-ideas-reducing-carbon-emissions-academic-travel-opinion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">noted\u003c/span>\u003c/a> last year that the footprint of a traveling scholar is likely larger than that of the average person, calling on research institutions to limit emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our institutional practices should shift to reduce academic air travel,” they wrote. “To be clear, we aren’t calling for a moratorium on flying, and specific personal and professional situations will inevitably require some of us to travel more than others. But even modest changes could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our professional practice. To that end, we’re calling on academic associations, societies and other organizations to require less flying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the authors, Heidi Roop, a climate science at the University of Washington, said while some conferences livestream talks and other events, they don’t put everything online. She hopes the pandemic will change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There isn’t yet a pick-your-own-adventure conference virtually, where you could be in-person or virtual,” she said. “My hope is we start thinking seriously about it, not just because of the pandemic, but because of our carbon footprint and the environmental impact of all the traveling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Presenting a Paper … Over Zoom \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earth scientist Chris Field took his first Stanford research appointment at the Carnegie Institution for Science in 1984. He estimates traveling as much as a third of the year to conduct climate research, meet with collaborators and attend conferences. The pace has declined, but he still takes two to four trips a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, all that travel is powered by fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Being forced to work remotely has been “transformative,” he said. He’s more productive, and he doesn’t have to battle jet lag and late-night flights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was not tuned in to the fraction of my time that I was going to the airport, hanging out in the airport, waiting in traffic and checking into the hotel, doing whatever,” he said. \u003cspan class=\"s4\">“That’s not rocket science to figure that out. But it is impactful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">He says the experience of presenting science online is better than inside a cavernous conference hall. “I’ve done a number of presentations and webinars and conversations, and it is easier in some ways; nobody’s sitting at the back of the room and can’t see the slides. And you have control over where the pointer is on the slide and all that stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the presentations may be better, it certainly cannot replace the tangible and intangible benefits of personal interaction with colleagues, competitors, mentors and students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003ci>“\u003c/i>One of the next frontiers that we’ll have to address as we think about a new way of doing business is how do you cement the pieces of personal interaction,” he said. “They are really important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AGU says it will soon announce a variety of online tools meant to enable personal interaction between scientists at this year’s meeting. These “will also serve as the foundation for the future of AGU Fall Meetings.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003cbr>\nStay-at-Home, Forever\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">While stay-at-home orders have catalyzed a movement of what is sometimes called distributed or remote work, it’s not a new idea — \u003ca href=\"https://about.gitlab.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">GitLab\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.invisionapp.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">InVision\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://buffer.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Buffer\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are just a few companies that operate with no central office and employees spread all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matt Mullenweg, the founder of the content management program WordPress, which hosts this website and many others, now runs a fully distributed company called Automattic, and long before the coronavirus swept the world, he argued, “\u003ca href=\"https://distributed.blog/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Distributed is the future of work\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">Mullenweg, recently penned a kind of victory \u003ca href=\"https://ma.tt/2020/05/gradually-then-suddenly/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a> — titled “Gradually, then suddenly” —\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>in response to the host of top-shelf tech companies announcing they would transition their workplaces for more remote work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“What’s going to be newsworthy by the end of the year is not technology companies saying they’re embracing distributed work, but those that aren’t,” Mullenweg said. “Those who thought this couldn’t work have been forced by the pandemic to do it anyway, and they’ve now seen that it’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">Add the American Geophysical Union’s annual Fall Meeting to the list of events going virtual only this year due to COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Last week, AGU \u003ca href=\"https://fromtheprow.agu.org/agu-fall-meeting-is-virtual-mostly-and-remains-global-always/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">announced\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that thousands of Earth scientists, geologists, researchers and science writers will attend the meeting online instead of descending on San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference, which will take place Dec. 7-11, is one of the largest annual scientific gatherings, usually featuring over 1,000 sessions on topics ranging from oceans to outer space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘You’re talking about a conference that’s responsible for thousands and thousands of tons of carbon in five days. It’s something that we’re going to have to come to grips with.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The AGU joins the \u003ca href=\"https://meetings.aaas.org/aaas-annual-meeting-update/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Association for the Advancement of Science\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://aas.org/posts/news/2020/04/how-aas-will-organize-virtual-scientific-conference\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Astronomical Society\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/we-had-act-how-coronavirus-fears-forced-physics-society-nix-giant-meeting\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">American Physical Society\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-03-02/coronavirus-cancelled-conferences-list\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">hundreds of other\u003c/span>\u003c/a> scientific organizations eschewing big in-person meetings in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">AGU’s organizers say if they get the go-ahead from San Francisco’s health officers, AGU may host a smaller regional gathering. But participants should still expect networking and poster hall presentations to occur in the digital realm, while sessions and talks will be recorded for attendees to enjoy “on demand” or to “binge watch,” according to the announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">Tens of thousands of people attend AGU each year, not only for the scientific presentations, but to go on field trips to local labs, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1951470/take-a-google-earth-tour-of-the-bay-areas-most-epic-rock-formations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">stunning geologic formations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, meet with colleagues and mentors, and socialize at parties and happy hours hosted by academic journals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These aspects of conferences like AGU are especially important for early-career scientists, who are meeting future collaborators and looking for jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rethinking Large Events\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003cb>\u003c/b>The shift to online gatherings is part of a larger trend in reimagining experiences centered on human interaction at a time when large gatherings are mostly banned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">The pandemic provided a window into a world of diminished driving, as well as speculation about unnecessary office space. In California, stay-at-home orders\u003cspan class=\"s2\"> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963716/coronavirus-forces-huge-number-of-californians-off-road-as-tele-everything-becomes-new-climate-option\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">pushed so many drivers off the road \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/span>that vehicle emissions dropped by as much as 75%, according to a UC Davis\u003cspan class=\"s2\"> \u003ca href=\"https://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/files/content/projects/COVID_CHIPs_Impacts_updated_430.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/span>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While people are starting to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11820003/charts-traffic-is-still-way-down-across-the-bay-area-but-its-making-a-comeback\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">return to the roads\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, state leaders and researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963716/coronavirus-forces-huge-number-of-californians-off-road-as-tele-everything-becomes-new-climate-option\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">hope\u003c/span>\u003c/a> investments in high-speed internet deployment and the transfer of more government functions online — virtual DMV \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-online/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visits\u003c/a>, anyone? — can help California decarbonize transportation. Bay Area technology firms like \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/21/21266570/facebook-remote-work-from-home-mark-zuckerberg-twitter-covid-19-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Facebook \u003c/span>\u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/keeping-our-employees-and-partners-safe-during-coronavirus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Twitter \u003c/span>\u003c/a>that have expanded work-from-home options in the face of the pandemic could be bellwethers for making physical attendance at the office obsolete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>‘A Bleep Ton’ of Emissions\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s conference, promoted with the social media hashtag #AGU20, will be a test of the virtual conference experience. And hold the carbon emissions, please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“Virtual participation in scientific meetings has great potential to increase access, reduce carbon footprints and diversify meeting attendance to the benefit of all participants — and to take attendees beyond conventional meeting spaces, into laboratories or remote field sites,” said Susan Lozier, \u003cspan class=\"s3\">AGU’s \u003c/span>president-elect and council chair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lozier didn’t say if any changes to the conference will be permanent. But the organization acknowledged in its announcement that the virtual meeting will mean “\u003cspan class=\"s2\">our carbon footprint will be less than ever before,” and it noted an emissions calculator would be placed on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calculating the carbon footprint of a conference like AGU is tricky, but in 2019, one academic \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/milankloewer/status/1204383697165856768\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">estimated\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that to get to the annual meeting and back, roughly 28,000 scientists traveled a combined 151 million miles resulting in 69,300 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That amount of CO2 is the equivalent of the combined yearly carbon output of 1,443 \u003ca href=\"http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet#:~:text=A%20typical%20U.S.%20household%20has,t%20CO2e%2Fyr.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">average American families\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">“That’s a bleep ton, really just a staggering number,” said \u003c/span>Kim Cobb, a climate scientist with Georgia Tech, who has long advocated for conferences like AGU taking steps to reduce the need to travel long distances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“You’re talking about a conference that’s responsible for thousands and thousands of tons of carbon in five days,” she said. “It’s something that we’re going to have to come to grips with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She hopes that science meetings improve virtual participation, consider holding major in-person gatherings biennially instead of annually, and organize smaller satellite gatherings instead of one central conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">The pandemic, she says, is providing an opportunity to think about a “vision for conferences that could be done partly remotely or fully remotely.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, scaling back live meetings would have an economic impact, especially for cities like San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During AGU, the cafes, restaurants, hotels and other businesses in the South of Market neighborhood where the conference is located brim with attendees toting conference badges and spending money. An Oxford Economic \u003ca href=\"https://insights.eventscouncil.org/Full-Article/ArtMID/398/ArticleID/1445/2018-Global-Economic-Significance-of-Business-Events\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> commissioned by the Events Industry Council estimates that billions of people attend conferences worldwide annually, spending over a trillion dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">A group of 12 academics \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/04/18/12-scholars-share-ideas-reducing-carbon-emissions-academic-travel-opinion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">noted\u003c/span>\u003c/a> last year that the footprint of a traveling scholar is likely larger than that of the average person, calling on research institutions to limit emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our institutional practices should shift to reduce academic air travel,” they wrote. “To be clear, we aren’t calling for a moratorium on flying, and specific personal and professional situations will inevitably require some of us to travel more than others. But even modest changes could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our professional practice. To that end, we’re calling on academic associations, societies and other organizations to require less flying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the authors, Heidi Roop, a climate science at the University of Washington, said while some conferences livestream talks and other events, they don’t put everything online. She hopes the pandemic will change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There isn’t yet a pick-your-own-adventure conference virtually, where you could be in-person or virtual,” she said. “My hope is we start thinking seriously about it, not just because of the pandemic, but because of our carbon footprint and the environmental impact of all the traveling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Presenting a Paper … Over Zoom \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earth scientist Chris Field took his first Stanford research appointment at the Carnegie Institution for Science in 1984. He estimates traveling as much as a third of the year to conduct climate research, meet with collaborators and attend conferences. The pace has declined, but he still takes two to four trips a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, all that travel is powered by fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Being forced to work remotely has been “transformative,” he said. He’s more productive, and he doesn’t have to battle jet lag and late-night flights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was not tuned in to the fraction of my time that I was going to the airport, hanging out in the airport, waiting in traffic and checking into the hotel, doing whatever,” he said. \u003cspan class=\"s4\">“That’s not rocket science to figure that out. But it is impactful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">He says the experience of presenting science online is better than inside a cavernous conference hall. “I’ve done a number of presentations and webinars and conversations, and it is easier in some ways; nobody’s sitting at the back of the room and can’t see the slides. And you have control over where the pointer is on the slide and all that stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the presentations may be better, it certainly cannot replace the tangible and intangible benefits of personal interaction with colleagues, competitors, mentors and students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">\u003ci>“\u003c/i>One of the next frontiers that we’ll have to address as we think about a new way of doing business is how do you cement the pieces of personal interaction,” he said. “They are really important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AGU says it will soon announce a variety of online tools meant to enable personal interaction between scientists at this year’s meeting. These “will also serve as the foundation for the future of AGU Fall Meetings.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003cbr>\nStay-at-Home, Forever\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">While stay-at-home orders have catalyzed a movement of what is sometimes called distributed or remote work, it’s not a new idea — \u003ca href=\"https://about.gitlab.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">GitLab\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.invisionapp.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">InVision\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://buffer.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Buffer\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are just a few companies that operate with no central office and employees spread all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matt Mullenweg, the founder of the content management program WordPress, which hosts this website and many others, now runs a fully distributed company called Automattic, and long before the coronavirus swept the world, he argued, “\u003ca href=\"https://distributed.blog/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Distributed is the future of work\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">Mullenweg, recently penned a kind of victory \u003ca href=\"https://ma.tt/2020/05/gradually-then-suddenly/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a> — titled “Gradually, then suddenly” —\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>in response to the host of top-shelf tech companies announcing they would transition their workplaces for more remote work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p2\">“What’s going to be newsworthy by the end of the year is not technology companies saying they’re embracing distributed work, but those that aren’t,” Mullenweg said. “Those who thought this couldn’t work have been forced by the pandemic to do it anyway, and they’ve now seen that it’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Tear Gas, Pollution, Wildfire Smoke: A Triple Threat to Your Lungs",
"headTitle": "Tear Gas, Pollution, Wildfire Smoke: A Triple Threat to Your Lungs | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>eron McGrew stayed home during the past two weeks while others in her hometown of Oakland were protesting systemic racism and police killings of black people. Like many of her neighbors, McGrew has asthma and, because of her breathing difficulties, she feared being exposed to COVID-19 and to tear gas used by police. She also feared police brutality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new coronavirus is taking a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11813696/latinos-around-the-bay-area-are-disproportionately-affected-by-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">particularly cruel toll\u003c/a> in minority communities, with black Americans \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-americans-death-rate-covid-19-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">far more likely to die\u003c/a> from COVID-19 than white Americans. One of the inequities driving the high numbers of deaths is damage and disease to lungs caused by years spent breathing polluted air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation='Teron McGrew, Oakland']I’m an African American and I need to be in the protests against systemic racism, but I made a choice for my life.’[/pullquote]Lung health is a critical weapon in the fight to reduce deaths during the pandemic. Yet police have been firing chemicals at protesters that can damage lung cells. American soldiers exposed to tear gas in sealed chambers during annual combat training were shown in a \u003ca href=\"https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/7/793/4259353\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2014 study\u003c/a> to be substantially more likely to contract acute respiratory infections afterward, prompting the Army to issue new rules that \u003ca href=\"https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOEPIJ-7-37\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">limit their exposure\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The respiratory onslaught precedes a wildfire season that further threatens to weaken immune protections against respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 and influenza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m an African American and I need to be in the protests against systemic racism, but I made a choice for my life,” said McGrew, a resident of North Oakland who works on issues of community and housing development. “I made a choice but people who are dying from COVID-19 and asthma and pollution, they don’t have a choice. They’re dying because of the inequalities and the systemic racism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollution from fossil fuels is also warming the planet and the region, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941376/we-can-make-california-wildfires-less-horrific-will-we\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leading to larger wildfires\u003c/a> and more of their harmful smoke. As the coronavirus infects new victims, California is heading into a hot, dry wildfire season. Wildfire smoke can blanket forest and foothill communities and choke far-away cities with particles that penetrate lungs and weaken immune responses to infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1965803\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 548px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1965803\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with coffee skin and black hair, wearing a white sweater, sits at a desk in front of two laptops. This is Teron McGrew at her home office in North Oakland. Rows of books, with books stacked on top of them, fill her bookshelf.\" width=\"548\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 548px) 100vw, 548px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Teron McGrew works in her home office in North Oakland. \u003ccite>(Candase Chambers/Climate Central)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The one-two punch of tear gas and wildfire smoke, coupled with ever-present air pollution from fossil fuels, is set to worsen suffering related to the coronavirus this year, with people of color living in polluted areas continuing to feel the worst effects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epidemiologists, geographers and other researchers have been learning in recent years that wildfire smoke poses a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1929784/breathing-fire-californias-central-valley-bears-the-brunt-of-harmful-wildfire-smoke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">greater public health risk\u003c/a> than previously realized. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412019326935\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new study\u003c/a> from Montana shows exposure to “smoke waves” — multiple-day bouts of heavy smoke — led to a substantial increase in influenza cases the following winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The literature shows that people who are exposed to air pollution during wildfires are more likely to get respiratory infections, and I would classify COVID-19 as a respiratory infection,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/geography/colleen-reid-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colleen Reid\u003c/a>, a geographer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose research interests include health impacts from wildfire smoke. “It could lead to more severe cases or even more cases that are noticed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>First Wildfire Smoke, Then Flu\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To test the relationship between wildfire smoke and influenza, \u003ca href=\"https://health.umt.edu/publichealth/faculty/core-faculty.php?s=Landguth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Erin Landguth\u003c/a>, an associate professor at the University of Montana, led a study that \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412019326935\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">examined health and smoke wave data\u003c/a> over a decade from Montana. The study was published this month in the scientific journal \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.elsevier.com/environment-international\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Environment International\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Landguth’s team looked for impacts on flu cases within one to four weeks of a smoke wave, and they didn’t find a significant effect during that period. What has stunned experts were impacts on influenza cases detected months later, during the following winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1965730\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"394\" height=\"222\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We thought there would be no way we’d see this long of a delay,” Landguth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on their analysis, the researchers concluded the epic 2017 wildfire season in Big Sky Country caused influenza cases that winter to at least double and possibly rise as much as fivefold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Influenza kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, and the findings also have worrying implications for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections. Landguth is now gathering data from all Western states to expand the influenza research, and is also starting to investigate relationships between smoke waves and COVID-19 infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ph.ucla.edu/faculty/jerrett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Jerrett\u003c/a>, a professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, is among the scientists racing to understand relationships between various types of air pollution and COVID-19 as the disease continues to spread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to be cautious in interpreting what we’re finding, but I think what we’re seeing in a series of very rapidly developing studies is evidence that air pollution does make people more susceptible to COVID,” Jerret said. “The wildfires are likely to exacerbate the existing symptoms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>More Smoke in California’s Future\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The hazards are intensifying as warming temperatures, worsening droughts, overgrown forest understories, urban development and other changes intensify wildfire seasons, putting more smoke into the air and more smoke particles into lungs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Led by scientists at Yale and Harvard, researchers several years ago used models of fire and winds to \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28642628/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">project smokier futures\u003c/a> for Western counties as temperatures rise. Across the Bay Area, the density of smoke particles suspended in the air during an average smoke wave is projected to nearly double by 2050, compared with levels during the late aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1965720\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-1020x574.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/monthly_seasonal_outlook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wildfire outlook\u003c/a> published by federal agencies on June 1 shows above normal potential for blazes across most of Northern California through September. Snowpacks are melting early in the warm spring temperatures, and hot and dry conditions are expected to persist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ingredient of greatest concern in smoke is PM2.5, the name given to the finest of particulate matter — particles so small they can lodge deep in lungs, and are sometimes so small they can enter the bloodstream. Smoke also affects levels of ozone pollution and it can contain toxic byproducts from incinerated plastics and paint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once inhaled, PM2.5 particles operate at a microscopic level to inflame and injure lung cells, providing the coronavirus and other pathogens with a boost as they work to overcome their victim’s immune system. The smoke also adds to risks of heart attack and a long list of other common and sometimes deadly maladies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tiny particulate matter isn’t just produced during wildfires — it’s present in pollution released by vehicle exhausts, power plants, refineries, farms and wood stoves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research is \u003ca href=\"https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/air-pollution-linked-with-higher-covid-19-death-rates/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">underway at Harvard\u003c/a> and elsewhere examining whether exposure to tiny particulate matter from fossil fuel pollution increases the risk of death from COVID-19. If so, this would raise the already elevated coronavirus threats faced by communities of color, which are frequently located in less costly areas that are heavily polluted, including those along highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Poor black and brown communities, especially, are at higher risk of dying from COVID, and they’re at higher risk because of a lot of things — one related to chronic inflammation from having faced chronic trauma and exposure, chronic air pollution, et cetera,” said \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.ucsf.edu/madhavi.dandu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Madhavi Dandu\u003c/a>, a professor of medicine at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many people in that setting are essential workers who don’t really have as much choice about whether they get to go to work,” Dandu said. “And a lot of people might live in closer housing settings or multigenerational households.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Solutions, but Not Easy Ones\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When smoke waves blot the skies, local governments and agencies often cancel classes and sporting and community events and recommend sheltering in place. For some in aging and inexpensively maintained housing, including rentals, however, the air in the home also becomes unsafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Oakland fills with smoke from wildfires burning in the region, McGrew, the resident of North Oakland who suffers from asthma, says she’s forced indoors. “When the smoke was really heavy, that’s when I had to get my inhaler.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2016 and 2017 wildfire seasons, \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/even/people/shelly-miller\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shelly Miller\u003c/a>, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, led research that monitored indoor air quality in 28 homes of low-income residents in Denver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were responding to an announcement we kept hearing on the news, which is, ‘It’s wildfire season, shelter in your home,'” Miller said. “And we kept thinking, ‘I don’t know if that’s always such a good idea,’ because many homes are not well protected from the outdoor environment, meaning lots of air can come inside from outside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the occupants in the homes studied kept their windows open for cooling, and Miller’s team found PM2.5 levels could be much higher inside those homes during smoke waves than outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Running an air cleaner, also called an air purifier, has been found to be highly effective in reducing indoor pollution from wildfire smoke — particularly when it’s operated with windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The factors preventing many residents from buying air cleaners are the same as those forcing them to live in drafty homes in polluted areas — the impoverishing consequences of skyrocketing economic disparity and underinvestments in health and some urban areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In West Oakland, where air pollution from ships, trains and trucks at the port mixes with pollution from freeways and other sources, leading to high rates of asthma and other diseases, health care can be unaffordable, and the housing stock provides limited protection from pollution or smoke waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obamacare has helped, but people need to understand that most of our folks that don’t have resources don’t have health coverage,” said Ken Chambers, the pastor of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.westsidelove.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">West Side Missionary Baptist Church\u003c/a> in West Oakland, just a few blocks from the port’s fence line. “People who are poor and broke don’t have the availability to eat high quality foods, they’re eating fast foods. They don’t go to the doctor for regular routine checkups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGrew, of North Oakland, has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.climaterealityproject.org/training\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">trained to discuss climate change\u003c/a> by the \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2020/06/09/california-oks-movie-theaters-to-reopen-with-limited-seats/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Reality Project\u003c/a>, a global nonprofit founded by Al Gore. She is also involved in Bay Area committees and efforts to tackle climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She sees strong connections between racism, racial disparities and climate change, and she wants African Americans participating in decision-making that affects everything from how communities are policed to how to grow green jobs and slow warming by reducing fossil fuel use. Shifting from fossil fuels to cleaner economies also boosts air quality, improving lung health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For 400 years, African Americans have been left out of the equation,” she said. “We’ve got to be at the tables when policies are being drafted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced through a partnership between KQED and \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatecentral.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Central\u003c/a>, a non-advocacy science and news group.\u003c/em>\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>eron McGrew stayed home during the past two weeks while others in her hometown of Oakland were protesting systemic racism and police killings of black people. Like many of her neighbors, McGrew has asthma and, because of her breathing difficulties, she feared being exposed to COVID-19 and to tear gas used by police. She also feared police brutality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new coronavirus is taking a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11813696/latinos-around-the-bay-area-are-disproportionately-affected-by-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">particularly cruel toll\u003c/a> in minority communities, with black Americans \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-americans-death-rate-covid-19-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">far more likely to die\u003c/a> from COVID-19 than white Americans. One of the inequities driving the high numbers of deaths is damage and disease to lungs caused by years spent breathing polluted air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Lung health is a critical weapon in the fight to reduce deaths during the pandemic. Yet police have been firing chemicals at protesters that can damage lung cells. American soldiers exposed to tear gas in sealed chambers during annual combat training were shown in a \u003ca href=\"https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/7/793/4259353\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2014 study\u003c/a> to be substantially more likely to contract acute respiratory infections afterward, prompting the Army to issue new rules that \u003ca href=\"https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOEPIJ-7-37\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">limit their exposure\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The respiratory onslaught precedes a wildfire season that further threatens to weaken immune protections against respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 and influenza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m an African American and I need to be in the protests against systemic racism, but I made a choice for my life,” said McGrew, a resident of North Oakland who works on issues of community and housing development. “I made a choice but people who are dying from COVID-19 and asthma and pollution, they don’t have a choice. They’re dying because of the inequalities and the systemic racism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollution from fossil fuels is also warming the planet and the region, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941376/we-can-make-california-wildfires-less-horrific-will-we\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leading to larger wildfires\u003c/a> and more of their harmful smoke. As the coronavirus infects new victims, California is heading into a hot, dry wildfire season. Wildfire smoke can blanket forest and foothill communities and choke far-away cities with particles that penetrate lungs and weaken immune responses to infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1965803\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 548px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1965803\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with coffee skin and black hair, wearing a white sweater, sits at a desk in front of two laptops. This is Teron McGrew at her home office in North Oakland. Rows of books, with books stacked on top of them, fill her bookshelf.\" width=\"548\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/06/Teron-McGrew.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 548px) 100vw, 548px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Teron McGrew works in her home office in North Oakland. \u003ccite>(Candase Chambers/Climate Central)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The one-two punch of tear gas and wildfire smoke, coupled with ever-present air pollution from fossil fuels, is set to worsen suffering related to the coronavirus this year, with people of color living in polluted areas continuing to feel the worst effects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epidemiologists, geographers and other researchers have been learning in recent years that wildfire smoke poses a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1929784/breathing-fire-californias-central-valley-bears-the-brunt-of-harmful-wildfire-smoke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">greater public health risk\u003c/a> than previously realized. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412019326935\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new study\u003c/a> from Montana shows exposure to “smoke waves” — multiple-day bouts of heavy smoke — led to a substantial increase in influenza cases the following winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The literature shows that people who are exposed to air pollution during wildfires are more likely to get respiratory infections, and I would classify COVID-19 as a respiratory infection,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/geography/colleen-reid-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colleen Reid\u003c/a>, a geographer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose research interests include health impacts from wildfire smoke. “It could lead to more severe cases or even more cases that are noticed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>First Wildfire Smoke, Then Flu\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To test the relationship between wildfire smoke and influenza, \u003ca href=\"https://health.umt.edu/publichealth/faculty/core-faculty.php?s=Landguth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Erin Landguth\u003c/a>, an associate professor at the University of Montana, led a study that \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412019326935\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">examined health and smoke wave data\u003c/a> over a decade from Montana. The study was published this month in the scientific journal \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.elsevier.com/environment-international\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Environment International\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Landguth’s team looked for impacts on flu cases within one to four weeks of a smoke wave, and they didn’t find a significant effect during that period. What has stunned experts were impacts on influenza cases detected months later, during the following winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1965730\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"394\" height=\"222\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/2017WildfireAirQuality_en_title_lg.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We thought there would be no way we’d see this long of a delay,” Landguth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on their analysis, the researchers concluded the epic 2017 wildfire season in Big Sky Country caused influenza cases that winter to at least double and possibly rise as much as fivefold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Influenza kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, and the findings also have worrying implications for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections. Landguth is now gathering data from all Western states to expand the influenza research, and is also starting to investigate relationships between smoke waves and COVID-19 infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ph.ucla.edu/faculty/jerrett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Jerrett\u003c/a>, a professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, is among the scientists racing to understand relationships between various types of air pollution and COVID-19 as the disease continues to spread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to be cautious in interpreting what we’re finding, but I think what we’re seeing in a series of very rapidly developing studies is evidence that air pollution does make people more susceptible to COVID,” Jerret said. “The wildfires are likely to exacerbate the existing symptoms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>More Smoke in California’s Future\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The hazards are intensifying as warming temperatures, worsening droughts, overgrown forest understories, urban development and other changes intensify wildfire seasons, putting more smoke into the air and more smoke particles into lungs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Led by scientists at Yale and Harvard, researchers several years ago used models of fire and winds to \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28642628/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">project smokier futures\u003c/a> for Western counties as temperatures rise. Across the Bay Area, the density of smoke particles suspended in the air during an average smoke wave is projected to nearly double by 2050, compared with levels during the late aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1965720\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/06/smoke-wave-intensity-1020x574.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/monthly_seasonal_outlook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wildfire outlook\u003c/a> published by federal agencies on June 1 shows above normal potential for blazes across most of Northern California through September. Snowpacks are melting early in the warm spring temperatures, and hot and dry conditions are expected to persist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ingredient of greatest concern in smoke is PM2.5, the name given to the finest of particulate matter — particles so small they can lodge deep in lungs, and are sometimes so small they can enter the bloodstream. Smoke also affects levels of ozone pollution and it can contain toxic byproducts from incinerated plastics and paint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once inhaled, PM2.5 particles operate at a microscopic level to inflame and injure lung cells, providing the coronavirus and other pathogens with a boost as they work to overcome their victim’s immune system. The smoke also adds to risks of heart attack and a long list of other common and sometimes deadly maladies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tiny particulate matter isn’t just produced during wildfires — it’s present in pollution released by vehicle exhausts, power plants, refineries, farms and wood stoves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research is \u003ca href=\"https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/air-pollution-linked-with-higher-covid-19-death-rates/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">underway at Harvard\u003c/a> and elsewhere examining whether exposure to tiny particulate matter from fossil fuel pollution increases the risk of death from COVID-19. If so, this would raise the already elevated coronavirus threats faced by communities of color, which are frequently located in less costly areas that are heavily polluted, including those along highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Poor black and brown communities, especially, are at higher risk of dying from COVID, and they’re at higher risk because of a lot of things — one related to chronic inflammation from having faced chronic trauma and exposure, chronic air pollution, et cetera,” said \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.ucsf.edu/madhavi.dandu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Madhavi Dandu\u003c/a>, a professor of medicine at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many people in that setting are essential workers who don’t really have as much choice about whether they get to go to work,” Dandu said. “And a lot of people might live in closer housing settings or multigenerational households.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Solutions, but Not Easy Ones\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When smoke waves blot the skies, local governments and agencies often cancel classes and sporting and community events and recommend sheltering in place. For some in aging and inexpensively maintained housing, including rentals, however, the air in the home also becomes unsafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Oakland fills with smoke from wildfires burning in the region, McGrew, the resident of North Oakland who suffers from asthma, says she’s forced indoors. “When the smoke was really heavy, that’s when I had to get my inhaler.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2016 and 2017 wildfire seasons, \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/even/people/shelly-miller\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shelly Miller\u003c/a>, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, led research that monitored indoor air quality in 28 homes of low-income residents in Denver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were responding to an announcement we kept hearing on the news, which is, ‘It’s wildfire season, shelter in your home,'” Miller said. “And we kept thinking, ‘I don’t know if that’s always such a good idea,’ because many homes are not well protected from the outdoor environment, meaning lots of air can come inside from outside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the occupants in the homes studied kept their windows open for cooling, and Miller’s team found PM2.5 levels could be much higher inside those homes during smoke waves than outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Running an air cleaner, also called an air purifier, has been found to be highly effective in reducing indoor pollution from wildfire smoke — particularly when it’s operated with windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The factors preventing many residents from buying air cleaners are the same as those forcing them to live in drafty homes in polluted areas — the impoverishing consequences of skyrocketing economic disparity and underinvestments in health and some urban areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In West Oakland, where air pollution from ships, trains and trucks at the port mixes with pollution from freeways and other sources, leading to high rates of asthma and other diseases, health care can be unaffordable, and the housing stock provides limited protection from pollution or smoke waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obamacare has helped, but people need to understand that most of our folks that don’t have resources don’t have health coverage,” said Ken Chambers, the pastor of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.westsidelove.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">West Side Missionary Baptist Church\u003c/a> in West Oakland, just a few blocks from the port’s fence line. “People who are poor and broke don’t have the availability to eat high quality foods, they’re eating fast foods. They don’t go to the doctor for regular routine checkups.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGrew, of North Oakland, has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.climaterealityproject.org/training\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">trained to discuss climate change\u003c/a> by the \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2020/06/09/california-oks-movie-theaters-to-reopen-with-limited-seats/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Reality Project\u003c/a>, a global nonprofit founded by Al Gore. She is also involved in Bay Area committees and efforts to tackle climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She sees strong connections between racism, racial disparities and climate change, and she wants African Americans participating in decision-making that affects everything from how communities are policed to how to grow green jobs and slow warming by reducing fossil fuel use. Shifting from fossil fuels to cleaner economies also boosts air quality, improving lung health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For 400 years, African Americans have been left out of the equation,” she said. “We’ve got to be at the tables when policies are being drafted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced through a partnership between KQED and \u003ca href=\"https://www.climatecentral.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Climate Central\u003c/a>, a non-advocacy science and news group.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "California’s Cap-and-Trade Program Generates Severely Reduced Revenue",
"headTitle": "California’s Cap-and-Trade Program Generates Severely Reduced Revenue | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">With demand for fossil fuels down across the state, California’s latest quarterly cap-and-trade auction generated very little money for the state to spend on key environmental programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The auction results are another sign that industrial activity in California has been severely weakened by the statewide shelter-in-place order meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s cap-and-trade program aims to limit greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, by capping industry emissions and allowing businesses to buy and sell credits at auction on a state-sponsored marketplace.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money generated from those sales is then used by the state for environmental programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The latest auction produced just $25 million in revenue, significantly less than the $600 million to $850 million raised at similar auctions during the last three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California sold only 37% of its allowances at the auction, which was held May 20. That was the lowest percentage since August 2016, when 35% of allowances were sold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board, which oversees the program, released the \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auction/results_summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">results\u003c/span>\u003c/a> Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Demand for Fossil Fuels Plummets\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s economy has rapidly constricted during the coronavirus pandemic, as a statewide stay-at-home order severely reduced business activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Refinery operations have contracted due to travel restrictions and reduced demand for gas. According to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Energy_Insights_ada.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">state’s energy commission\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, gasoline production in California declined 47.5% between March and April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jet fuel production declined 68.3% during that time, and diesel production fell 33.2%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Demand for natural gas has actually been higher during the pandemic compared to the same time period last year, likely due to colder weather rather than any impacts from the coronavirus. Commercial power usage has been way down, but with people sheltering at home, residential usage has been up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">With emissions reduced, businesses appear to find little need to buy credits that allow them to release more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s mainly what’s going on here,” said Chris Field, an earth scientist at Stanford. “Cap-and-trade is still a very effective way to drive emissions down. At the same time, it can generate revenues from important processes. It’s important not to overinterpret any mismatch between supply and demand during this really challenging period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Weaknesses in the Program?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But an undersold market could also signal that the state’s market is bloated with more allowances than are necessary, given the paucity of economic activity in the state. \u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s basically the worst-case result,” said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and lecturer at Stanford, referring to the latest auction. “Almost no revenue is coming into the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bad outcome will get blamed on COVID, but is much more the product of a weak program design that was vulnerable to surprises, with way too many allowances,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field agrees the program might need to be adjusted, but he said it’s too soon to tell. As the state allows businesses to reopen, economic activity is expected to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may be a long-term consequence of the pandemic is an opportunity to decarbonize more rapidly,” Field said. “I hope that’s the case, but I don’t think we should take a hit to the economy to indicate that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Katelyn Roedner Sutter, U.S. climate program manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, which co-sponsored legislation to create the cap-and-trade program in 2006, wrote in a \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/author/kroedner/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that the results “demonstrate the durability of cap-and-trade” because even when the program is underfunded, it still “\u003cspan class=\"s2\">provides a critical backstop, ensuring California’s targets for reductions in climate pollution are achieved.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1965133 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"795\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM.jpg 795w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM-768x481.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 795px) 100vw, 795px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the auction illustrates the “need to diversify funding for complementary climate investments,” she acknowledged. “Rather than relying solely on a program specifically designed to \u003ci>reduce\u003c/i> emissions and lower mitigation costs (and therefore revenue), California should move toward ensuring climate priorities are a core part of the state’s long-term fiscal priorities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twice in 2016 and once in 2017, California’s quarterly auction generated similarly low revenue. But for the last three years, the market has been stable.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cuts to Environmental Programs\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the state’s climate program is not generating revenue as expected, many of the state’s climate programs are facing the prospect of budget cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California uses the money to clean dirty drinking water, encourage electric vehicles use and create programs that reduce emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom signaled uncertainty about cap-and-trade when he released his May revision to the state budget. The governor proposed a $965 million budget for the program, down from $1.4 billion last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he acknowledged that California does not know how much revenue the program will generate this year and proposed spending the money as it comes in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency would not be able to maintain current funding levels. “We are going to have to make hard decisions,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He said the state will prioritize initiatives to improve air quality in disadvantaged communities, fire prevention, and a program to clean up contaminated drinking water across the state.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The program's May auction produced just $25 million in revenue, significantly less than the $600 to $850 million raised at similar auctions the last three years. That means state environmental programs now face budget cuts.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">With demand for fossil fuels down across the state, California’s latest quarterly cap-and-trade auction generated very little money for the state to spend on key environmental programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The auction results are another sign that industrial activity in California has been severely weakened by the statewide shelter-in-place order meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s cap-and-trade program aims to limit greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, by capping industry emissions and allowing businesses to buy and sell credits at auction on a state-sponsored marketplace.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money generated from those sales is then used by the state for environmental programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The latest auction produced just $25 million in revenue, significantly less than the $600 million to $850 million raised at similar auctions during the last three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California sold only 37% of its allowances at the auction, which was held May 20. That was the lowest percentage since August 2016, when 35% of allowances were sold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board, which oversees the program, released the \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auction/results_summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">results\u003c/span>\u003c/a> Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Demand for Fossil Fuels Plummets\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s economy has rapidly constricted during the coronavirus pandemic, as a statewide stay-at-home order severely reduced business activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Refinery operations have contracted due to travel restrictions and reduced demand for gas. According to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Energy_Insights_ada.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">state’s energy commission\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, gasoline production in California declined 47.5% between March and April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jet fuel production declined 68.3% during that time, and diesel production fell 33.2%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Demand for natural gas has actually been higher during the pandemic compared to the same time period last year, likely due to colder weather rather than any impacts from the coronavirus. Commercial power usage has been way down, but with people sheltering at home, residential usage has been up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">With emissions reduced, businesses appear to find little need to buy credits that allow them to release more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s mainly what’s going on here,” said Chris Field, an earth scientist at Stanford. “Cap-and-trade is still a very effective way to drive emissions down. At the same time, it can generate revenues from important processes. It’s important not to overinterpret any mismatch between supply and demand during this really challenging period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Weaknesses in the Program?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But an undersold market could also signal that the state’s market is bloated with more allowances than are necessary, given the paucity of economic activity in the state. \u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s basically the worst-case result,” said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and lecturer at Stanford, referring to the latest auction. “Almost no revenue is coming into the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bad outcome will get blamed on COVID, but is much more the product of a weak program design that was vulnerable to surprises, with way too many allowances,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field agrees the program might need to be adjusted, but he said it’s too soon to tell. As the state allows businesses to reopen, economic activity is expected to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may be a long-term consequence of the pandemic is an opportunity to decarbonize more rapidly,” Field said. “I hope that’s the case, but I don’t think we should take a hit to the economy to indicate that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Katelyn Roedner Sutter, U.S. climate program manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, which co-sponsored legislation to create the cap-and-trade program in 2006, wrote in a \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/author/kroedner/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that the results “demonstrate the durability of cap-and-trade” because even when the program is underfunded, it still “\u003cspan class=\"s2\">provides a critical backstop, ensuring California’s targets for reductions in climate pollution are achieved.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1965133 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"795\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM.jpg 795w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Image-5-28-20-at-12.53-PM-768x481.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 795px) 100vw, 795px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the auction illustrates the “need to diversify funding for complementary climate investments,” she acknowledged. “Rather than relying solely on a program specifically designed to \u003ci>reduce\u003c/i> emissions and lower mitigation costs (and therefore revenue), California should move toward ensuring climate priorities are a core part of the state’s long-term fiscal priorities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twice in 2016 and once in 2017, California’s quarterly auction generated similarly low revenue. But for the last three years, the market has been stable.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cuts to Environmental Programs\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the state’s climate program is not generating revenue as expected, many of the state’s climate programs are facing the prospect of budget cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California uses the money to clean dirty drinking water, encourage electric vehicles use and create programs that reduce emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom signaled uncertainty about cap-and-trade when he released his May revision to the state budget. The governor proposed a $965 million budget for the program, down from $1.4 billion last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he acknowledged that California does not know how much revenue the program will generate this year and proposed spending the money as it comes in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency would not be able to maintain current funding levels. “We are going to have to make hard decisions,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He said the state will prioritize initiatives to improve air quality in disadvantaged communities, fire prevention, and a program to clean up contaminated drinking water across the state.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Climate Lawsuits by California Cities, Counties Transferred to State Court in Victory Over Oil Companies",
"headTitle": "Climate Lawsuits by California Cities, Counties Transferred to State Court in Victory Over Oil Companies | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">A panel of federal judges on the \u003cspan class=\"s1\">9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in\u003c/span> Pasadena handed major fossil fuel companies a setback in two climate-related cases brought by California cities and counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two unanimous rulings by the three-judge panel move the cases back to state court, where they were initially filed, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">clearing a major hurdle for the litigation following a string of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1956561/after-setbacks-calif-governments-press-their-climate-suit-against-fossil-fuel-companies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">setbacks \u003c/span>\u003c/a>that included the transfer of the cases to \u003c/span>federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The lawsuits, one brought by the the counties of San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz and the cities of Richmond and Imperial Beach, and the other brought by Oakland and San Francisco, seek billions of dollars in damages from oil and gas companies to pay for the effects of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The lawsuits argue that fossil fuel companies are responsible for the remediation costs and property damage from increasingly severe wildfires, rising sea levels and intense storms that batter coastal communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the latest \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-15499.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">decision\u003c/a>, the judges \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-15499.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">affirmed\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a 9th Circuit ruling that municipalities can pursue climate cases in state court and applying state law, seeking damages from 30 oil and gas companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The judges also \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-16663.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">revived\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the case brought by San Francisco and Oakland against BP, Chevron, and three other oil companies; a U.S. District court judge \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1926396/federal-judge-dismisses-climate-case-against-big-oil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">dismissed\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that lawsuit in 2018, saying the scope of the case required a global solution beyond the purview of the court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“San Francisco and Oakland taxpayers are already incurring the costs of dealing with the damage these fossil fuel companies knowingly caused,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said Tuesday in an email. “It is time for these companies to pay their fair share. They should not be able to stick taxpayers with the bill for the damage they knew they were causing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Sean Comey, senior adviser for external affairs at Chevron, wrote in an email that the cities are trying to “penalize the production of affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy, which for decades has been authorized and encouraged by law and government policy makers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has argued in legal briefs that the cities are trying to use state courts to regulate global energy policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Chevron believes the cases belong in federal court,” Comey said. “They present substantial issues of national law and policy which makes them inappropriate for state law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the rulings in favor of the California communities, a final decision in the cases is still months or even years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cem>Associated Press contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A pair of high-profile climate lawsuits brought by California cities and counties cleared a major hurdle Tuesday.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">A panel of federal judges on the \u003cspan class=\"s1\">9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in\u003c/span> Pasadena handed major fossil fuel companies a setback in two climate-related cases brought by California cities and counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two unanimous rulings by the three-judge panel move the cases back to state court, where they were initially filed, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">clearing a major hurdle for the litigation following a string of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1956561/after-setbacks-calif-governments-press-their-climate-suit-against-fossil-fuel-companies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">setbacks \u003c/span>\u003c/a>that included the transfer of the cases to \u003c/span>federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The lawsuits, one brought by the the counties of San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz and the cities of Richmond and Imperial Beach, and the other brought by Oakland and San Francisco, seek billions of dollars in damages from oil and gas companies to pay for the effects of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The lawsuits argue that fossil fuel companies are responsible for the remediation costs and property damage from increasingly severe wildfires, rising sea levels and intense storms that batter coastal communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the latest \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-15499.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">decision\u003c/a>, the judges \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-15499.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">affirmed\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a 9th Circuit ruling that municipalities can pursue climate cases in state court and applying state law, seeking damages from 30 oil and gas companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The judges also \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/05/26/18-16663.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">revived\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the case brought by San Francisco and Oakland against BP, Chevron, and three other oil companies; a U.S. District court judge \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1926396/federal-judge-dismisses-climate-case-against-big-oil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">dismissed\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that lawsuit in 2018, saying the scope of the case required a global solution beyond the purview of the court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“San Francisco and Oakland taxpayers are already incurring the costs of dealing with the damage these fossil fuel companies knowingly caused,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said Tuesday in an email. “It is time for these companies to pay their fair share. They should not be able to stick taxpayers with the bill for the damage they knew they were causing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Sean Comey, senior adviser for external affairs at Chevron, wrote in an email that the cities are trying to “penalize the production of affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy, which for decades has been authorized and encouraged by law and government policy makers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has argued in legal briefs that the cities are trying to use state courts to regulate global energy policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Chevron believes the cases belong in federal court,” Comey said. “They present substantial issues of national law and policy which makes them inappropriate for state law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the rulings in favor of the California communities, a final decision in the cases is still months or even years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003cem>Associated Press contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "UC Is Now Largest University System in US to Divest From Fossil Fuels",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">After selling off more than $1 billion in assets over the last year, the University of California’s investment portfolio is now completely divested of oil, gas and other fossil fuel companies, UC \u003ca href=\"https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-s-investment-portfolios-fossil-free-clean-energy-investments-top-1-billion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announced\u003c/a> Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">While it is not the first educational system to completely rid itself of fossil fuel investments, with about 285,000 students, it is the largest in the country to withdraw financial stakes in an industry that is the principal driver of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Richard Sherman, chair of the UC Board of Regents investments committee, said in a statement that the investment strategy includes a “hopeful view of the future.” \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;\">“As long-term investors, we believe the university and its stakeholders are much better served by investing in promising opportunities in the alternative energy field rather than gambling on oil and gas,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jagdeep Singh Bachher, UC’s chief investment officer, said in a statement that fossil fuel companies posed “an unacceptable risk” financially.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">For years, the climate advocacy group 350.org and student activists have led a campaign aimed at cutting off financing to fossil fuel companies by encouraging universities and other big financial institutions to walk away from the oil, gas and coal industries. The group’s slogan is “not a penny more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Just amazing,” \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1262936446651990016?s=20\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">tweeted \u003c/span>\u003c/a>Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and a leader of the movement. “Univ of California system finishes its massive divestment from fossil fuels. Such thanks to all who made this happen”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Divestments from big institutions total more than $11 trillion, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://350.org/press-release/global-fossil-fuel-divestment-11t/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">campaign\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty other colleges and universities have also divested, including California Institute of the Arts, Chico State University and the Peralta Community College District in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">UC’s lead investors said in a Los Angeles Times \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-16/divestment-fossil-fuel-university-of-california-climate-change\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">op-ed\u003c/a> published in September that the decision to divest was not driven by the demands of environmentalists or an effort to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, they framed the decision as sound financial thinking based on “risk-averse” reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Some might see our action as born of political pressure\u003ci>,\u003c/i> or as green movement idealism or perhaps political correctness run amok,” they wrote. “So be it; we are part of a university system where diversity of opinion thrives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 2019, the university’s shedding of $1 billion in fossil fuel assets has coincided with about the same amount of added investments in clean energy, mostly large-scale solar and wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">After selling off more than $1 billion in assets over the last year, the University of California’s investment portfolio is now completely divested of oil, gas and other fossil fuel companies, UC \u003ca href=\"https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-s-investment-portfolios-fossil-free-clean-energy-investments-top-1-billion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announced\u003c/a> Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">While it is not the first educational system to completely rid itself of fossil fuel investments, with about 285,000 students, it is the largest in the country to withdraw financial stakes in an industry that is the principal driver of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Richard Sherman, chair of the UC Board of Regents investments committee, said in a statement that the investment strategy includes a “hopeful view of the future.” \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;\">“As long-term investors, we believe the university and its stakeholders are much better served by investing in promising opportunities in the alternative energy field rather than gambling on oil and gas,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jagdeep Singh Bachher, UC’s chief investment officer, said in a statement that fossil fuel companies posed “an unacceptable risk” financially.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">For years, the climate advocacy group 350.org and student activists have led a campaign aimed at cutting off financing to fossil fuel companies by encouraging universities and other big financial institutions to walk away from the oil, gas and coal industries. The group’s slogan is “not a penny more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Just amazing,” \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1262936446651990016?s=20\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">tweeted \u003c/span>\u003c/a>Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and a leader of the movement. “Univ of California system finishes its massive divestment from fossil fuels. Such thanks to all who made this happen”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Divestments from big institutions total more than $11 trillion, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://350.org/press-release/global-fossil-fuel-divestment-11t/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">campaign\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty other colleges and universities have also divested, including California Institute of the Arts, Chico State University and the Peralta Community College District in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">UC’s lead investors said in a Los Angeles Times \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-16/divestment-fossil-fuel-university-of-california-climate-change\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">op-ed\u003c/a> published in September that the decision to divest was not driven by the demands of environmentalists or an effort to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, they framed the decision as sound financial thinking based on “risk-averse” reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Some might see our action as born of political pressure\u003ci>,\u003c/i> or as green movement idealism or perhaps political correctness run amok,” they wrote. “So be it; we are part of a university system where diversity of opinion thrives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 2019, the university’s shedding of $1 billion in fossil fuel assets has coincided with about the same amount of added investments in clean energy, mostly large-scale solar and wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"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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"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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"marketplace": {
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"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",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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},
"mindshift": {
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"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>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/radiolab1400.png",
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},
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"filters": [
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]
},
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"restaurantDataById": {},
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"userAgentReducer": {
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"isBot": true
},
"requestOutcomesReducer": {
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}
}
