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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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"excerpt": "Clean energy and transportation would tackle pollution and help ease the pressure from a main driver of wildfire smoke: climate change.",
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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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"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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"title": "In Just 50 Years, Many Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans",
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"content": "\u003cp>By 2070, the world’s habitable climate zone will shift so much that billions of people will be pushed past human comfort levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Tim Lenton, Global Systems Institute']‘We’re going back to temperatures that we haven’t seen for 5 million years, territory that predates the divergence of humans from apes.’[/pullquote]A new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows a “surprisingly narrow” human climate niche—between 52 degrees Fahrenheit to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. And it will shift geographically more in the next 50 years than any time during the past 6,000 years. As a result, up to 3 billion people are “likely to live under climate conditions that are warmer than conditions deemed suitable for human life to flourish,” the international team of researchers wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Los Angeles and Paris will bake in fiery desert temperatures, and the world’s most populous cities in Asia and Africa will have deadly heat waves every year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It looks unlivable for many,” said co-author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. “Where we are headed is a place we don’t want to go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some cities in North America and Europe that are now in the sweet spot of the human climate zone, with mean annual temperatures from 64 degrees and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, will be as warm as the North African coast by late in the century, Lenton said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s quite a climate shock. We’re going back to temperatures that we haven’t seen for 5 million years, territory that predates the divergence of humans from apes,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Michael Mann, Penn State']‘It is within our ability, given a very worst case scenario, to make this planet largely uninhabitable to us and other life forms. The good news is that it doesn’t appear we’re headed on that trajectory now.’[/pullquote]Compounding the climate problem for humans is that the greatest population growth is expected exactly in those zones most affected by human-caused warming. If the inhabitants do not migrate to more livable areas, the researchers projected, one-third of the global population will experience a mean annual temperature warmer than 84 degrees Fahrenheit—an average currently found only on 0.8 percent of the Earth’s land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Land areas are warming faster than the oceans, which mean “human-experienced temperatures are projected to rise by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, more than twice the mean global temperature rise,” said co-author Marten Scheffer, with Wageningen University and Research. The poorest, most densely populated parts of the world, with the lowest adaptive capacity, are potentially the most affected, he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The buildup of heat and population could make the human climate bubble burst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you talk about the most extreme temperature end, put simply, one can adapt by having good air conditioning and importing your food. That is an unlikely option for the poorest portion of humanity who happen to be the ones most exposed to extreme conditions,” he said. Humans can survive and live under quite extreme conditions, but the “vast majority has always been concentrated in the places corresponding to conditions that we defined as the climate niche,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who was not involved in the research, said, “The study further reinforces an emerging body of research that suggests that it is within our ability, given a very worst case scenario, to make this planet largely uninhabitable to us and other life forms. The good news is that it doesn’t appear we’re headed on that trajectory now, given the progress already being made world-wide in transitioning away from fossil fuels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But,” he added, ‘habitability of the planet’ is a very low bar indeed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Massive Migrations and Huge Adaptations\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scheffer said the study tallied population densities based on mean annual temperatures—how many people lived in places where that average reading was 50 degrees, 70 degrees or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers then identified the temperature niche that has attracted the most people going back 6,000 years. Climate and populations changed, but the bulk of the people were always concentrated under the same conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1963878\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1963878\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg\" alt=\"People hold Hollywood tourist maps over their heads as makeshift sunshade in Griffith Park in March 2015 in Los Angeles, California. A record-breaking series of unusual heat waves made this the first March to have had six days with highs in the 90s or above in Los Angeles since at least 1877 when record-keeping began.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-1020x680.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">People use Hollywood tourist maps as makeshift sunshade in Griffith Park in March 2015 in Los Angeles, California. A record-breaking series of unusual heat waves made this the first March to have had six days with highs in the 90s or above in Los Angeles since at least 1877 when record-keeping began. \u003ccite>(David McNew/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Next we looked at the projected climate change using existing model predictions and asked: ‘Suppose that people would remain in the same climate preference as they have over the past 6,000 years, where would they have to be distributed over the globe in 50 years from now?'” Scheffer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The projections suggested that the shifting human climate niche would elicit both heroic adaptation measures, as well as massive migrations of people to more suitable climate regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Humanity has responded quite markedly to climate changes in the past. However, none of those in the past 5,000 years have been as strong as the one we are likely facing over the coming 50 years,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Washington State University evolutionary anthropologist Tim Kohler, who studies how earlier societies adapted to climate change, said he was a little surprised at the relative narrowness of the climate niche.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We archaeologists like to lecture about how our vaunted technology (clothes, fire, tools, boats…) and highly cooperative social organization have made it possible for us to colonize all habitats on Earth during the last 50,000 years or so,” Kohler said in an email. “That is still true of course, but what we show here is that despite the ability to live in many environments, we are densest within a small subset of those.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that their choice to begin their comparisons 6,000 years ago, a relatively warm time within the Holocene, was “a very conservative choice from the perspective of the finding that the coming warming will be unprecedented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lenton said he hopes the paper will resonate as a “humanized” way to see climate change, and he made comparisons to humanity’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The massive impacts projected by the new paper will have an immense financial cost. The findings suggest that swallowing the financial pill now to pay for adaptation and planned migration would be less bitter than waiting and responding to events as they unfold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the pandemic, societies have been recalculating the cost-benefit equation, but for climate change, that reckoning has been on the back burner for too long, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By casting it in different terms, maybe we can trigger a much-needed change in our way of thinking,” he said. “Stepping out of making an economic judgment and starting to make a human judgment would be a powerful step to take.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\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\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Compounding the climate problem for humans is that the greatest population growth is expected exactly in those zones most affected by human-caused warming. If the inhabitants do not migrate to more livable areas, the researchers projected, one-third of the global population will experience a mean annual temperature warmer than 84 degrees Fahrenheit—an average currently found only on 0.8 percent of the Earth’s land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Land areas are warming faster than the oceans, which mean “human-experienced temperatures are projected to rise by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, more than twice the mean global temperature rise,” said co-author Marten Scheffer, with Wageningen University and Research. The poorest, most densely populated parts of the world, with the lowest adaptive capacity, are potentially the most affected, he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The buildup of heat and population could make the human climate bubble burst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you talk about the most extreme temperature end, put simply, one can adapt by having good air conditioning and importing your food. That is an unlikely option for the poorest portion of humanity who happen to be the ones most exposed to extreme conditions,” he said. Humans can survive and live under quite extreme conditions, but the “vast majority has always been concentrated in the places corresponding to conditions that we defined as the climate niche,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who was not involved in the research, said, “The study further reinforces an emerging body of research that suggests that it is within our ability, given a very worst case scenario, to make this planet largely uninhabitable to us and other life forms. The good news is that it doesn’t appear we’re headed on that trajectory now, given the progress already being made world-wide in transitioning away from fossil fuels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But,” he added, ‘habitability of the planet’ is a very low bar indeed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Massive Migrations and Huge Adaptations\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scheffer said the study tallied population densities based on mean annual temperatures—how many people lived in places where that average reading was 50 degrees, 70 degrees or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers then identified the temperature niche that has attracted the most people going back 6,000 years. Climate and populations changed, but the bulk of the people were always concentrated under the same conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1963878\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1963878\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg\" alt=\"People hold Hollywood tourist maps over their heads as makeshift sunshade in Griffith Park in March 2015 in Los Angeles, California. A record-breaking series of unusual heat waves made this the first March to have had six days with highs in the 90s or above in Los Angeles since at least 1877 when record-keeping began.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/Heat-inline-image-1020x680.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">People use Hollywood tourist maps as makeshift sunshade in Griffith Park in March 2015 in Los Angeles, California. A record-breaking series of unusual heat waves made this the first March to have had six days with highs in the 90s or above in Los Angeles since at least 1877 when record-keeping began. \u003ccite>(David McNew/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Next we looked at the projected climate change using existing model predictions and asked: ‘Suppose that people would remain in the same climate preference as they have over the past 6,000 years, where would they have to be distributed over the globe in 50 years from now?'” Scheffer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The projections suggested that the shifting human climate niche would elicit both heroic adaptation measures, as well as massive migrations of people to more suitable climate regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Humanity has responded quite markedly to climate changes in the past. However, none of those in the past 5,000 years have been as strong as the one we are likely facing over the coming 50 years,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Washington State University evolutionary anthropologist Tim Kohler, who studies how earlier societies adapted to climate change, said he was a little surprised at the relative narrowness of the climate niche.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We archaeologists like to lecture about how our vaunted technology (clothes, fire, tools, boats…) and highly cooperative social organization have made it possible for us to colonize all habitats on Earth during the last 50,000 years or so,” Kohler said in an email. “That is still true of course, but what we show here is that despite the ability to live in many environments, we are densest within a small subset of those.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that their choice to begin their comparisons 6,000 years ago, a relatively warm time within the Holocene, was “a very conservative choice from the perspective of the finding that the coming warming will be unprecedented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lenton said he hopes the paper will resonate as a “humanized” way to see climate change, and he made comparisons to humanity’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The massive impacts projected by the new paper will have an immense financial cost. The findings suggest that swallowing the financial pill now to pay for adaptation and planned migration would be less bitter than waiting and responding to events as they unfold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the pandemic, societies have been recalculating the cost-benefit equation, but for climate change, that reckoning has been on the back burner for too long, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By casting it in different terms, maybe we can trigger a much-needed change in our way of thinking,” he said. “Stepping out of making an economic judgment and starting to make a human judgment would be a powerful step to take.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\" 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\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "coronavirus-forces-huge-number-of-californians-off-road-as-tele-everything-becomes-new-climate-option",
"title": "Coronavirus Forces Huge Number of Californians Off Road, as Tele-Everything Becomes New Climate Option",
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"headTitle": "Coronavirus Forces Huge Number of Californians Off Road, as Tele-Everything Becomes New Climate Option | KQED",
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"content": "\u003ch4>\u003cem>California’s stay-at-home order has provided a window into a world in which cars are off the road and California’s climate goals are more attainable. But how can the state retain some of these gains once the pandemic ends?\u003c/em>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\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;\">L\u003c/span>ike many people, Hannah Gordon has been working from home, courtesy of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Some things haven’t changed all that much. She can access the same project management software from her duplex, and she uses Google’s video conferencing service to attend meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But there is one big difference: the lack of a commute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gordon, 28, doesn’t miss it at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Before the pandemic, she trekked every day from the East Bay to her office in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation='Kate Gordon, director Governor’s Office of Planning and Research']“I think a lot of people go immediately to: ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, and everything would be fine. But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel…”[/pullquote]Taking public transit ate up about an hour-and-a-half each way, including either a drive to the Rockridge BART station, where she had to pay for parking, or a long walk home alone, in the dark. So she started driving to the city instead. Traffic can be grueling and unpredictable, and she left early to give herself time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“For however long we’re going to be doing this, it is one thing I am grateful for,” Gordon said, about working from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Another positive development: Because she’s not driving, you can subtract the carbon emissions she would have been adding to the already catastrophic global total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>A Major Driving Decline\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">California’s statewide stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the coronavirus is providing Californians with a window into a world in which the majority of cars are off the road. Environmentally, it’s been a boon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers at the UC Davis Road Ecology Center \u003ca href=\"https://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/files/content/projects/COVID_CHIPs_Impacts_updated_430.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that after a statewide stay-at-home order in March and mid-April, the total vehicle miles traveled in the state declined by 75%, with a corresponding reduction in planet-warming gases and smog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the U.S., the researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/coronavirusliveupdates/news/11815709/reduced-travel-causing-big-drop-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-study-shows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a 71% drop in car travel,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>which they estimate could amount to a 4% decrease in total greenhouse gas emissions for the country this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Vehicle miles are considered by policymakers a key indicator of more than just how much people are driving, but also health and air quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“That’s a great benefit,” said Fraser Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center, about the plummeting time on the road. “Now, if it all rebounds, if we keep driving the way we used to, we’ll have had one good year, and then it’ll go back to what it was before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1963717\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1963717 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/2020CO2Peak_Monthly_en_title_lg-e1588809409138.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate Central\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That would not solve anything. While emissions have dropped during the pandemic, they \u003ca href=\"https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/co2-and-the-climate-curve\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">still added\u003c/a> to the overall concentration of carbon in the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Shilling said the lessons to take out of the pandemic need to be applied to the climate crisis, including the reduction in driving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“I think we’re going to learn a lot during this intervening period. How do we telecommute? How do we arrange our work at home? Our shopping trips? All of our travel in a different way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He likened mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic to reducing the harm from climate change in that they are both a “survival goal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Global CO2 Drop\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The International Energy Agency \u003ca href=\"https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">forecasts\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a whopping 8% global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 compared to 2019, which would be an unprecedented drop since measurements have been taken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The rapid decline is “set to be almost twice as large as all previous declines since the end of World War II combined,” the agency wrote.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation='Fraser Shilling, co-director UC Davis Road Ecology Center ']‘That’s a great benefit. Now, if it all rebounds, if we keep driving the way we used to, we’ll have had one good year, and then it’ll go back to what it was before.’[/pullquote]The reduction in carbon emissions has put the world on an early track to meet a \u003ca href=\"https://unfccc.int/news/cut-global-emissions-by-76-percent-every-year-for-next-decade-to-meet-15degc-paris-target-un-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">target\u003c/span>\u003c/a> outlined in the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1.5 C rise in global warming\u003c/a> and even more severe environmental consequences. In November, the United Nations said emissions had to drop at least 7.6% per year through 2030 if the world was to have a chance of meeting the goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The burning of fossil fuels for heat and energy is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">main\u003c/span>\u003c/a> source of carbon dioxide, and the steep drop in demand for energy due to whole economies shutting down is the primary factor behind reduced emissions during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Less impactful on a global basis is the sharp decline in driving and flying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, however, the reduction in driving has a bigger impact because the state already requires its investor-owned utilities to use renewable energy, a mandate that led to a \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/942b5a251fac413a84fc4eb93a67c46c/California-meets-greenhouse-gas-reduction-goal-years-early\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">reduction of its\u003c/span>\u003c/a> carbon emissions below the 1990 level two years ahead of schedule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">California’s energy efficiency \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards/2019-building-energy-efficiency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">standards\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are among the strongest in the country, and its landmark cap-and-trade program requires companies to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases while lowering the overall limits on emissions over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>An Intractable Problem\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Reducing the amount of time Californians have to spend driving is the state’s climate white whale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">For three decades, California has tried and failed to significantly reduce transportation emissions with policies that require cleaner gasoline; promote public transit and dense urban development; restrict tailpipe pollution; and incentivize the use of electric vehicles. Transportation-related emissions still haven’t peaked, and they’re the leading source of greenhouse gases in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Mary Nichols, the state’s top air regulator, \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-california-insight-idUSKCN1PQ4MJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">admitted\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the state’s failure on transportation emissions to Reuters last year. “The strategies that we’ve used up until now just haven’t been effective,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The seemingly intractable problem of vehicle emissions stems in part from decades-old urban planning decisions that allowed Los Angeles and other communities to build sprawling suburbs of single-family homes, one reason that so many workers are now forced to grin-and-bear hourslong commutes.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the pandemic, the state was falling behind on meeting its 2030 target of reducing carbon emissions by 40% from 1990 levels, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948712/your-suv-is-really-messing-with-the-states-climate-plans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> by Beacon Economics commissioned by Next 10, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works on economic and environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A key problem: more Californians driving more miles in less fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The UC Davis Road Ecology Center report found that the shutdown order has, at least temporarily, put the state on track to reach this target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tele-Everything\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">During this stay-at-home period, it’s not just workers in offices and other places of business who have been subtracted from streets and highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visits to medical offices are \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963133/telehealth-is-having-a-huge-moment-during-coronavirus-crisis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">way down\u003c/span>\u003c/a> as patients and doctors have been forced to make massive use of telehealth tools for diagnoses. Since schools are closed, no one is taking their car to drop off their kids, instead relying on whatever distance learning capability their districts are offering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Academic conferences have moved online, too, which some organizers\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/04/covid-19-forces-conferences-online-scientists-discover-upsides-virtual-format?utm_campaign=news_daily_2020-04-28&et_rid=566128243&et_cid=3306149\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\"> say \u003c/span>\u003c/a>could become the new normal as virtual meetings present an opportunity to reach a wider audience while reducing the carbon footprint of an event.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Kate Gordon, director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, says this mass, unintentional experiment in staying home has highlighted an argument climate advocates should pay attention to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a long time, we have been saying, we need to think about broadband and telework as opportunities to reduce vehicle miles traveled,” she said. “And that connection has not been as clear in the mind of a lot of climate policy people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Traditionally, Gordon says, it’s electrification that has been the solution of choice for decarbonizing the transportation sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“I think a lot of people go immediately to: ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, and everything would be fine,’” she said. “But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel around the state because it has all these other associated emissions impacts, as well as being high polluting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Across the country, internet usage surged when states began ordering people to stay at home. Network providers reported a rise in usage of 20-35% in the end of March and early April, according to the Federal Communications Commission.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>Much of the spike stems from increased demand in suburban, exurban and residential areas during daytime hours, likely from people who can log in and work from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gordon says California can support telecommuting by increasing broadband access and making nuts-and-bolts administrative changes that allow people to attend parole hearings, visit the DMV or perform other government functions online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">When the economy opens up again, she thinks, the state can sustain some of the emission reductions by investing in systems that promote telecommuting, teleconferencing, teletrips … basically, tele-everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“The more options people have to not do their long commutes, the better for air quality and the better for our overall emissions profile,” she said. “Universal fast internet access is part of what makes teleworking even possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Digital Divide\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">One roadblock to a tele-everything California is that it suffers from a vast digital divide, with high-speed internet access available in many of the state’s bustling urban centers, but not in remote areas in Northern California, the Central Valley and Inland Empire.\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1963721\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"372\" height=\"482\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg 1275w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-1020x1320.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 372px) 100vw, 372px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the pandemic, people who could telecommute tended to be \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/06/telecommuting-will-likely-continue-long-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">white-collar workers with higher incomes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and that has held true during the pandemic, according to a Brookings Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/06/telecommuting-will-likely-continue-long-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Nowhere is that divide felt more acutely than in the schools. For example, Oakland has been offering online classes for weeks, but many students there still \u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/28/oakland-parents-teachers-call-on-mayor-district-to-guarantee-internet-access-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">lack access\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Businesses Adapt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">During the shutdown, businesses have found new ways to keep the economic train lurching forward, says Rufus Jeffris, senior vice president of communications for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareacouncil.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Bay Area Council\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, an advocacy group that has long pushed for policies to reduce solo commuters on roads and freeways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Those who have fast internet setups have been able to adapt to working from home, leaning on an \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/950cccc45ddddb919b3eaa629a3e6688\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">ever-growing\u003c/span>\u003c/a> roster of video conferencing applications like Zoom, which has seen its stock price soar during the pandemic, from $68.72 a share on Jan. 2 to a peak\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>of $181.50 on April 24.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said although it will be “interesting to see whether this cements work-from-home practices more broadly,” he doesn’t think telecommuting can substitute for the office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Business and the economy are taking a big hit right now,” he said. “We have to figure out how to save lives, but also save livelihoods. Businesses want to follow the public health and science behind this, but business leaders are eager to get to work and start figuring out safe ways to reopen as soon as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Sunrun, a leading residential solar company, is one business that has been able to change its work protocols to stay operational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Getting a solar unit onto a customer’s house usually\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>begins with an employee scouting a home to site solar panels. Now, it’s the customers who are snapping their own photos with smartphones, sending them in to the company in an effort to limit human contact, says Anne Hoskins, Sunrun’s chief policy officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of submitting permitting documents to planning departments in person, company representatives send them electronically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We even went a step further with some of the permitting offices and said, ‘We think you could do the inspection remotely. We can do it by camera and with you on the other side.’ And some offices agreed to that, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Hoskins thinks this remote work could speed up the process and improve government permitting even after the stay-at-home orders are lifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>What Happens After State Order Lifted?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Which experiments in telecommuting will be maintained on a widespread basis after people eventually go back to some semblance of their pre-pandemic lives remains to be seen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In the back of the mind of UC Davis’ Shilling is a “nascent irritation” that California is “going to reverse path and take us right back to the place we were before and not learn these lessons,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says his colleagues express this cynicism when he talks about the\u003cbr>\n“optimistic projection” that the state can use this moment to change driving behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They say: ‘Oh, no, we’re just going to go back to what we were doing before,’” Shilling said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But this is too fatalistic, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of like running along the edge of a cliff,” he said. “Because that’s essentially what we’re doing as a species and as a society. And if you just have this idea, I’m going to fall off the cliff and die, then you may increase your chances of doing that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“But if you are more optimistic and say: ‘I’m not going to fall, I’m going to try really hard to not fall off the cliff, then maybe you’re more likely to succeed. To me, being optimistic is a better survival strategy.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "California’s stay-at-home order has provided a window into a world in which cars are off the road and the state's climate goals are more attainable. But how can the state retain some of these gains once the pandemic ends?",
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"title": "Coronavirus Forces Huge Number of Californians Off Road, as Tele-Everything Becomes New Climate Option | KQED",
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"headline": "Coronavirus Forces Huge Number of Californians Off Road, as Tele-Everything Becomes New Climate Option",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ch4>\u003cem>California’s stay-at-home order has provided a window into a world in which cars are off the road and California’s climate goals are more attainable. But how can the state retain some of these gains once the pandemic ends?\u003c/em>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\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;\">L\u003c/span>ike many people, Hannah Gordon has been working from home, courtesy of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Some things haven’t changed all that much. She can access the same project management software from her duplex, and she uses Google’s video conferencing service to attend meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But there is one big difference: the lack of a commute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gordon, 28, doesn’t miss it at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Before the pandemic, she trekked every day from the East Bay to her office in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "“I think a lot of people go immediately to: ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, and everything would be fine. But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel…”",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Taking public transit ate up about an hour-and-a-half each way, including either a drive to the Rockridge BART station, where she had to pay for parking, or a long walk home alone, in the dark. So she started driving to the city instead. Traffic can be grueling and unpredictable, and she left early to give herself time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“For however long we’re going to be doing this, it is one thing I am grateful for,” Gordon said, about working from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Another positive development: Because she’s not driving, you can subtract the carbon emissions she would have been adding to the already catastrophic global total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>A Major Driving Decline\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">California’s statewide stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the coronavirus is providing Californians with a window into a world in which the majority of cars are off the road. Environmentally, it’s been a boon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers at the UC Davis Road Ecology Center \u003ca href=\"https://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/files/content/projects/COVID_CHIPs_Impacts_updated_430.pdf\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> that after a statewide stay-at-home order in March and mid-April, the total vehicle miles traveled in the state declined by 75%, with a corresponding reduction in planet-warming gases and smog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the U.S., the researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/coronavirusliveupdates/news/11815709/reduced-travel-causing-big-drop-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-study-shows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a 71% drop in car travel,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>which they estimate could amount to a 4% decrease in total greenhouse gas emissions for the country this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Vehicle miles are considered by policymakers a key indicator of more than just how much people are driving, but also health and air quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“That’s a great benefit,” said Fraser Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center, about the plummeting time on the road. “Now, if it all rebounds, if we keep driving the way we used to, we’ll have had one good year, and then it’ll go back to what it was before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1963717\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1963717 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/2020CO2Peak_Monthly_en_title_lg-e1588809409138.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate Central\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That would not solve anything. While emissions have dropped during the pandemic, they \u003ca href=\"https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/co2-and-the-climate-curve\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">still added\u003c/a> to the overall concentration of carbon in the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Shilling said the lessons to take out of the pandemic need to be applied to the climate crisis, including the reduction in driving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“I think we’re going to learn a lot during this intervening period. How do we telecommute? How do we arrange our work at home? Our shopping trips? All of our travel in a different way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He likened mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic to reducing the harm from climate change in that they are both a “survival goal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Global CO2 Drop\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The International Energy Agency \u003ca href=\"https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">forecasts\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a whopping 8% global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 compared to 2019, which would be an unprecedented drop since measurements have been taken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The rapid decline is “set to be almost twice as large as all previous declines since the end of World War II combined,” the agency wrote.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘That’s a great benefit. Now, if it all rebounds, if we keep driving the way we used to, we’ll have had one good year, and then it’ll go back to what it was before.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The reduction in carbon emissions has put the world on an early track to meet a \u003ca href=\"https://unfccc.int/news/cut-global-emissions-by-76-percent-every-year-for-next-decade-to-meet-15degc-paris-target-un-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">target\u003c/span>\u003c/a> outlined in the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1.5 C rise in global warming\u003c/a> and even more severe environmental consequences. In November, the United Nations said emissions had to drop at least 7.6% per year through 2030 if the world was to have a chance of meeting the goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The burning of fossil fuels for heat and energy is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">main\u003c/span>\u003c/a> source of carbon dioxide, and the steep drop in demand for energy due to whole economies shutting down is the primary factor behind reduced emissions during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Less impactful on a global basis is the sharp decline in driving and flying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, however, the reduction in driving has a bigger impact because the state already requires its investor-owned utilities to use renewable energy, a mandate that led to a \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/942b5a251fac413a84fc4eb93a67c46c/California-meets-greenhouse-gas-reduction-goal-years-early\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">reduction of its\u003c/span>\u003c/a> carbon emissions below the 1990 level two years ahead of schedule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">California’s energy efficiency \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards/2019-building-energy-efficiency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">standards\u003c/span>\u003c/a> are among the strongest in the country, and its landmark cap-and-trade program requires companies to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases while lowering the overall limits on emissions over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>An Intractable Problem\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Reducing the amount of time Californians have to spend driving is the state’s climate white whale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">For three decades, California has tried and failed to significantly reduce transportation emissions with policies that require cleaner gasoline; promote public transit and dense urban development; restrict tailpipe pollution; and incentivize the use of electric vehicles. Transportation-related emissions still haven’t peaked, and they’re the leading source of greenhouse gases in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Mary Nichols, the state’s top air regulator, \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-california-insight-idUSKCN1PQ4MJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">admitted\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the state’s failure on transportation emissions to Reuters last year. “The strategies that we’ve used up until now just haven’t been effective,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The seemingly intractable problem of vehicle emissions stems in part from decades-old urban planning decisions that allowed Los Angeles and other communities to build sprawling suburbs of single-family homes, one reason that so many workers are now forced to grin-and-bear hourslong commutes.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the pandemic, the state was falling behind on meeting its 2030 target of reducing carbon emissions by 40% from 1990 levels, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948712/your-suv-is-really-messing-with-the-states-climate-plans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> by Beacon Economics commissioned by Next 10, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works on economic and environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A key problem: more Californians driving more miles in less fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The UC Davis Road Ecology Center report found that the shutdown order has, at least temporarily, put the state on track to reach this target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tele-Everything\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">During this stay-at-home period, it’s not just workers in offices and other places of business who have been subtracted from streets and highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visits to medical offices are \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1963133/telehealth-is-having-a-huge-moment-during-coronavirus-crisis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">way down\u003c/span>\u003c/a> as patients and doctors have been forced to make massive use of telehealth tools for diagnoses. Since schools are closed, no one is taking their car to drop off their kids, instead relying on whatever distance learning capability their districts are offering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Academic conferences have moved online, too, which some organizers\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/04/covid-19-forces-conferences-online-scientists-discover-upsides-virtual-format?utm_campaign=news_daily_2020-04-28&et_rid=566128243&et_cid=3306149\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\"> say \u003c/span>\u003c/a>could become the new normal as virtual meetings present an opportunity to reach a wider audience while reducing the carbon footprint of an event.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Kate Gordon, director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, says this mass, unintentional experiment in staying home has highlighted an argument climate advocates should pay attention to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a long time, we have been saying, we need to think about broadband and telework as opportunities to reduce vehicle miles traveled,” she said. “And that connection has not been as clear in the mind of a lot of climate policy people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Traditionally, Gordon says, it’s electrification that has been the solution of choice for decarbonizing the transportation sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“I think a lot of people go immediately to: ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, and everything would be fine,’” she said. “But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel around the state because it has all these other associated emissions impacts, as well as being high polluting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Across the country, internet usage surged when states began ordering people to stay at home. Network providers reported a rise in usage of 20-35% in the end of March and early April, according to the Federal Communications Commission.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>Much of the spike stems from increased demand in suburban, exurban and residential areas during daytime hours, likely from people who can log in and work from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Gordon says California can support telecommuting by increasing broadband access and making nuts-and-bolts administrative changes that allow people to attend parole hearings, visit the DMV or perform other government functions online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">When the economy opens up again, she thinks, the state can sustain some of the emission reductions by investing in systems that promote telecommuting, teleconferencing, teletrips … basically, tele-everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“The more options people have to not do their long commutes, the better for air quality and the better for our overall emissions profile,” she said. “Universal fast internet access is part of what makes teleworking even possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Digital Divide\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">One roadblock to a tele-everything California is that it suffers from a vast digital divide, with high-speed internet access available in many of the state’s bustling urban centers, but not in remote areas in Northern California, the Central Valley and Inland Empire.\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1963721\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"372\" height=\"482\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019.jpg 1275w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/05/CA_BB_Fixed_Downstream_Consumer_2019-1020x1320.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 372px) 100vw, 372px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the pandemic, people who could telecommute tended to be \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/06/telecommuting-will-likely-continue-long-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">white-collar workers with higher incomes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, and that has held true during the pandemic, according to a Brookings Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/06/telecommuting-will-likely-continue-long-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Nowhere is that divide felt more acutely than in the schools. For example, Oakland has been offering online classes for weeks, but many students there still \u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/28/oakland-parents-teachers-call-on-mayor-district-to-guarantee-internet-access-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">lack access\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>Businesses Adapt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">During the shutdown, businesses have found new ways to keep the economic train lurching forward, says Rufus Jeffris, senior vice president of communications for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareacouncil.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Bay Area Council\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, an advocacy group that has long pushed for policies to reduce solo commuters on roads and freeways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Those who have fast internet setups have been able to adapt to working from home, leaning on an \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/950cccc45ddddb919b3eaa629a3e6688\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">ever-growing\u003c/span>\u003c/a> roster of video conferencing applications like Zoom, which has seen its stock price soar during the pandemic, from $68.72 a share on Jan. 2 to a peak\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>of $181.50 on April 24.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said although it will be “interesting to see whether this cements work-from-home practices more broadly,” he doesn’t think telecommuting can substitute for the office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Business and the economy are taking a big hit right now,” he said. “We have to figure out how to save lives, but also save livelihoods. Businesses want to follow the public health and science behind this, but business leaders are eager to get to work and start figuring out safe ways to reopen as soon as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Sunrun, a leading residential solar company, is one business that has been able to change its work protocols to stay operational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Getting a solar unit onto a customer’s house usually\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>begins with an employee scouting a home to site solar panels. Now, it’s the customers who are snapping their own photos with smartphones, sending them in to the company in an effort to limit human contact, says Anne Hoskins, Sunrun’s chief policy officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of submitting permitting documents to planning departments in person, company representatives send them electronically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We even went a step further with some of the permitting offices and said, ‘We think you could do the inspection remotely. We can do it by camera and with you on the other side.’ And some offices agreed to that, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Hoskins thinks this remote work could speed up the process and improve government permitting even after the stay-at-home orders are lifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cstrong>What Happens After State Order Lifted?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Which experiments in telecommuting will be maintained on a widespread basis after people eventually go back to some semblance of their pre-pandemic lives remains to be seen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In the back of the mind of UC Davis’ Shilling is a “nascent irritation” that California is “going to reverse path and take us right back to the place we were before and not learn these lessons,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says his colleagues express this cynicism when he talks about the\u003cbr>\n“optimistic projection” that the state can use this moment to change driving behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They say: ‘Oh, no, we’re just going to go back to what we were doing before,’” Shilling said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But this is too fatalistic, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of like running along the edge of a cliff,” he said. “Because that’s essentially what we’re doing as a species and as a society. And if you just have this idea, I’m going to fall off the cliff and die, then you may increase your chances of doing that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“But if you are more optimistic and say: ‘I’m not going to fall, I’m going to try really hard to not fall off the cliff, then maybe you’re more likely to succeed. To me, being optimistic is a better survival strategy.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "West Oakland Environmental Justice Leaders on What's Changed, What Hasn't in the Neighborhood",
"headTitle": "West Oakland Environmental Justice Leaders on What’s Changed, What Hasn’t in the Neighborhood | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>In the early 1990s, West Oakland resident Ms. Margaret Gordon, as she likes to be called, worked at the neighborhood elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she was in the nurse’s office, something caught her attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to see all these inhalers in shoeboxes and a basket with the kids’ names on it,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the neighborhood children had asthma, the nurse told her. Ms. Gordon had also noticed that same health condition, for both children and adults, coming up in meeting after meeting in the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wondered if these respiratory issues had to do with all the trucks rolling daily through the neighborhood, heading in and out of the Port of Oakland. They literally left their mark on the inside of her home, where she would see streaks of “black soot on my windowsill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That question prompted Gordon to embark on a decades-long effort to clean up the environmental toxins around her, co-founding an organization called the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, West Oakland has been the location of heavy industry and discriminatory policies such as \u003ca href=\"https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/37.811/-122.312\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">redlining. \u003c/a>This history has resulted in West Oakland residents, primarily people of color, being exposed to more pollution than other neighborhoods in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The air in West Oakland contains some of the highest levels of \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">toxic diesel particulates\u003c/a> in the region. The California Environmental Protection Agency has designated the area as a “\u003ca href=\"https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/04/SB-535-Designation-Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">disadvantaged community\u003c/a>,” meaning it’s disproportionately burdened by pollution that can lead to negative health impacts. West Oakland has \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/ab617-community-health/west-oakland/100219-files/final-plan-vol-1-100219-pdf.pdf?la=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and premature death\u003c/a> related to air pollution than other places in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the 50th anniversary of Earth Day last week, KQED asked Gordon and her colleagues in the environmental justice movement to reflect on the changes they’ve seen in their time fighting for a cleaner West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brian Beveridge, a colleague of Gordon’s, says the community has learned different political strategies over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake, the Cypress Freeway bisected West Oakland, dividing the neighborhood and subjecting the community to the pollution that comes with a heavily used highway. When the freeway was damaged in the quake, the community lobbied to rebuild it in an area to the west, rejoining the divided streets. “Community members came in the room and fought for what they needed against the big agencies,” including Caltrans, Beveridge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past several decades, the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and other grassroots efforts have threatened lawsuits and brought actions against the city and Port of Oakland, including a 2017 civil rights \u003ca href=\"https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/2017-04-04-TitleVI_Complaint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">complaint\u003c/a> about what activists called disregard for the health of West Oakland residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Beveridge said that through the years the group “realized we can’t just sue all the time. We have to find a way to have a dialogue and change the dynamic of the conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said his group now works more collaboratively with government and private groups, and that the attitude of these larger organizations toward West Oakland residents has changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These institutions have begun to realize that the residents have an intrinsic knowledge of their own environment. We are now treated as peers by experts and Ph.D.s and scientists,” Beveridge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In the Beginning\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric Arnold of Oakland nonprofit Urban Releaf says Gordon and others started engaging in environmental justice work in the 1990s, back before it was well-known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Focusing environmental work on people and communities, instead of nature and conservation, “was kind of a radical idea,” Arnold said. “But now, thanks to the work of activists and advocates, there is substantial policy, substantial legislation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arnold cited the passage of \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Assembly Bill 32\u003c/a>, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, as a watershed moment. The bill, which requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, called for an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee to advise the state in implementing the legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naming the movement like that “codified it” and “set a baseline for environmental justice,” Arnold said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another big development in the movement came in 2012, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB535\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Senate Bill 535\u003c/a> into law, requiring the investment of cap-and-trade revenues in disadvantaged communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arnold said the activism in the Bay Area helped push some of these measures through. “West and East Oakland had been some of the meccas for the environmental justice movement, not just in California, but the entire country,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also credited Gordon’s work for pushing the state to collect and share data on pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project has also participated in gathering data independently from the state, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edf.org/airqualitymaps/oakland/pollution-and-health-concerns-west-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a partnership\u003c/a> with the advocacy group \u003ca href=\"https://www.edf.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Environmental Defense Fund\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Maps\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://aclima.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aclima\u003c/a> and the University of Texas at Austin. The project, which attached Aclima sensors to Google Street View cars, measured nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and black carbon — pollutants that come from car exhaust. In June 2017, the results were \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.7b00891\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology. \u003c/em>The findings showed that air pollution varied widely within neighborhoods and individual blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, the Port of Oakland reported that diesel particulate emissions were down 81% from 2005. But Ms. Margaret Gordon said health has not improved by a commensurate amount, and the gains have not been enough to combat decades of pollution in West Oakland’s air, soil and water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, Gordon got into this fight because of health. These days, she’d like to see some new data. “How many people still have ended up in the hospital?” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the early 1990s, West Oakland resident Ms. Margaret Gordon, as she likes to be called, worked at the neighborhood elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she was in the nurse’s office, something caught her attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to see all these inhalers in shoeboxes and a basket with the kids’ names on it,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the neighborhood children had asthma, the nurse told her. Ms. Gordon had also noticed that same health condition, for both children and adults, coming up in meeting after meeting in the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wondered if these respiratory issues had to do with all the trucks rolling daily through the neighborhood, heading in and out of the Port of Oakland. They literally left their mark on the inside of her home, where she would see streaks of “black soot on my windowsill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That question prompted Gordon to embark on a decades-long effort to clean up the environmental toxins around her, co-founding an organization called the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, West Oakland has been the location of heavy industry and discriminatory policies such as \u003ca href=\"https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/37.811/-122.312\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">redlining. \u003c/a>This history has resulted in West Oakland residents, primarily people of color, being exposed to more pollution than other neighborhoods in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The air in West Oakland contains some of the highest levels of \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">toxic diesel particulates\u003c/a> in the region. The California Environmental Protection Agency has designated the area as a “\u003ca href=\"https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/04/SB-535-Designation-Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">disadvantaged community\u003c/a>,” meaning it’s disproportionately burdened by pollution that can lead to negative health impacts. West Oakland has \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/ab617-community-health/west-oakland/100219-files/final-plan-vol-1-100219-pdf.pdf?la=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and premature death\u003c/a> related to air pollution than other places in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the 50th anniversary of Earth Day last week, KQED asked Gordon and her colleagues in the environmental justice movement to reflect on the changes they’ve seen in their time fighting for a cleaner West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brian Beveridge, a colleague of Gordon’s, says the community has learned different political strategies over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake, the Cypress Freeway bisected West Oakland, dividing the neighborhood and subjecting the community to the pollution that comes with a heavily used highway. When the freeway was damaged in the quake, the community lobbied to rebuild it in an area to the west, rejoining the divided streets. “Community members came in the room and fought for what they needed against the big agencies,” including Caltrans, Beveridge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past several decades, the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and other grassroots efforts have threatened lawsuits and brought actions against the city and Port of Oakland, including a 2017 civil rights \u003ca href=\"https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/2017-04-04-TitleVI_Complaint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">complaint\u003c/a> about what activists called disregard for the health of West Oakland residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Beveridge said that through the years the group “realized we can’t just sue all the time. We have to find a way to have a dialogue and change the dynamic of the conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said his group now works more collaboratively with government and private groups, and that the attitude of these larger organizations toward West Oakland residents has changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These institutions have begun to realize that the residents have an intrinsic knowledge of their own environment. We are now treated as peers by experts and Ph.D.s and scientists,” Beveridge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In the Beginning\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric Arnold of Oakland nonprofit Urban Releaf says Gordon and others started engaging in environmental justice work in the 1990s, back before it was well-known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Focusing environmental work on people and communities, instead of nature and conservation, “was kind of a radical idea,” Arnold said. “But now, thanks to the work of activists and advocates, there is substantial policy, substantial legislation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arnold cited the passage of \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Assembly Bill 32\u003c/a>, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, as a watershed moment. The bill, which requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, called for an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee to advise the state in implementing the legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naming the movement like that “codified it” and “set a baseline for environmental justice,” Arnold said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another big development in the movement came in 2012, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB535\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Senate Bill 535\u003c/a> into law, requiring the investment of cap-and-trade revenues in disadvantaged communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arnold said the activism in the Bay Area helped push some of these measures through. “West and East Oakland had been some of the meccas for the environmental justice movement, not just in California, but the entire country,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also credited Gordon’s work for pushing the state to collect and share data on pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project has also participated in gathering data independently from the state, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edf.org/airqualitymaps/oakland/pollution-and-health-concerns-west-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a partnership\u003c/a> with the advocacy group \u003ca href=\"https://www.edf.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Environmental Defense Fund\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Maps\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://aclima.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aclima\u003c/a> and the University of Texas at Austin. The project, which attached Aclima sensors to Google Street View cars, measured nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and black carbon — pollutants that come from car exhaust. In June 2017, the results were \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.7b00891\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology. \u003c/em>The findings showed that air pollution varied widely within neighborhoods and individual blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, the Port of Oakland reported that diesel particulate emissions were down 81% from 2005. But Ms. Margaret Gordon said health has not improved by a commensurate amount, and the gains have not been enough to combat decades of pollution in West Oakland’s air, soil and water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, Gordon got into this fight because of health. These days, she’d like to see some new data. “How many people still have ended up in the hospital?” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Releasing Herds of Animals Into the Arctic Could Help Fight Climate Change, Study Finds",
"headTitle": "Releasing Herds of Animals Into the Arctic Could Help Fight Climate Change, Study Finds | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Herds of horses, bison and reindeer could play a significant part in saving the world from an acceleration in global heating. That is the conclusion of a recent study showing how grazing herbivores can slow down the pace of thawing permafrost in the Arctic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Christian Beer, University of Hamburg']‘It may be utopian to imaging resettling wild animal herds in all the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere. But the results indicate that using fewer animals would still produce a cooling effect.’[/pullquote]The study — a computerized simulation based on real-life, on-the ground data — finds that with enough animals, 80% of all permafrost soils around the globe could be preserved through 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research was inspired by an experiment in the town of Chersky, Siberia featured on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” The episode introduces viewers to an eccentric scientist named Sergey Zimov who resettled grazing animals to a piece of the Arctic tundra more than 20 years ago. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zimov is unconventional, to say the least, even urging geneticists to work on resurrecting a version of the now-extinct woolly mammoth to aid in his quest. But through the years he and his son Nikita have observed positive impacts from adding grazing animals to the permafrost area he named Pleistocene Park, in a nod to the last Ice Age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Permafrost is a thick layer of soil that remains frozen year-round. Because of the rapidly warming climate in Arctic regions, much of the permafrost is not permanently frozen anymore. Thawing permafrost releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases that have been buried in the frozen soil for tens of thousands of years, back into the atmosphere. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are concerned that this mechanism will act as a feedback loop, further warming the atmosphere, thawing more soil, releasing more greenhouse gases and warming the atmosphere even more, perpetuating a dangerous cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year their fears were confirmed when a study led by scientists at Woods Hole Research Center revealed that the Arctic was no longer storing as much carbon as it was emitting back into the atmosphere. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In winter the permafrost in Chersky, Siberia stays at about 14 degrees Fahrenheit. But the air can be much colder, dropping down to 40 below zero Fahrenheit. Typically there is a thick blanket of snowfall in winter which insulates the soil, shielding it from the frigid air above and keeping it milder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea behind Zimov’s on-the-ground Pleistocene Park experiment was to bring grazing animals with their stamping hooves back to the land to disperse the snow, compress the ground and chill the soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1962826\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1962826\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-1020x679.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reindeer walk on a snow-covered field in the remote Yamalo-Nenets region of northern Russia on March 8, 2018. Professor Christian Beer of the University of Hamburg says that, with three times the number of reindeer across the Arctic as live there now, 70 percent of permafrost could be saved. \u003ccite>(SERGEI GAPON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Turns out, it worked. The 100 resettled animals, across a one-square-kilometer area, cut the average snow cover height in half, dramatically reducing the insulating effect, exposing the soil to the overlying colder air and intensifying the freezing of permafrost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to see what impact this method could have on a much larger scale, beyond the confines of Pleistocene Park, Professor Christian Beer of the University of Hamburg conducted a simulation experiment. His team used a special climate model to replicate the impact on the land surface throughout all of the Arctic permafrost soils in the Northern Hemisphere over the course of an entire year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, show that if emissions continue to rise unchecked we can expect to see a 7-degree Fahrenheit increase in permafrost temperatures, which would cause half of all permafrost to thaw by 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, with animal herds repopulating the tundra, the ground would only warm by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. That would be enough to preserve 80% of the current permafrost though the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This type of natural manipulation in ecosystems that are especially relevant for the climate system has barely been researched to date, but holds tremendous potential,” Beer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Rick Thoman, International Arctic Research Center']‘Unless the plan is to cover millions of square kilometers with horses, bison and reindeer, how could this possibly have any significant impact?’[/pullquote]CBS News asked Beer how realistic it is to expect that the Arctic could be repopulated with enough animals to make a difference. “I am not sure,” he replied, adding that more research is needed but the results are promising. “Today we have an average of 5 reindeers per square kilometer across the Arctic. With 15 [reindeer] per square kilometer we could already save 70% permafrost according to our calculations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may be utopian to imaging resettling wild animal herds in all the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” Beer concedes. “But the results indicate that using fewer animals would still produce a cooling effect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, agrees that snow disturbed and trampled by animal herds is a much less efficient insulator, but he has his doubts about implementing this idea. “Unless the plan is to cover millions of square kilometers with horses, bison and reindeer, how could this possibly have any significant impact? I certainly would not call it ‘utopian’ to destroy permafrost lands as we know them by having these animals in the distribution and numbers required.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beer and his team did consider some potential side effects of this approach. For example, in summer the animals would destroy the cooling moss layer on the ground, which would contribute to warming the soil. This was taken into account in the simulations, but the cooling impact of the compressed snow effect in winter is several times greater, they found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If theoretically we were able to maintain a high animal density like in Zimov’s Pleistocene Park, would that be good enough to save permafrost under the strongest warming scenario? Yes, it could work for 80% of the region” said Beer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a next step, Beer plans to collaborate with biologists in order to investigate how the animals would actually spread across the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "It would take a lot of animals. But the thawing of Arctic permafrost is a big problem for humans, because it releases trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, speeding global warming.",
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"description": "It would take a lot of animals. But the thawing of Arctic permafrost is a big problem for humans, because it releases trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, speeding global warming.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Herds of horses, bison and reindeer could play a significant part in saving the world from an acceleration in global heating. That is the conclusion of a recent study showing how grazing herbivores can slow down the pace of thawing permafrost in the Arctic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘It may be utopian to imaging resettling wild animal herds in all the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere. But the results indicate that using fewer animals would still produce a cooling effect.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The study — a computerized simulation based on real-life, on-the ground data — finds that with enough animals, 80% of all permafrost soils around the globe could be preserved through 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research was inspired by an experiment in the town of Chersky, Siberia featured on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” The episode introduces viewers to an eccentric scientist named Sergey Zimov who resettled grazing animals to a piece of the Arctic tundra more than 20 years ago. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zimov is unconventional, to say the least, even urging geneticists to work on resurrecting a version of the now-extinct woolly mammoth to aid in his quest. But through the years he and his son Nikita have observed positive impacts from adding grazing animals to the permafrost area he named Pleistocene Park, in a nod to the last Ice Age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Permafrost is a thick layer of soil that remains frozen year-round. Because of the rapidly warming climate in Arctic regions, much of the permafrost is not permanently frozen anymore. Thawing permafrost releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases that have been buried in the frozen soil for tens of thousands of years, back into the atmosphere. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are concerned that this mechanism will act as a feedback loop, further warming the atmosphere, thawing more soil, releasing more greenhouse gases and warming the atmosphere even more, perpetuating a dangerous cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year their fears were confirmed when a study led by scientists at Woods Hole Research Center revealed that the Arctic was no longer storing as much carbon as it was emitting back into the atmosphere. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In winter the permafrost in Chersky, Siberia stays at about 14 degrees Fahrenheit. But the air can be much colder, dropping down to 40 below zero Fahrenheit. Typically there is a thick blanket of snowfall in winter which insulates the soil, shielding it from the frigid air above and keeping it milder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea behind Zimov’s on-the-ground Pleistocene Park experiment was to bring grazing animals with their stamping hooves back to the land to disperse the snow, compress the ground and chill the soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1962826\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1962826\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/04/reindeer-1020x679.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reindeer walk on a snow-covered field in the remote Yamalo-Nenets region of northern Russia on March 8, 2018. Professor Christian Beer of the University of Hamburg says that, with three times the number of reindeer across the Arctic as live there now, 70 percent of permafrost could be saved. \u003ccite>(SERGEI GAPON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Turns out, it worked. The 100 resettled animals, across a one-square-kilometer area, cut the average snow cover height in half, dramatically reducing the insulating effect, exposing the soil to the overlying colder air and intensifying the freezing of permafrost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to see what impact this method could have on a much larger scale, beyond the confines of Pleistocene Park, Professor Christian Beer of the University of Hamburg conducted a simulation experiment. His team used a special climate model to replicate the impact on the land surface throughout all of the Arctic permafrost soils in the Northern Hemisphere over the course of an entire year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, show that if emissions continue to rise unchecked we can expect to see a 7-degree Fahrenheit increase in permafrost temperatures, which would cause half of all permafrost to thaw by 2100.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, with animal herds repopulating the tundra, the ground would only warm by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. That would be enough to preserve 80% of the current permafrost though the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This type of natural manipulation in ecosystems that are especially relevant for the climate system has barely been researched to date, but holds tremendous potential,” Beer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>CBS News asked Beer how realistic it is to expect that the Arctic could be repopulated with enough animals to make a difference. “I am not sure,” he replied, adding that more research is needed but the results are promising. “Today we have an average of 5 reindeers per square kilometer across the Arctic. With 15 [reindeer] per square kilometer we could already save 70% permafrost according to our calculations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may be utopian to imaging resettling wild animal herds in all the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” Beer concedes. “But the results indicate that using fewer animals would still produce a cooling effect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, agrees that snow disturbed and trampled by animal herds is a much less efficient insulator, but he has his doubts about implementing this idea. “Unless the plan is to cover millions of square kilometers with horses, bison and reindeer, how could this possibly have any significant impact? I certainly would not call it ‘utopian’ to destroy permafrost lands as we know them by having these animals in the distribution and numbers required.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beer and his team did consider some potential side effects of this approach. For example, in summer the animals would destroy the cooling moss layer on the ground, which would contribute to warming the soil. This was taken into account in the simulations, but the cooling impact of the compressed snow effect in winter is several times greater, they found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If theoretically we were able to maintain a high animal density like in Zimov’s Pleistocene Park, would that be good enough to save permafrost under the strongest warming scenario? Yes, it could work for 80% of the region” said Beer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a next step, Beer plans to collaborate with biologists in order to investigate how the animals would actually spread across the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "After the Coronavirus, the Climate Crisis Will Remain. What Have We Learned?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, but in an irony big enough to envelop the entire planet, many who want to celebrate will have to do it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1962429/earth-day-2020-is-live-and-online-and-in-your-backyard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">indoors\u003c/a>. That, of course, is due to the coronavirus, which has killed around 175,000 people and forced populations around the globe to live life almost exclusively sheltered at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]What have we learned from the coronavirus pandemic that we can apply to the climate crisis?[/pullquote]The death and chaos surrounding COVID-19 has been a brutal reminder of nature’s ability to disrupt humanity’s best laid plans. Yet, the crisis is not without at least one positive development. By one \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">estimate\u003c/a>, the pandemic could this year result in a 5.5% drop in worldwide carbon emissions, which cause global warming. And the U.S. Energy Information Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">projects\u003c/a> the country’s emissions from gas and energy could decrease by a startling 7%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this reduction in planet-warming emissions will likely \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834295861/carbon-emissions-are-falling-but-still-not-enough-scientists-say\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fall short\u003c/a> of what scientists say is needed to avert the worst effects of climate change, we wondered:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are there any lessons to be learned from coping with the current crisis that might be applied to the ongoing catastrophe of climate change?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the answers to that question from seven climate and environmental experts and advocates, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Naomi Oreskes,\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> author ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Why we need the federal government\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for climate change because it involves many of the same elements but on a much faster timescale. One of the challenges of climate change is that it has been difficult to communicate to people exactly how severe it is, because its impacts appear to be far away, or because the causal chain that links driving a car to the death of people is slightly complex. With COVID-19, we see it’s acute because people become sick and die over the course of just a few weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saw great resistance on the part of the federal government, particularly conservatives, to take strong action. And the reason that many of them were reluctant was a sense that this really wasn’t the role of the federal government. This is exactly the ideology operating in climate change denial. But as we’ve seen in the case of COVID-19, this is not something that the private sector can address very effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why do we even have government? Well, to solve problems that we as individuals can’t solve on our own. It’s true, government is not the solution to all our problems. But it clearly is the solution to many of our biggest problems, like those in public health or environmental health. The best way to have that happen is for there to be leadership on the federal level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.katharinehayhoe.com/wp2016/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Katherine Hayhoe\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, Climate Center, Texas Tech\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Proof we can effect ‘incredible change’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The encouraging thing we’re seeing is that when we recognize there is a challenge that threatens every single one of us, no matter where we live or what language we speak or where we fall on the political spectrum, the vast majority of us are willing to take action, because when it all comes down to it, what matters to all of us is the same. It’s our health and our safety and that of our family and our loved ones and community. I truly believe we all have the values we need to care about climate change already. We just haven’t connected the dots. My concern is: How long will it take us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pandemic has caused enormous drops in air pollution, which some estimate could save as many lives as were lost to the coronavirus pandemic in areas that are very highly polluted. We also know that our carbon emissions have dropped as the economy has been shuttered around the world. But we know that those reductions were achieved through unsustainable methods. We can’t have everybody staying in their homes. We can’t have people thrown out of work. But what it showed us is that we do have the power to act and we can effect incredible change when we do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://opr.ca.gov/about/director-bio.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Kate Gordon\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Electrify Everything? How About Tele-Everything…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things the Air Resources Board has highlighted in the past is just how important reducing vehicle miles is in thinking about how we can lower transportation emissions. I think a lot of people have gone immediately to, ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, everything would be fine.’ But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel around the state, because it has all these other associated emissions impacts, as well as being highly polluting. What we’re seeing right now is just this huge decline in vehicle miles traveled. There’ve been a bunch of different estimates out there \u003ci>—\u003c/i>if you just go on gasoline demand, it’s about 50 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a long time, we at the Office of Planning and Research and others have been saying we need to think about broadband and telework as opportunities to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And that connection has not been as clear, I think, in the mind of a lot of climate policy people. [The stay-at-home order] has really underscored that the more options people have to work remotely and not do their increasingly long commutes, the better for air quality and the better for our overall emissions profile. We can learn something about putting these remote work systems in place to really reduce that need to drive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://rooseveltinstitute.org/author/rhianagunnwright/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Rhiana Gunn-Wright\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, climate policy, Roosevelt Institute\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Racial disparities around the environment and COVID-19\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate is the background condition for the ways that we live, so it also affects so many things in our world, including disease transmission. We’re seeing right now that there are racial disparities in how COVID-19 affects people. Black people in particular are more likely to be hospitalized and die from it. And one of the reasons for that is structural racism and residential segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are low-income and black and Latino, you are far more likely to live near toxic fumes and be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution, which in turn creates a ton of background conditions: cancers, heart disease risk, respiratory issues, which in turn makes people more vulnerable to the coronavirus. So in very real ways we are poisoning people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://rael.berkeley.edu/people/kammen-daniel/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Dan Kammen, \u003c/strong>\u003c/a>director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Like a ‘peeing section’ in a swimming pool\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that emissions are down so quickly is important. Obviously, this is not the way we wanted to reduce emissions, but it shows how quickly the environment can recover. We’re seeing wild animals all over; there’s a report on the news every few minutes about seeing endangered cats in big cities, etc. So there’s definitely the upside story that if we were to invest in the least-cost energy today, which is renewables and not fossil fuels, we really could bend the curve on climate right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID-19 has also shown us how clearly we’re all in this together. Unfortunately, the rich and the affluent have ways to insulate themselves. But overall, it’s very clear that if you don’t treat this as a global issue, you’re not going to get anywhere. So it’s been described as a case of having a ‘peeing section’ in a swimming pool. That doesn’t work. A strategy that doesn’t tie us all together is not going to work. So global emissions have to go down, not just in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmental justice and reaching out to those least able to respond is not a luxury. We’re not going to solve COVID-19 if we don’t make social distancing, unemployment and testing available to everyone. And we won’t get anywhere in climate change unless we recognize that it’s really a social justice issue more than a technology issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/08/26/mpa-esp-faculty-profile-a-park-williams-professor-of-climatology/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Park Williams\u003c/a>, \u003c/strong>bioclimatologist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People can handle a crisis\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are proving that they can handle data, hard decisions and uncertainty. We have seen citizens proving they can handle model projections with an inherent uncertainty, and they still determine and make lifestyle choices based on those results. I wasn’t sure that was possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Like climate change], the coronavirus is another situation where the writing was on the wall for a very long time, and experts have been warning about this as an inevitable result for a very long time. Policymakers have a really easy time kicking the can down the road that a crisis actually breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cbecal.org/andres-soto/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Andres Soto\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, organizer, Communities for a Better Environment, Richmond\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Destabilized lives\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The air, we know, is clearer. There are less people driving, so less combustion is in the air. But we also see the refinery is still operating apparently at full capacity, despite what’s going on with the crude market on the global scale. And there has been absolutely no indication that Chevron is going to be cutting back on its pollution while everybody else has to shelter in place. \u003cem>Editor’s note: \u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">According to federal data, production at West Coast refineries collectively is \u003c/i>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">\u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_wiup_dcu_r50_4.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" aria-describedby=\"slack-kit-tooltip\">down\u003c/a>\u003c/i>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> by about a quarter since the shelter-at-home order began.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, we’ve been about educating and mobilizing people to build their community power to address polluters in their community. Because of the lack of an efficient social safety net, we now find ourselves having to address people’s personal needs as their lives have become destabilized by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re seeing that the vulnerabilities of society through the pandemic are enhanced by nationalistic self-interest. We really do need to think like “Star Trek,” global government where we’re all working together, continent to continent in reshaping the future of the ecology of the planet and the economy — grassroots up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: This post has been updated to include refinery production information. \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>Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, but in an irony big enough to envelop the entire planet, many who want to celebrate will have to do it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1962429/earth-day-2020-is-live-and-online-and-in-your-backyard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">indoors\u003c/a>. That, of course, is due to the coronavirus, which has killed around 175,000 people and forced populations around the globe to live life almost exclusively sheltered at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The death and chaos surrounding COVID-19 has been a brutal reminder of nature’s ability to disrupt humanity’s best laid plans. Yet, the crisis is not without at least one positive development. By one \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">estimate\u003c/a>, the pandemic could this year result in a 5.5% drop in worldwide carbon emissions, which cause global warming. And the U.S. Energy Information Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">projects\u003c/a> the country’s emissions from gas and energy could decrease by a startling 7%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this reduction in planet-warming emissions will likely \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834295861/carbon-emissions-are-falling-but-still-not-enough-scientists-say\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fall short\u003c/a> of what scientists say is needed to avert the worst effects of climate change, we wondered:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are there any lessons to be learned from coping with the current crisis that might be applied to the ongoing catastrophe of climate change?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the answers to that question from seven climate and environmental experts and advocates, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Naomi Oreskes,\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> author ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Why we need the federal government\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for climate change because it involves many of the same elements but on a much faster timescale. One of the challenges of climate change is that it has been difficult to communicate to people exactly how severe it is, because its impacts appear to be far away, or because the causal chain that links driving a car to the death of people is slightly complex. With COVID-19, we see it’s acute because people become sick and die over the course of just a few weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saw great resistance on the part of the federal government, particularly conservatives, to take strong action. And the reason that many of them were reluctant was a sense that this really wasn’t the role of the federal government. This is exactly the ideology operating in climate change denial. But as we’ve seen in the case of COVID-19, this is not something that the private sector can address very effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why do we even have government? Well, to solve problems that we as individuals can’t solve on our own. It’s true, government is not the solution to all our problems. But it clearly is the solution to many of our biggest problems, like those in public health or environmental health. The best way to have that happen is for there to be leadership on the federal level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.katharinehayhoe.com/wp2016/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Katherine Hayhoe\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, Climate Center, Texas Tech\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Proof we can effect ‘incredible change’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The encouraging thing we’re seeing is that when we recognize there is a challenge that threatens every single one of us, no matter where we live or what language we speak or where we fall on the political spectrum, the vast majority of us are willing to take action, because when it all comes down to it, what matters to all of us is the same. It’s our health and our safety and that of our family and our loved ones and community. I truly believe we all have the values we need to care about climate change already. We just haven’t connected the dots. My concern is: How long will it take us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pandemic has caused enormous drops in air pollution, which some estimate could save as many lives as were lost to the coronavirus pandemic in areas that are very highly polluted. We also know that our carbon emissions have dropped as the economy has been shuttered around the world. But we know that those reductions were achieved through unsustainable methods. We can’t have everybody staying in their homes. We can’t have people thrown out of work. But what it showed us is that we do have the power to act and we can effect incredible change when we do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://opr.ca.gov/about/director-bio.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Kate Gordon\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Electrify Everything? How About Tele-Everything…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things the Air Resources Board has highlighted in the past is just how important reducing vehicle miles is in thinking about how we can lower transportation emissions. I think a lot of people have gone immediately to, ‘Oh, if we just had only electric cars, everything would be fine.’ But what we’ve found in looking at the models is that you actually really do have to reduce the amount that people have to travel around the state, because it has all these other associated emissions impacts, as well as being highly polluting. What we’re seeing right now is just this huge decline in vehicle miles traveled. There’ve been a bunch of different estimates out there \u003ci>—\u003c/i>if you just go on gasoline demand, it’s about 50 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a long time, we at the Office of Planning and Research and others have been saying we need to think about broadband and telework as opportunities to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And that connection has not been as clear, I think, in the mind of a lot of climate policy people. [The stay-at-home order] has really underscored that the more options people have to work remotely and not do their increasingly long commutes, the better for air quality and the better for our overall emissions profile. We can learn something about putting these remote work systems in place to really reduce that need to drive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://rooseveltinstitute.org/author/rhianagunnwright/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Rhiana Gunn-Wright\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, director, climate policy, Roosevelt Institute\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Racial disparities around the environment and COVID-19\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate is the background condition for the ways that we live, so it also affects so many things in our world, including disease transmission. We’re seeing right now that there are racial disparities in how COVID-19 affects people. Black people in particular are more likely to be hospitalized and die from it. And one of the reasons for that is structural racism and residential segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are low-income and black and Latino, you are far more likely to live near toxic fumes and be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution, which in turn creates a ton of background conditions: cancers, heart disease risk, respiratory issues, which in turn makes people more vulnerable to the coronavirus. So in very real ways we are poisoning people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://rael.berkeley.edu/people/kammen-daniel/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Dan Kammen, \u003c/strong>\u003c/a>director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Like a ‘peeing section’ in a swimming pool\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that emissions are down so quickly is important. Obviously, this is not the way we wanted to reduce emissions, but it shows how quickly the environment can recover. We’re seeing wild animals all over; there’s a report on the news every few minutes about seeing endangered cats in big cities, etc. So there’s definitely the upside story that if we were to invest in the least-cost energy today, which is renewables and not fossil fuels, we really could bend the curve on climate right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID-19 has also shown us how clearly we’re all in this together. Unfortunately, the rich and the affluent have ways to insulate themselves. But overall, it’s very clear that if you don’t treat this as a global issue, you’re not going to get anywhere. So it’s been described as a case of having a ‘peeing section’ in a swimming pool. That doesn’t work. A strategy that doesn’t tie us all together is not going to work. So global emissions have to go down, not just in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmental justice and reaching out to those least able to respond is not a luxury. We’re not going to solve COVID-19 if we don’t make social distancing, unemployment and testing available to everyone. And we won’t get anywhere in climate change unless we recognize that it’s really a social justice issue more than a technology issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/08/26/mpa-esp-faculty-profile-a-park-williams-professor-of-climatology/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Park Williams\u003c/a>, \u003c/strong>bioclimatologist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People can handle a crisis\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are proving that they can handle data, hard decisions and uncertainty. We have seen citizens proving they can handle model projections with an inherent uncertainty, and they still determine and make lifestyle choices based on those results. I wasn’t sure that was possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Like climate change], the coronavirus is another situation where the writing was on the wall for a very long time, and experts have been warning about this as an inevitable result for a very long time. Policymakers have a really easy time kicking the can down the road that a crisis actually breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cbecal.org/andres-soto/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Andres Soto\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>, organizer, Communities for a Better Environment, Richmond\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Destabilized lives\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The air, we know, is clearer. There are less people driving, so less combustion is in the air. But we also see the refinery is still operating apparently at full capacity, despite what’s going on with the crude market on the global scale. And there has been absolutely no indication that Chevron is going to be cutting back on its pollution while everybody else has to shelter in place. \u003cem>Editor’s note: \u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">According to federal data, production at West Coast refineries collectively is \u003c/i>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">\u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_wiup_dcu_r50_4.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" aria-describedby=\"slack-kit-tooltip\">down\u003c/a>\u003c/i>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> by about a quarter since the shelter-at-home order began.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, we’ve been about educating and mobilizing people to build their community power to address polluters in their community. Because of the lack of an efficient social safety net, we now find ourselves having to address people’s personal needs as their lives have become destabilized by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re seeing that the vulnerabilities of society through the pandemic are enhanced by nationalistic self-interest. We really do need to think like “Star Trek,” global government where we’re all working together, continent to continent in reshaping the future of the ecology of the planet and the economy — grassroots up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: This post has been updated to include refinery production information. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Megadrought Conditions Not Seen for 400+ Years Have Returned to the West, Scientists Say",
"headTitle": "Megadrought Conditions Not Seen for 400+ Years Have Returned to the West, Scientists Say | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>For two decades, dry conditions have cooked the West to a crisp. The nearly uninterrupted string of below-average rain years has been punctuated by punishing temperatures that basically go in one direction: up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This warming, research \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1944993/study-climate-change-a-leading-driver-of-californias-wildfires\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">suggests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, is a key driver of California’s wildfires, and it now appears to have thrust the entire region into an extended long-term “megadrought” worse than any experienced in recorded history, according to an analysis of 1,200 years of tree\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>ring records, a century of weather observations and dozens of climate models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[emailsignup newslettername='science' align='right']The conclusion of the \u003ca href=\"https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> published Thursday in the journal \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> corroborates what scientists \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/07/24/medieval-megadroughts-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">have long feared and warned policymakers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>: Extreme warming will exacerbate any dry spell making it longer, severer and more widespread, and this will bake states in the Western U.S. and areas of Mexico with a punishingly long drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">While the occasional wet period, like what California experience in the last water year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-latest-drought/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">punctuates\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a long run of below-average precipitation, for the past two decades the region has been consistently dry and hot. In response, thirsty farms and cities have drawn down the Colorado River, putting the water supply for 40 million people in the state at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last time the West experienced sustained arid conditions over decades was a 28-year dry spell that ended in the year 1603, researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“We now have a full, uninterrupted record of soil moisture across western North America that extends from 800 A.D. all the way up to the near present,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who led the study. “That allows us to compare for the first time this drought event to the big megadroughts. And the development of this prolonged drought that began in 2000 looks indistinguishable from those big megadroughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The study looked at California, eight other states and Northern Mexico. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>A Worst-Case Scenarios for Water Managers\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Scientists have long known that the West suffered in the distant past under anomalous dry periods that lasted for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The region returning to what researchers call a megadrought or a “paleo-drought” is considered to be a worst-case scenario for water managers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say the region experienced megadroughts in the 9th, 12th, 13th and16th centuries, disrupting Native American cultures. For example, dry conditions are believed to have \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/western-us-could-soon-face-worst-megadrought-millennium-180954238/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">driven\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the Anasazi from their pueblo settlements in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One key difference between past and present, Williams says, is that the ancient megadroughts all coincided with long periods of cool water on the ocean surface in the tropical west coast of South America, a natural climate pattern known as \u003ci>La Niña,\u003c/i> which contributes to North American droughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>while a mild \u003ci>La Niña\u003c/i> and other natural conditions are playing a role in the current drought, Williams says, rising temperatures are responsible for half the severity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global warming has driven temperatures in the West up by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, he says, and hotter air holds more moisture, absorbing it like a sponge from shrubs, trees and the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With past megadroughts, we had these naturally occurring dry years, but those dry years were occurring under a completely different backdrop of temperatures,” Williams said. “Where the last 20 years have been substantially warmer than they would have been without global warming, and a warm atmosphere simply can hold more moisture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angeline Pendergrass, a federal scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not involved in the study, agrees that climate change will make droughts worse, she cautions that it may be too soon to know if the region is entering a true megadrought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and an expert on California’s water supply, said he thinks it’s “quite likely” that warming temperatures could be pushing the region into a prolonged drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we are going into a megadrought, it would look a lot like this,” he said. “And it would be made even worse with higher temperatures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Lund was also not involved in the research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>Megadrought, Meet the Most Populous State in the Nation\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A megadrought would have huge and potentially catastrophic implications for California’s 40 million people, many of whom live in parched areas of the state. It would also require continuing ingenuity on the part of water managers who maintain substantial reservoirs at Lake Mead and Lake Powell along the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under prolonged conditions of drought, populous cities in California would suffer but would\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>likely be able to adapt, Lund says. while farmers and the state’s natural ecosystems would get the worst of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we do the modeling of these paleo-droughts for California, basically the cities get by okay. They don’t like it. It costs a lot and it hurts,” he said. “But the cities are not affected in their overall prosperity if they’re managed well. It’s agriculture that goes way down, by maybe half. And the ecosystems, they are just sort of in freefall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The 20th century saw California grow to be the most populous state in the nation, says Scott Stine,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay, and that coincided with an especially wet century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We built this phenomenal infrastructure, second to none in the world, here in California and in other parts of the West,” he said. “All of it based on the diversion of water and all of it based on the assumption that the 20th century was normal. And the 20th century is not normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“The problem of the present day and the coming droughts is that we are set up to need far more water than we should expect at any time in the coming decades and centuries,” he said. “Particularly with the higher temperatures. We’ve created a monster that we have to continue to feed with water, and the water is just not going to be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s3\">\u003cb>Tree Ring Data \u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\nThe study is based on tree ring data that is painstakingly difficult to obtain, but exceptionally convincing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To collect tree ring data, scientists first must trudge throughout undisturbed forests and lake beds in search of preserved stumps, which provide a window into soil-moisture levels of the distant past. Williams’ team used records from thousands of trees from across the region. Radiocarbon dating and other techniques on the stumps can determine the age of the tree’s annual growth rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California’s moderate climate, trees grow a single ring each year. In the springtime, after winter rains and snow have soaked the state’s forests, the cells of a tree expand. During the hot summer, they contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The expanding and contracting of the cell size is visible in the tree\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>rings. Wet years produce wide rings and dry years thin rings. Researchers can calculate the length of a dry spell by counting the thin rings of a stump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">For example, Stine \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/369546a0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> stumps underneath Mono Lake and other places in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere suggesting \u003c/span>California over the last 1,200 years has\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>weathered two sustained dry spells each lasting \u003ca href=\"http://archive.redding.com/news/past-droughts-in-calif-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say-ep-299086669-353588471.html/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">more than a century.\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan class=\"s5\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\nIn comparison, dry spells that afflict modern California — as devastating as they can be — have lasted only a few years.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For two decades, dry conditions have cooked the West to a crisp. The nearly uninterrupted string of below-average rain years has been punctuated by punishing temperatures that basically go in one direction: up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This warming, research \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1944993/study-climate-change-a-leading-driver-of-californias-wildfires\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">suggests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, is a key driver of California’s wildfires, and it now appears to have thrust the entire region into an extended long-term “megadrought” worse than any experienced in recorded history, according to an analysis of 1,200 years of tree\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>ring records, a century of weather observations and dozens of climate models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The conclusion of the \u003ca href=\"https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> published Thursday in the journal \u003ci>Science\u003c/i> corroborates what scientists \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/07/24/medieval-megadroughts-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">have long feared and warned policymakers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>: Extreme warming will exacerbate any dry spell making it longer, severer and more widespread, and this will bake states in the Western U.S. and areas of Mexico with a punishingly long drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">While the occasional wet period, like what California experience in the last water year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-latest-drought/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">punctuates\u003c/span>\u003c/a> a long run of below-average precipitation, for the past two decades the region has been consistently dry and hot. In response, thirsty farms and cities have drawn down the Colorado River, putting the water supply for 40 million people in the state at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last time the West experienced sustained arid conditions over decades was a 28-year dry spell that ended in the year 1603, researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“We now have a full, uninterrupted record of soil moisture across western North America that extends from 800 A.D. all the way up to the near present,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who led the study. “That allows us to compare for the first time this drought event to the big megadroughts. And the development of this prolonged drought that began in 2000 looks indistinguishable from those big megadroughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The study looked at California, eight other states and Northern Mexico. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>A Worst-Case Scenarios for Water Managers\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Scientists have long known that the West suffered in the distant past under anomalous dry periods that lasted for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The region returning to what researchers call a megadrought or a “paleo-drought” is considered to be a worst-case scenario for water managers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say the region experienced megadroughts in the 9th, 12th, 13th and16th centuries, disrupting Native American cultures. For example, dry conditions are believed to have \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/western-us-could-soon-face-worst-megadrought-millennium-180954238/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">driven\u003c/span>\u003c/a> the Anasazi from their pueblo settlements in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One key difference between past and present, Williams says, is that the ancient megadroughts all coincided with long periods of cool water on the ocean surface in the tropical west coast of South America, a natural climate pattern known as \u003ci>La Niña,\u003c/i> which contributes to North American droughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>while a mild \u003ci>La Niña\u003c/i> and other natural conditions are playing a role in the current drought, Williams says, rising temperatures are responsible for half the severity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global warming has driven temperatures in the West up by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, he says, and hotter air holds more moisture, absorbing it like a sponge from shrubs, trees and the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With past megadroughts, we had these naturally occurring dry years, but those dry years were occurring under a completely different backdrop of temperatures,” Williams said. “Where the last 20 years have been substantially warmer than they would have been without global warming, and a warm atmosphere simply can hold more moisture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angeline Pendergrass, a federal scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not involved in the study, agrees that climate change will make droughts worse, she cautions that it may be too soon to know if the region is entering a true megadrought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and an expert on California’s water supply, said he thinks it’s “quite likely” that warming temperatures could be pushing the region into a prolonged drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we are going into a megadrought, it would look a lot like this,” he said. “And it would be made even worse with higher temperatures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Lund was also not involved in the research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cb>Megadrought, Meet the Most Populous State in the Nation\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A megadrought would have huge and potentially catastrophic implications for California’s 40 million people, many of whom live in parched areas of the state. It would also require continuing ingenuity on the part of water managers who maintain substantial reservoirs at Lake Mead and Lake Powell along the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under prolonged conditions of drought, populous cities in California would suffer but would\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>likely be able to adapt, Lund says. while farmers and the state’s natural ecosystems would get the worst of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we do the modeling of these paleo-droughts for California, basically the cities get by okay. They don’t like it. It costs a lot and it hurts,” he said. “But the cities are not affected in their overall prosperity if they’re managed well. It’s agriculture that goes way down, by maybe half. And the ecosystems, they are just sort of in freefall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The 20th century saw California grow to be the most populous state in the nation, says Scott Stine,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay, and that coincided with an especially wet century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We built this phenomenal infrastructure, second to none in the world, here in California and in other parts of the West,” he said. “All of it based on the diversion of water and all of it based on the assumption that the 20th century was normal. And the 20th century is not normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“The problem of the present day and the coming droughts is that we are set up to need far more water than we should expect at any time in the coming decades and centuries,” he said. “Particularly with the higher temperatures. We’ve created a monster that we have to continue to feed with water, and the water is just not going to be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s3\">\u003cb>Tree Ring Data \u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s2\">\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\nThe study is based on tree ring data that is painstakingly difficult to obtain, but exceptionally convincing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To collect tree ring data, scientists first must trudge throughout undisturbed forests and lake beds in search of preserved stumps, which provide a window into soil-moisture levels of the distant past. Williams’ team used records from thousands of trees from across the region. Radiocarbon dating and other techniques on the stumps can determine the age of the tree’s annual growth rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California’s moderate climate, trees grow a single ring each year. In the springtime, after winter rains and snow have soaked the state’s forests, the cells of a tree expand. During the hot summer, they contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The expanding and contracting of the cell size is visible in the tree\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>rings. Wet years produce wide rings and dry years thin rings. Researchers can calculate the length of a dry spell by counting the thin rings of a stump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">For example, Stine \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/369546a0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">found\u003c/span>\u003c/a> stumps underneath Mono Lake and other places in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere suggesting \u003c/span>California over the last 1,200 years has\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>weathered two sustained dry spells each lasting \u003ca href=\"http://archive.redding.com/news/past-droughts-in-calif-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say-ep-299086669-353588471.html/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">more than a century.\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan class=\"s5\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\nIn comparison, dry spells that afflict modern California — as devastating as they can be — have lasted only a few years.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With the dramatic reduction in car traffic and commercial flights, carbon emissions have been falling around the globe. If the slowdown continues, \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\">some are estimating\u003c/a> the world could see the largest drop in emissions in the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, overall greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are still going up and the decline will likely be smaller than what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, the effects are just starting to appear. In China, the first country to lock down, greenhouse gas emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/811019032/why-chinas-air-has-been-cleaner-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak\">dropped an estimated 25%\u003c/a> in February as factories and industrial producers slowed output. That decreased coal burning, which has come back slowly since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A month or two of shelter in place will drop carbon dioxide emissions a few percent here or there, but it won’t change the year substantially unless we stay like this for some time,” says Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The declines are still too small to be read by greenhouse gas observatories around the world, like the one \u003ca href=\"https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/\">on top of the Mauna Loa volcano\u003c/a> in Hawaii, given the natural changes in atmosphere this time of year. Because much of the Earth’s land mass is in the northern hemisphere, plants and forests there cause carbon levels to fluctuate as they bloom in the spring, drawing carbon dioxide from the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If countries continue shelter-at-home orders, emissions declines could be greater. The U.S. Energy Information Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/\">estimates U.S. emissions from gas and energy use could drop\u003c/a> more than 7% this year, similar to a 2009 decline during the financial crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, early estimates put global emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\">dropping around 4%.\u003c/a> Still, that’s less than the \u003ca href=\"https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/cut-global-emissions-76-percent-every-year-next-decade-meet-15degc\">7.6% the U.N. says is needed\u003c/a> to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To achieve those cuts, scientists say more fundamental changes are needed, like switching to renewable energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t the way we want to reduce our fossil fuel emissions,” says Jackson. “We don’t want tens of millions of people being out of work as a path to decarbonizing our economy. We need systemic change in our energy infrastructure and new green technologies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Jackson says the recent changes are providing useful insights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s as if a third of the cars on the road were suddenly electric, running on clean electricity and the air pollution is plummeting,” says Jackson. “It’s really a remarkable experiment and it shows the benefits of clean energy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Carbon+Emissions+Are+Falling%2C+But+Still+Not+Enough%2C+Scientists+Say&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With the dramatic reduction in car traffic and commercial flights, carbon emissions have been falling around the globe. If the slowdown continues, \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\">some are estimating\u003c/a> the world could see the largest drop in emissions in the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, overall greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are still going up and the decline will likely be smaller than what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, the effects are just starting to appear. In China, the first country to lock down, greenhouse gas emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/811019032/why-chinas-air-has-been-cleaner-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak\">dropped an estimated 25%\u003c/a> in February as factories and industrial producers slowed output. That decreased coal burning, which has come back slowly since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A month or two of shelter in place will drop carbon dioxide emissions a few percent here or there, but it won’t change the year substantially unless we stay like this for some time,” says Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The declines are still too small to be read by greenhouse gas observatories around the world, like the one \u003ca href=\"https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/\">on top of the Mauna Loa volcano\u003c/a> in Hawaii, given the natural changes in atmosphere this time of year. Because much of the Earth’s land mass is in the northern hemisphere, plants and forests there cause carbon levels to fluctuate as they bloom in the spring, drawing carbon dioxide from the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If countries continue shelter-at-home orders, emissions declines could be greater. The U.S. Energy Information Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/\">estimates U.S. emissions from gas and energy use could drop\u003c/a> more than 7% this year, similar to a 2009 decline during the financial crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, early estimates put global emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions\">dropping around 4%.\u003c/a> Still, that’s less than the \u003ca href=\"https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/cut-global-emissions-76-percent-every-year-next-decade-meet-15degc\">7.6% the U.N. says is needed\u003c/a> to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To achieve those cuts, scientists say more fundamental changes are needed, like switching to renewable energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t the way we want to reduce our fossil fuel emissions,” says Jackson. “We don’t want tens of millions of people being out of work as a path to decarbonizing our economy. We need systemic change in our energy infrastructure and new green technologies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Jackson says the recent changes are providing useful insights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s as if a third of the cars on the road were suddenly electric, running on clean electricity and the air pollution is plummeting,” says Jackson. “It’s really a remarkable experiment and it shows the benefits of clean energy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Carbon+Emissions+Are+Falling%2C+But+Still+Not+Enough%2C+Scientists+Say&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "As April Begins, California's Snowpack is About Half of Normal",
"headTitle": "As April Begins, California’s Snowpack is About Half of Normal | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>California water officials announced Wednesday that snowpack across the Sierra Nevada is measuring \u003ca href=\"http://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action\">53 percent\u003c/a> of the historical average for the start of April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/\">Department of Water Resources\u003c/a> (DWR) conducted the fourth monthly snow survey of the season today at Phillips Station snow course south of Lake Tahoe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DWR spokesman Chris Orrock says the region experienced a handful of big snow storms in March, but they weren’t enough to make up for a dry January and one of the driest Februaries on record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This year we’re probably going to have one of the 10 worst snowpacks in California history,” says Orrock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists in California closely monitor Sierra snowpack leading up to April 1st, around the time when the spring runoff typically begins. The water that melts off the snowpack helps to replenish California’s reservoirs in dry months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water from melting Sierra snowpack accounts for about 30 percent of California’s annual water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orrock says the majority of that snowpack accumulates from December through the end of March.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“April 1st is kind of our benchmark. Typically that’s when we see the deepest snowpack with the most water,” says Orrock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past decade, Sierra snowpack totals have varied significantly from year to year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the past 10 years, we’ve seen three of our smallest snowpacks on record, but we’ve also seen three of our largest snowpacks on record,” said Sean de Guzman, DWR’s chief of Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecast Section, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While 2020 will go down as a dry year, Orrock says runoff from last year’s snowpack, which was was well above average, has left the state’s major reservoirs near — or above — average for this time of year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water officials say climate change has played a role in the variability observed in California’s snowpack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While today’s survey results show our snowpack is better off than it was just last month, they still underscore the need for widespread, wise use of our water supplies,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth in a statement. “California’s climate continues to show extreme unpredictability, and February’s record dryness is a clear example of the extremes associated with climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/CA_DWR/status/1245483339470929920\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water from melting Sierra snowpack accounts for about 30 percent of California’s annual water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orrock says the majority of that snowpack accumulates from December through the end of March.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“April 1st is kind of our benchmark. Typically that’s when we see the deepest snowpack with the most water,” says Orrock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past decade, Sierra snowpack totals have varied significantly from year to year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the past 10 years, we’ve seen three of our smallest snowpacks on record, but we’ve also seen three of our largest snowpacks on record,” said Sean de Guzman, DWR’s chief of Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecast Section, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While 2020 will go down as a dry year, Orrock says runoff from last year’s snowpack, which was was well above average, has left the state’s major reservoirs near — or above — average for this time of year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water officials say climate change has played a role in the variability observed in California’s snowpack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While today’s survey results show our snowpack is better off than it was just last month, they still underscore the need for widespread, wise use of our water supplies,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth in a statement. “California’s climate continues to show extreme unpredictability, and February’s record dryness is a clear example of the extremes associated with climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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