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"title": "U.S. Wants to Dredge San Francisco Bay to Aid Oil Shipping",
"headTitle": "U.S. Wants to Dredge San Francisco Bay to Aid Oil Shipping | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The Trump administration’s commitment to fossil fuels is no secret. Federal energy officials recently went so far as to \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-authorizes-additional-lng-exports-freeport-lng\">call\u003c/a> natural gas “molecules of U.S. freedom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That dedication to nonrenewable energy is now reaching into the San Francisco Bay itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to dredge 13 miles of the bay in order to deepen a channel for ships carrying imported crude oil to four Bay Area refineries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first of two proposed segments cuts across the southern third of San Pablo Bay, beginning northwest of Richmond and extending to the Carquinez Strait. The second runs from Martinez to Avon, under the Benicia Martinez Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1944065 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-160x69.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-768x333.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-1020x442.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-1200x520.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture.png 1498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which drafted the \u003ca href=\"https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p16021coll7/id/11171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plan\u003c/a> in April, said the intention is to lower the cost of crude oil — most of which is imported from foreign countries — by making it cheaper to ship to the Phillips 66, Valero, Shell and Marathon refineries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Port of Stockton is named as a nonfederal sponsor of the Corps’ plan and is partnering with Contra Costa County, where three of the refineries are located, to prepare an environmental impact report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists, however, are aggressively pushing back, saying the project will worsen air pollution around the refineries and increase the number of ships in the bay that are heavily loaded with oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and several other groups sent a \u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/Comments_of_Environmental_Groups_on_the_DEIS_for_the_San_Francisco_Bay.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">joint\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/VakxC829m0u6qv17T1nmfu?domain=s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\">letter\u003c/a> on Monday to the federal government arguing the project would increase the risk of a spill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a terrible proposal on so many levels,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s an affront to communities in the Bay Area who already have to suffer from the pollution from our many oil refineries. The dredging project will end up increasing the amount of oil that is processed at those refineries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Multiple Trips Needed\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Army Corps of Engineers says the current shipping channel is inefficient because it’s shallow depth limits the amount of oil that ships can carry into the Carquinez Strait. Instead, they have to “light-load” their cargo, wait until high tide, and make multiple trips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan calls for deepening channels in San Pablo Bay’s Pinole Shoal and east of the strait at Bulls Head Reach from 35 to 38 feet, so that the ships can travel with a larger load, reducing the cost, number of ships and drop-offs. The Corps estimates that the dredge will save $10 million annually and increase the oil-carrying capacity of ships from 68% to 72%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By decreasing the cost of bringing that commodity into those facilities, then that should translate into a lower cost to the consumer,” said Pamela Castens, who is managing the project for the Corps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castens said the crude is shipped in to meet product demand, and the Corps estimates the modification won’t increase the amount of oil that the refineries process. “That volume is assumed to hold steady in the future because of the commodity forecast projections,” Castens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greg Karras, a staff scientist with the environmental group Communities for a Better Environment, disagrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The project would very likely enable full, or at least increased use of the refineries’ currently unused capacity,” he wrote in a separate letter to the Corps. Karras \u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/Expert_Report_of_G_Karras_on_SF_Bay_to_Stockton_Navigational_Improvement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimated\u003c/a> the extra oil brought in could release between 1.8 and 7.2 million additional tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler Earl, an attorney for the group, said the projected increase “at a time when we should be moving away from fossil fuel production” is “unacceptable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists also expressed concern that the Corps’ office in North Carolina is managing the project, and that it filed environmental documents in Jacksonville, Florida rather than California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t make sense for an agency on the other end of the country to be in charge of a project in San Francisco,” Kretzmann said. “I can only assume it was to hide the fact that they’re trying to push forward this terrible project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Corps’ Castens said its experts are scattered around the country and will shift projects around to make them easier to manage. The agency moved this particular plan out of San Francisco in late 2016. It held a public meeting about the project in Martinez on June 11, and the public affairs office \u003ca href=\"https://www.spn.usace.army.mil/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> has listed the plan on its web site, Castens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, Castens’ team must file an amended plan in October. They hope to begin construction by 2023, but Contra Costa County and the Port of Stockton still need to file environmental impact reports with the state of California, which environmentalists will likely challenge. Also, Congress has yet to appropriate money for the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stockton Wants Jobs\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintaining shipping lanes across the San Francisco Bay, a process that involves clearing millions of cubic yards of mud, sand and silt every year. For years, the Corps looked to improve shipping channels all the way from San Francisco to the Port of Stockton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in 2016, the Corps decided that deepening the channel between Avon and the Port of Stockton would be too expensive and could increase the salinity of the Delta. Instead, the agency limited the scope of the project to the 13-mile stretch ending at Avon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Port is still in this project to eventually get to Stockton,” said Jeffrey Wingfield, director of environmental and public affairs for the Port of Stockton. “We’ll do a separate study at some point. We are about creating jobs in Stockton. This stretch has to get dug for it to get to Stockton in the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally incorrectly cited that the four refineries are located in Contra Costa County. The Valero refinery is located in Solano County.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Trump administration’s commitment to fossil fuels is no secret. Federal energy officials recently went so far as to \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-authorizes-additional-lng-exports-freeport-lng\">call\u003c/a> natural gas “molecules of U.S. freedom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That dedication to nonrenewable energy is now reaching into the San Francisco Bay itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to dredge 13 miles of the bay in order to deepen a channel for ships carrying imported crude oil to four Bay Area refineries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first of two proposed segments cuts across the southern third of San Pablo Bay, beginning northwest of Richmond and extending to the Carquinez Strait. The second runs from Martinez to Avon, under the Benicia Martinez Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1944065 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-800x347.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-160x69.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-768x333.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-1020x442.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture-1200x520.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Capture.png 1498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which drafted the \u003ca href=\"https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p16021coll7/id/11171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plan\u003c/a> in April, said the intention is to lower the cost of crude oil — most of which is imported from foreign countries — by making it cheaper to ship to the Phillips 66, Valero, Shell and Marathon refineries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Port of Stockton is named as a nonfederal sponsor of the Corps’ plan and is partnering with Contra Costa County, where three of the refineries are located, to prepare an environmental impact report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists, however, are aggressively pushing back, saying the project will worsen air pollution around the refineries and increase the number of ships in the bay that are heavily loaded with oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and several other groups sent a \u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/Comments_of_Environmental_Groups_on_the_DEIS_for_the_San_Francisco_Bay.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">joint\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/VakxC829m0u6qv17T1nmfu?domain=s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\">letter\u003c/a> on Monday to the federal government arguing the project would increase the risk of a spill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a terrible proposal on so many levels,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s an affront to communities in the Bay Area who already have to suffer from the pollution from our many oil refineries. The dredging project will end up increasing the amount of oil that is processed at those refineries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Multiple Trips Needed\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Army Corps of Engineers says the current shipping channel is inefficient because it’s shallow depth limits the amount of oil that ships can carry into the Carquinez Strait. Instead, they have to “light-load” their cargo, wait until high tide, and make multiple trips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan calls for deepening channels in San Pablo Bay’s Pinole Shoal and east of the strait at Bulls Head Reach from 35 to 38 feet, so that the ships can travel with a larger load, reducing the cost, number of ships and drop-offs. The Corps estimates that the dredge will save $10 million annually and increase the oil-carrying capacity of ships from 68% to 72%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By decreasing the cost of bringing that commodity into those facilities, then that should translate into a lower cost to the consumer,” said Pamela Castens, who is managing the project for the Corps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castens said the crude is shipped in to meet product demand, and the Corps estimates the modification won’t increase the amount of oil that the refineries process. “That volume is assumed to hold steady in the future because of the commodity forecast projections,” Castens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greg Karras, a staff scientist with the environmental group Communities for a Better Environment, disagrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The project would very likely enable full, or at least increased use of the refineries’ currently unused capacity,” he wrote in a separate letter to the Corps. Karras \u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/Expert_Report_of_G_Karras_on_SF_Bay_to_Stockton_Navigational_Improvement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimated\u003c/a> the extra oil brought in could release between 1.8 and 7.2 million additional tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler Earl, an attorney for the group, said the projected increase “at a time when we should be moving away from fossil fuel production” is “unacceptable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists also expressed concern that the Corps’ office in North Carolina is managing the project, and that it filed environmental documents in Jacksonville, Florida rather than California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t make sense for an agency on the other end of the country to be in charge of a project in San Francisco,” Kretzmann said. “I can only assume it was to hide the fact that they’re trying to push forward this terrible project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Corps’ Castens said its experts are scattered around the country and will shift projects around to make them easier to manage. The agency moved this particular plan out of San Francisco in late 2016. It held a public meeting about the project in Martinez on June 11, and the public affairs office \u003ca href=\"https://www.spn.usace.army.mil/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> has listed the plan on its web site, Castens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, Castens’ team must file an amended plan in October. They hope to begin construction by 2023, but Contra Costa County and the Port of Stockton still need to file environmental impact reports with the state of California, which environmentalists will likely challenge. Also, Congress has yet to appropriate money for the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stockton Wants Jobs\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintaining shipping lanes across the San Francisco Bay, a process that involves clearing millions of cubic yards of mud, sand and silt every year. For years, the Corps looked to improve shipping channels all the way from San Francisco to the Port of Stockton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in 2016, the Corps decided that deepening the channel between Avon and the Port of Stockton would be too expensive and could increase the salinity of the Delta. Instead, the agency limited the scope of the project to the 13-mile stretch ending at Avon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Port is still in this project to eventually get to Stockton,” said Jeffrey Wingfield, director of environmental and public affairs for the Port of Stockton. “We’ll do a separate study at some point. We are about creating jobs in Stockton. This stretch has to get dug for it to get to Stockton in the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally incorrectly cited that the four refineries are located in Contra Costa County. The Valero refinery is located in Solano County.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Argument for Giving California's Struggling Mountain Lions Endangered Species Protection",
"headTitle": "The Argument for Giving California’s Struggling Mountain Lions Endangered Species Protection | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Two environmental groups are pushing state wildlife officials to grant new protections to mountain lions between Santa Cruz and the Mexico border under the California Endangered Species Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A\u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/CESA_petition_-_Southern_California_Central_Coast_Mountain_Lions.pdf\"> petition \u003c/a> to the California Fish and Game Commission filed Tuesday recommends that the state consider a group of six subpopulations of mountain lions (\u003cem>puma concolo\u003c/em>r) as a single “evolutionarily significant unit.” The Center for Biological Diversity and the nonprofit Mountain Lion Foundation argue that the resulting unit should be designated as “threatened or endangered” under state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These populations are struggling, and they’re struggling because they’re isolated,” said Tiffany Yap, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the petition. “Ultimately, if we are able to increase connectivity, each area of mountain lions will be able to kind of mix with the other populations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the groups’ legal and scientific logic is accepted, a designation could add sweeping protections to patches of puma territory covering as much as a third of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kirsten McIntyre, a spokeswoman with the Department of Fish and Game, said that the commission and department had not yet seen the petition and had no comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pumas once dominated mountain ranges along the Central Coast and in the southern end of the state. But according to a \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1868\">study published in March\u003c/a>, researchers, relying on observations, DNA and modeling data, predict that at least some populations could disappear entirely within a half century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That study crystallized the concept of an “extinction vortex” in the debate over mountain lion viability. The vortex is created by two interlocking conditions: a well-documented decline in genetic diversity in some subpopulations, and the dearth of mountain lions in the mating pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Male mountain lions require broad swaths of territory to roam. Their home ranges can be greater than 200 miles, and they don’t like to share with other males. Over the course of the past century, the greatest threats they’ve faced have been from humans’ steady encroachment into the wildland-urban interface. That requires roads that dice up open space, and the cars that drive on those roads hit cougars trying to cross.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applied poisons like rodenticide and insecticide are also sickening mountain lions, building up in them as they eat smaller prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It makes it much harder for them to stay alive, and then also reproduce,” said Yap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human development can also lead to fire, which diminishes the utility of open space for the animals. Development also makes it easier for the lions to get lost or trapped, ending up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1933826/mountain-lion-roaming-pleasanton-business-lot-sedated-captured\">Pleasanton parking lots\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/mountain-lion-spotted-in-saratoga-neighborhood/1834363168\">Saratoga backyards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recommendations of wildlife officials and the ultimate decision are meant to be grounded in science. But Yap acknowledges that the breadth of potential change means that developers and property owners who might be affected may oppose the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, state officials grant mountain lions some consideration as a “specially protected species,” which limits how they can be hunted. But that designation doesn’t require actions to protect them or their habitat. Yap says if the petition is approved, things would change. “There would have to be resources put into looking at connectivity,” she said. “Do we build a wildlife crossing here? Should we avoid that area and build somewhere else?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designating six isolated groups of mountain lions as a single threatened unit would likely limit new construction and change how state agencies, like Caltrans, plan and build infrastructure. Complicating matters is the fact that mountain lions living elsewhere, like in the Sierra Nevadas and the far northern part of the state, don’t appear to be in as much trouble as their more southern counterparts — though without an accurate statewide population count, it’s hard to tell. While California \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/conservation/mammals/mountain-lion/faq\">estimates\u003c/a> a “stable” population of 4,000-6,000 mountain lions, an official count hasn’t been conducted in decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawyers for the environmental groups say the Fish and Game Commission must initially ask scientists and staffers at the Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine whether the petition is viable, and then whether a designation may be warranted. That preliminary determination is expected by the end of the year; a final decision could follow a year after that.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Two environmental groups are pushing state wildlife officials to grant new protections to mountain lions between Santa Cruz and the Mexico border under the California Endangered Species Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A\u003ca href=\"https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3-wagtail.biolgicaldiversity.org/documents/CESA_petition_-_Southern_California_Central_Coast_Mountain_Lions.pdf\"> petition \u003c/a> to the California Fish and Game Commission filed Tuesday recommends that the state consider a group of six subpopulations of mountain lions (\u003cem>puma concolo\u003c/em>r) as a single “evolutionarily significant unit.” The Center for Biological Diversity and the nonprofit Mountain Lion Foundation argue that the resulting unit should be designated as “threatened or endangered” under state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These populations are struggling, and they’re struggling because they’re isolated,” said Tiffany Yap, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the petition. “Ultimately, if we are able to increase connectivity, each area of mountain lions will be able to kind of mix with the other populations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the groups’ legal and scientific logic is accepted, a designation could add sweeping protections to patches of puma territory covering as much as a third of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kirsten McIntyre, a spokeswoman with the Department of Fish and Game, said that the commission and department had not yet seen the petition and had no comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pumas once dominated mountain ranges along the Central Coast and in the southern end of the state. But according to a \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1868\">study published in March\u003c/a>, researchers, relying on observations, DNA and modeling data, predict that at least some populations could disappear entirely within a half century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That study crystallized the concept of an “extinction vortex” in the debate over mountain lion viability. The vortex is created by two interlocking conditions: a well-documented decline in genetic diversity in some subpopulations, and the dearth of mountain lions in the mating pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Male mountain lions require broad swaths of territory to roam. Their home ranges can be greater than 200 miles, and they don’t like to share with other males. Over the course of the past century, the greatest threats they’ve faced have been from humans’ steady encroachment into the wildland-urban interface. That requires roads that dice up open space, and the cars that drive on those roads hit cougars trying to cross.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applied poisons like rodenticide and insecticide are also sickening mountain lions, building up in them as they eat smaller prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It makes it much harder for them to stay alive, and then also reproduce,” said Yap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human development can also lead to fire, which diminishes the utility of open space for the animals. Development also makes it easier for the lions to get lost or trapped, ending up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1933826/mountain-lion-roaming-pleasanton-business-lot-sedated-captured\">Pleasanton parking lots\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/mountain-lion-spotted-in-saratoga-neighborhood/1834363168\">Saratoga backyards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recommendations of wildlife officials and the ultimate decision are meant to be grounded in science. But Yap acknowledges that the breadth of potential change means that developers and property owners who might be affected may oppose the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, state officials grant mountain lions some consideration as a “specially protected species,” which limits how they can be hunted. But that designation doesn’t require actions to protect them or their habitat. Yap says if the petition is approved, things would change. “There would have to be resources put into looking at connectivity,” she said. “Do we build a wildlife crossing here? Should we avoid that area and build somewhere else?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designating six isolated groups of mountain lions as a single threatened unit would likely limit new construction and change how state agencies, like Caltrans, plan and build infrastructure. Complicating matters is the fact that mountain lions living elsewhere, like in the Sierra Nevadas and the far northern part of the state, don’t appear to be in as much trouble as their more southern counterparts — though without an accurate statewide population count, it’s hard to tell. While California \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/conservation/mammals/mountain-lion/faq\">estimates\u003c/a> a “stable” population of 4,000-6,000 mountain lions, an official count hasn’t been conducted in decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawyers for the environmental groups say the Fish and Game Commission must initially ask scientists and staffers at the Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine whether the petition is viable, and then whether a designation may be warranted. That preliminary determination is expected by the end of the year; a final decision could follow a year after that.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Best Health and Science Books to Dip Into This Summer",
"headTitle": "The Best Health and Science Books to Dip Into This Summer | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he first day of summer has arrived, and so has STAT’s annual book list of great reads in health, science, and medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read on for recommendations from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and CDC Director Robert Redfield. Plus, STAT readers from Boston to Ireland to Australia share their picks, in addition to our staff. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Notable Figures\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805071806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0805071806&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7bf123ab6184f5cac33d58beddbb56f6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Claudia Dreifus\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis is an awesome collection of 38 interviews, published originally in the Science Times section of the New York Times, that captures the wonder and excitement of scientific discovery. As an outstanding journalist and a relative outsider to science, Dreifus elicits from her subjects the passion, frustration, inspiration and, ultimately, the joy of doing science. Her writing reminds me of the work of John McPhee: deep and expansive with a sense of fun. A great read!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jennifer Doudna, professor and HHMI Investigator, UC Berkeley; director, Innovative Genomics Institute of UC Berkeley/UCSF/Gladstone Institutes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006122796X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006122796X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7cfcc6b0801cc1e4c567331d7f105411\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul A. Offit\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nPhysicians, parents, and public health professionals seeking credible, timely information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines will find those answers in Dr. Offit’s “Vaccinated.” He writes a compelling narrative, sharing the underlying science and historical context behind the vaccine regimen recommended today. This fact-based retrospective dispels myths and underscores the importance of immunization for children and adults alike. Readers will have a better understanding of the science-based reasoning to embrace vaccination for themselves, their families, and their communities.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520229134/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520229134&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f6872536969b6885c29cba642778c5ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul Farmer\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book highlights so well the very inception of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute itself and our mission to develop treatments and preventive agents for diseases burdening the world’s poorest people. Tenderly, Farmer tells the stories of those who suffer, offering their complex circumstances in the face of overwhelming data. The Partners in Health co-founder challenges those determined to care for the most vulnerable to challenge the status quo. Although written 20 years ago, the stories ring truer than ever. Inequities in health have only become magnified and are now manifest in our own backyard. Although sobering, it is also inspiring and may make the reader leap to other resources such as “The Age of Living Machines” by Susan Hockfield, who posits that convergence across scientific disciplines led to the current technological capabilities. Can these not be leveraged with know-how and fortitude to meaningfully address inequities in health?\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Penny Heaton, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1845291557/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1845291557&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=424b9e11f98c4fb76b3a018ce157005a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“A Brief History of Medicine: from Hippocrates to Gene Therapy”\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cem>By Paul Strathern\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Among the many histories of medicine, Paul Strathern’s narrative stands out for its lively prose and colorful portraits of figures who broke with dogma and proved new paradigms. Even the expert reader will find much that is novel and nuanced, not only in stories about prominent characters like Galen and Harvey, but less well known individuals like the Venerable Bede, an English monk who revived Greek and Roman knowledge during the Dark Ages, and Al-Razi, an Islamic scholar who challenged Aristotle’s prevailing notions with experimental data and showed that pediatric disorders need not be viewed as untreatable and hopeless. Each chapter offers a rich tableau depicting advances in medical thinking based on astute observation and rigorous induction. Strathern brilliantly succeeds in both educating and entertaining his reader, a perfect blend for a summer treat.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Jerome Groopman, New Yorker staff writer and author; Recanati Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345804570/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345804570&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=137ae7f66e5eee834172c881aa8f1b7a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Prum\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWhether you agree with Prum or not, his case for renewed attention to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection — that considerations of beauty, and not just functional adaptation, shape evolution — is eye-opening. The book also reminds us that politics (in this case, 19th-century disapproval of Darwin’s views on female mate choice) can influence what we are taught about science. Even if you are skeptical, Prum will make you think twice about the natural world, and will definitely change how you look at ducks.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Ron Klain, President Obama’s Ebola czar during the West African outbreak\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062338781/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062338781&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=a08377a6dbaebf506ffcb6efb996c457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Katherine Eban\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>In her fierce and fearless book, “Bottle of Lies,” the investigative journalist Katherine Eban takes us on a journey through the loosely regulated and often corrupt manufacture of generic drugs. Weaving together the story of a terrified but determined whistleblower from India, shady drug producers from China, and a notably timid FDA, Eban’s compelling book should serve as cautionary tale and a wake-up call for consumers, manufacturers, and physicians — “should” being the operative word.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Deborah Blum, author of “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Readers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735224153/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0735224153&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=e88ba9aa97ec231e13dcca5e20cbc7bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Michael Pollan\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith cannabis medicine now getting the attention it deserves, Michael Pollan has done a tremendous job at digging into the history of psychedelic use, both recreationally and in therapy, together with his own observations as a new psychedelic experimenter at the age of 60. All in all, a comprehensive history of the topic, together with interviews from key psychedelic researchers, and a call for serious researchers to think twice about hasty judgments surrounding this interesting compound.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jon Calder, Belfast, Northern Ireland\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006289627X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006289627X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ea6fc765acd3cc5ad1ccd85342cb04ae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Kris Newby\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Bitten” is a riveting narrative that digs into the origins of the Lyme disease epidemic. It connects many dots with compelling evidence and page-turning storytelling that point to the likelihood that a bio-weaponized tick program gone awry could have contributed to the more virulent forms of tick-borne illnesses that have been wreaking havoc on unwitting people for the past five decades. Doctors are not well-trained on tick-borne illness, diagnostics are inadequate, and there are no career tracks in the field other than a few courageous pioneers. Biotech is largely on the sidelines. Yet millions of people are being disabled. Perhaps this book will help stir some action. After all, we all are just one bite away from a nightmare illness.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Nancy Dougherty, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544114515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0544114515&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4f6ff933051d07a5d66bb8d7906db1a2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gregory Berns\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nFabulous book for anyone interested in the realities of research. Getting MRI data on dogs to confirm the similarities in where dogs and human brains respond to stimuli sounds like a good idea. Getting permission to get the dogs into the places where there are MRIs, getting the dogs used to the MRI, selecting real-life animals, and the implications for the experimental conclusions is very different from what usually shows up in methods and results.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Joanna Haas, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316418080/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316418080&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ab87c536d62f16a84be8997dbe897c72\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Riveting account of a scientist trying to save her husband through a combination of sheer will, determination, and cutting-edge science. It’s an amazing blend of mystery, thriller, and microbiology.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Mallory Johnson, Berkeley, Calif.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671510576/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0671510576&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=cb77504e40e1a9467241ae7547ca194a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Barry Werth\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Billion Dollar Molecule” is a thrilling story about the development of a now powerful pharmaceutical company, its revolutionary approach in structure-based drug development, and how closely it came to failing along the way. At a time when people doubt the justifications of pricing for pharmaceutical drugs, peeking at the risks involved in development and the arduous journeys of the scientists involved through this story could add nuance to the conversation.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Kishel, Buffalo, N.Y.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190916834/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0190916834&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4c465b27e88b48c0879f78555b17f6ef\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sandro Galea\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Well” moves beyond talk of health disparities as simply numbers and statistics, dissecting the factors that influence health and well-being. This is an excellent read for health professionals or anyone interested in better understanding all the variables that impact our decisions and behaviors, like power, politics, and luck.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jamie Klufts, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312430000/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312430000&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=35421e550159f565498198501246b2c1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Atul Gawande\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nYears after reading it, the message and themes of this book still resonate with me. One for everyone involved in health.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eliza Metcalfe, Melbourne, Australia \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/154164414X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=154164414X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=9df8ac5f5bb7af175e206e2ce490fcfb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Harris\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Rigor Mortis” delves into data reproducibility and scientific rigor in biomedical research. Using deft anecdotes and commentary, Harris explores how sociocultural forces and perverse incentives in funding mechanisms can conspire to create a dirge of confidence in the research process. Anyone interested in learning about how flawed science undermines medicine should pick up this book for a relatively quick and incisive read.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kyle Penrod, Providence, R.I.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316051632/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316051632&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=102a5090c27ba3b32e74ee3014fa30fc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sam Kean\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book is an entertaining and amazing look at the history of the periodic table and the discovery of the elements. Kean writes in a narrative fashion that gripped me from the very first page. This book is a must for lovers of science, history, and science history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Katie Reeves, Augusta, Ga.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Reporters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608192075/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608192075&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7aa079684701270fecebca869fe0c79e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Nick Reding\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe 2016 election sparked a national obsession with reporting from “flyover country” — a hasty attempt from the national media to remember the forgotten swathes of land between the coasts. But some of the resulting coverage was so full of caricatures it seemed like just another version of flying over. Stumbling across “Methland” in the public library provided a strong antidote to those datelines without depth. Nick Reding’s portraits of small-town Iowans who are cooking, using, or working against meth are so deeply reported that you feel as if you’ve met these people in the flesh. The details are striking — kids mixing “crank” in soda bottles as they tootle around on their bikes, a dealer investing in car selling and horse racing as fronts for her drug empire — but the book also has an impressive sweep: It chronicles rural economies overtaken by agricultural behemoths, towns left behind by everyone with the means to leave, and public health and existential crises ensnaring the people who remain.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Boodman, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568585810/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1568585810&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=c7392af7e5427afc8fbd10e2f028fc99\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Abby Norman\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAny woman whose pain has been dismissed as being “part of what it means to be a woman” will highly relate to this book. “Ask Me About My Uterus” is the story of Abby Norman, whose long and frustrating journey of finding out what was causing her excruciating pain, unexplainable weight loss, and a host of other symptoms meant she had to drop out of college her freshman year. Norman describes how relationships and hobbies all fell by the wayside as the constant pain kept her at home. Only after she got a job at a hospital and spent hours educating herself did Norman finally get a diagnosis of endometriosis. The book weaves together Norman’s own story as well as research and evidence to indicate how medicine continues to ignore women’s pain. I learned a lot of things, but how to be more assertive when I visit with a physician is at the top of the list!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Shraddha Chakradhar, reporter and Morning Rounds writer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP6MSJG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07DP6MSJG&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=169853d1a860b739e89a5805d07eee17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Christie Aschwanden\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nLike many who live life with a daily dose of sweat, I’m always on the lookout for the best ways to recover from exercise and get myself back out the door. In her new book, science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden deftly unravels the complex web of science, pseudoscience, and downright bogus claims in the world of exercise recovery. She takes the reader into infrared saunas, ice baths, and float spas and tests techniques I’d never heard of (meditation headbands are a thing?) meant to help athletes bounce back from their hard efforts.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Brittany Flaherty, news intern\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812997417/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812997417&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=3df4e39b8793e8725667e7c8b16161f3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Lake Success”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gary Shteyngart\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Lake Success” is the story of Barry Cohen, a superlatively successful hedge fund manager whose enviable Manhattan life comes hideously unglued after he makes an ill-advised bet on what is clearly a stand-in for Valeant Pharmaceuticals. What ensues is a never sanguine, always empathetic, reliably funny portrait of a fabulously wealthy person who seems to have forgotten the concept of failure. It’s also a fascinating character study for those of us biotech schnooks who looked at alleged insider traders like Mathew Martoma and wondered how on earth they thought they’d get away with it all. Plus there’s fancy watches, generational angst, and a meditation on the creeping financialization of everything that promises to bring about a new Gilded Age. You know, beach stuff.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Damian Garde, national biotech reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524732710/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1524732710&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f0f49695f97eea1f87af0be2c561a5fe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Dani Shapiro\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWherever she speaks during her book tour for “Inheritance,” memoirist Dani Shapiro is approached by people who, like her, discovered through a DNA spit test that their biological father is not who they thought he was, and that their family history is a lot more twisted than they realized. Indeed, when I heard her in Boston, a man stood up during the Q&A and announced he’d learned he was the product of a sperm donor who turned out to be a fertility doctor who’d fathered dozens of children. Shapiro’s book is a very personal story, but clearly one that resonates broadly in our DNA-obsessed age.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Gideon Gil, managing editor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501168681/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1501168681&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=22c75b403593e8a3a77e635029a3d63f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal West”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By David McCullough\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nA great way to gain perspective on the impact of modern medicine is to consider life before it arrived. McCullough’s account of the pioneers who settled America’s Northwest Territory — an area that includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — offers a window into the ruggedness required of both doctors and patients who stared down deadly illnesses in the unbroken wilderness with few defenses. Episodic disease outbreaks swept across the frontier like wildfire, often decimating settlements and taking the lives of multiple children in the same family. As a father living in present-day Ohio, it is hard to imagine the panic this must have instilled, and the resolve required to push forward despite the heart-wrenching costs. But this book has given me fresh insight and a few reasons to reconsider my own grievances in the relative utopia we’ve carved out of the Wild West.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Casey Ross, national technology correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812982525/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812982525&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ca6e6c07db5238906a40e5ea31a25d71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Luke Dittrich\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe book weaves the neuroscience legend of Henry Molaison with author Luke Dittrich’s own family dramas. After Dittrich’s grandfather operated on Molaison’s brain in an effort to treat his debilitating epilepsy, he wasn’t able to form any short-term memories. For decades after the surgery, researchers worked with Molaison to better understand how human memory works. Patient H.M.’s story is interesting enough. But when the story is mentioned, the surgeon is usually a minor player. This time, Dittrich brings his grandfather to life — and uses his family’s own history to explore some of the darker chapters in neuroscience history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kate Sheridan, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525552960/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0525552960&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=0abcda54b107dd77066adae0db4d637f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Darius The Great is Not Okay”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Adib Khorram\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAdib Khorram’s debut novel is about many things: identity, immigration, family, friendship. It’s also about living with clinical depression as a teen, and being a teen with a parent who has depression. Khorram is able to give readers a window into living with mental illness without making it the sole focus of the characters or their stories. And while it’s technically a young adult book, I’d recommend it to adults of all ages.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Megan Thielking, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he first day of summer has arrived, and so has STAT’s annual book list of great reads in health, science, and medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read on for recommendations from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and CDC Director Robert Redfield. Plus, STAT readers from Boston to Ireland to Australia share their picks, in addition to our staff. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Notable Figures\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805071806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0805071806&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7bf123ab6184f5cac33d58beddbb56f6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Claudia Dreifus\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis is an awesome collection of 38 interviews, published originally in the Science Times section of the New York Times, that captures the wonder and excitement of scientific discovery. As an outstanding journalist and a relative outsider to science, Dreifus elicits from her subjects the passion, frustration, inspiration and, ultimately, the joy of doing science. Her writing reminds me of the work of John McPhee: deep and expansive with a sense of fun. A great read!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jennifer Doudna, professor and HHMI Investigator, UC Berkeley; director, Innovative Genomics Institute of UC Berkeley/UCSF/Gladstone Institutes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006122796X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006122796X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7cfcc6b0801cc1e4c567331d7f105411\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul A. Offit\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nPhysicians, parents, and public health professionals seeking credible, timely information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines will find those answers in Dr. Offit’s “Vaccinated.” He writes a compelling narrative, sharing the underlying science and historical context behind the vaccine regimen recommended today. This fact-based retrospective dispels myths and underscores the importance of immunization for children and adults alike. Readers will have a better understanding of the science-based reasoning to embrace vaccination for themselves, their families, and their communities.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520229134/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520229134&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f6872536969b6885c29cba642778c5ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul Farmer\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book highlights so well the very inception of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute itself and our mission to develop treatments and preventive agents for diseases burdening the world’s poorest people. Tenderly, Farmer tells the stories of those who suffer, offering their complex circumstances in the face of overwhelming data. The Partners in Health co-founder challenges those determined to care for the most vulnerable to challenge the status quo. Although written 20 years ago, the stories ring truer than ever. Inequities in health have only become magnified and are now manifest in our own backyard. Although sobering, it is also inspiring and may make the reader leap to other resources such as “The Age of Living Machines” by Susan Hockfield, who posits that convergence across scientific disciplines led to the current technological capabilities. Can these not be leveraged with know-how and fortitude to meaningfully address inequities in health?\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Penny Heaton, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1845291557/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1845291557&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=424b9e11f98c4fb76b3a018ce157005a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“A Brief History of Medicine: from Hippocrates to Gene Therapy”\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cem>By Paul Strathern\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Among the many histories of medicine, Paul Strathern’s narrative stands out for its lively prose and colorful portraits of figures who broke with dogma and proved new paradigms. Even the expert reader will find much that is novel and nuanced, not only in stories about prominent characters like Galen and Harvey, but less well known individuals like the Venerable Bede, an English monk who revived Greek and Roman knowledge during the Dark Ages, and Al-Razi, an Islamic scholar who challenged Aristotle’s prevailing notions with experimental data and showed that pediatric disorders need not be viewed as untreatable and hopeless. Each chapter offers a rich tableau depicting advances in medical thinking based on astute observation and rigorous induction. Strathern brilliantly succeeds in both educating and entertaining his reader, a perfect blend for a summer treat.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Jerome Groopman, New Yorker staff writer and author; Recanati Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345804570/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345804570&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=137ae7f66e5eee834172c881aa8f1b7a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Prum\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWhether you agree with Prum or not, his case for renewed attention to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection — that considerations of beauty, and not just functional adaptation, shape evolution — is eye-opening. The book also reminds us that politics (in this case, 19th-century disapproval of Darwin’s views on female mate choice) can influence what we are taught about science. Even if you are skeptical, Prum will make you think twice about the natural world, and will definitely change how you look at ducks.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Ron Klain, President Obama’s Ebola czar during the West African outbreak\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062338781/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062338781&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=a08377a6dbaebf506ffcb6efb996c457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Katherine Eban\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>In her fierce and fearless book, “Bottle of Lies,” the investigative journalist Katherine Eban takes us on a journey through the loosely regulated and often corrupt manufacture of generic drugs. Weaving together the story of a terrified but determined whistleblower from India, shady drug producers from China, and a notably timid FDA, Eban’s compelling book should serve as cautionary tale and a wake-up call for consumers, manufacturers, and physicians — “should” being the operative word.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Deborah Blum, author of “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Readers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735224153/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0735224153&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=e88ba9aa97ec231e13dcca5e20cbc7bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Michael Pollan\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith cannabis medicine now getting the attention it deserves, Michael Pollan has done a tremendous job at digging into the history of psychedelic use, both recreationally and in therapy, together with his own observations as a new psychedelic experimenter at the age of 60. All in all, a comprehensive history of the topic, together with interviews from key psychedelic researchers, and a call for serious researchers to think twice about hasty judgments surrounding this interesting compound.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jon Calder, Belfast, Northern Ireland\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006289627X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006289627X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ea6fc765acd3cc5ad1ccd85342cb04ae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Kris Newby\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Bitten” is a riveting narrative that digs into the origins of the Lyme disease epidemic. It connects many dots with compelling evidence and page-turning storytelling that point to the likelihood that a bio-weaponized tick program gone awry could have contributed to the more virulent forms of tick-borne illnesses that have been wreaking havoc on unwitting people for the past five decades. Doctors are not well-trained on tick-borne illness, diagnostics are inadequate, and there are no career tracks in the field other than a few courageous pioneers. Biotech is largely on the sidelines. Yet millions of people are being disabled. Perhaps this book will help stir some action. After all, we all are just one bite away from a nightmare illness.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Nancy Dougherty, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544114515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0544114515&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4f6ff933051d07a5d66bb8d7906db1a2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gregory Berns\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nFabulous book for anyone interested in the realities of research. Getting MRI data on dogs to confirm the similarities in where dogs and human brains respond to stimuli sounds like a good idea. Getting permission to get the dogs into the places where there are MRIs, getting the dogs used to the MRI, selecting real-life animals, and the implications for the experimental conclusions is very different from what usually shows up in methods and results.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Joanna Haas, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316418080/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316418080&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ab87c536d62f16a84be8997dbe897c72\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Riveting account of a scientist trying to save her husband through a combination of sheer will, determination, and cutting-edge science. It’s an amazing blend of mystery, thriller, and microbiology.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Mallory Johnson, Berkeley, Calif.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671510576/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0671510576&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=cb77504e40e1a9467241ae7547ca194a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Barry Werth\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Billion Dollar Molecule” is a thrilling story about the development of a now powerful pharmaceutical company, its revolutionary approach in structure-based drug development, and how closely it came to failing along the way. At a time when people doubt the justifications of pricing for pharmaceutical drugs, peeking at the risks involved in development and the arduous journeys of the scientists involved through this story could add nuance to the conversation.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Kishel, Buffalo, N.Y.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190916834/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0190916834&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4c465b27e88b48c0879f78555b17f6ef\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sandro Galea\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Well” moves beyond talk of health disparities as simply numbers and statistics, dissecting the factors that influence health and well-being. This is an excellent read for health professionals or anyone interested in better understanding all the variables that impact our decisions and behaviors, like power, politics, and luck.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jamie Klufts, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312430000/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312430000&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=35421e550159f565498198501246b2c1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Atul Gawande\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nYears after reading it, the message and themes of this book still resonate with me. One for everyone involved in health.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eliza Metcalfe, Melbourne, Australia \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/154164414X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=154164414X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=9df8ac5f5bb7af175e206e2ce490fcfb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Harris\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Rigor Mortis” delves into data reproducibility and scientific rigor in biomedical research. Using deft anecdotes and commentary, Harris explores how sociocultural forces and perverse incentives in funding mechanisms can conspire to create a dirge of confidence in the research process. Anyone interested in learning about how flawed science undermines medicine should pick up this book for a relatively quick and incisive read.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kyle Penrod, Providence, R.I.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316051632/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316051632&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=102a5090c27ba3b32e74ee3014fa30fc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sam Kean\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book is an entertaining and amazing look at the history of the periodic table and the discovery of the elements. Kean writes in a narrative fashion that gripped me from the very first page. This book is a must for lovers of science, history, and science history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Katie Reeves, Augusta, Ga.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Reporters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608192075/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608192075&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7aa079684701270fecebca869fe0c79e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Nick Reding\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe 2016 election sparked a national obsession with reporting from “flyover country” — a hasty attempt from the national media to remember the forgotten swathes of land between the coasts. But some of the resulting coverage was so full of caricatures it seemed like just another version of flying over. Stumbling across “Methland” in the public library provided a strong antidote to those datelines without depth. Nick Reding’s portraits of small-town Iowans who are cooking, using, or working against meth are so deeply reported that you feel as if you’ve met these people in the flesh. The details are striking — kids mixing “crank” in soda bottles as they tootle around on their bikes, a dealer investing in car selling and horse racing as fronts for her drug empire — but the book also has an impressive sweep: It chronicles rural economies overtaken by agricultural behemoths, towns left behind by everyone with the means to leave, and public health and existential crises ensnaring the people who remain.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Boodman, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568585810/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1568585810&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=c7392af7e5427afc8fbd10e2f028fc99\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Abby Norman\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAny woman whose pain has been dismissed as being “part of what it means to be a woman” will highly relate to this book. “Ask Me About My Uterus” is the story of Abby Norman, whose long and frustrating journey of finding out what was causing her excruciating pain, unexplainable weight loss, and a host of other symptoms meant she had to drop out of college her freshman year. Norman describes how relationships and hobbies all fell by the wayside as the constant pain kept her at home. Only after she got a job at a hospital and spent hours educating herself did Norman finally get a diagnosis of endometriosis. The book weaves together Norman’s own story as well as research and evidence to indicate how medicine continues to ignore women’s pain. I learned a lot of things, but how to be more assertive when I visit with a physician is at the top of the list!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Shraddha Chakradhar, reporter and Morning Rounds writer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP6MSJG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07DP6MSJG&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=169853d1a860b739e89a5805d07eee17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Christie Aschwanden\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nLike many who live life with a daily dose of sweat, I’m always on the lookout for the best ways to recover from exercise and get myself back out the door. In her new book, science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden deftly unravels the complex web of science, pseudoscience, and downright bogus claims in the world of exercise recovery. She takes the reader into infrared saunas, ice baths, and float spas and tests techniques I’d never heard of (meditation headbands are a thing?) meant to help athletes bounce back from their hard efforts.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Brittany Flaherty, news intern\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812997417/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812997417&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=3df4e39b8793e8725667e7c8b16161f3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Lake Success”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gary Shteyngart\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Lake Success” is the story of Barry Cohen, a superlatively successful hedge fund manager whose enviable Manhattan life comes hideously unglued after he makes an ill-advised bet on what is clearly a stand-in for Valeant Pharmaceuticals. What ensues is a never sanguine, always empathetic, reliably funny portrait of a fabulously wealthy person who seems to have forgotten the concept of failure. It’s also a fascinating character study for those of us biotech schnooks who looked at alleged insider traders like Mathew Martoma and wondered how on earth they thought they’d get away with it all. Plus there’s fancy watches, generational angst, and a meditation on the creeping financialization of everything that promises to bring about a new Gilded Age. You know, beach stuff.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Damian Garde, national biotech reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524732710/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1524732710&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f0f49695f97eea1f87af0be2c561a5fe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Dani Shapiro\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWherever she speaks during her book tour for “Inheritance,” memoirist Dani Shapiro is approached by people who, like her, discovered through a DNA spit test that their biological father is not who they thought he was, and that their family history is a lot more twisted than they realized. Indeed, when I heard her in Boston, a man stood up during the Q&A and announced he’d learned he was the product of a sperm donor who turned out to be a fertility doctor who’d fathered dozens of children. Shapiro’s book is a very personal story, but clearly one that resonates broadly in our DNA-obsessed age.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Gideon Gil, managing editor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501168681/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1501168681&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=22c75b403593e8a3a77e635029a3d63f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal West”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By David McCullough\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nA great way to gain perspective on the impact of modern medicine is to consider life before it arrived. McCullough’s account of the pioneers who settled America’s Northwest Territory — an area that includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — offers a window into the ruggedness required of both doctors and patients who stared down deadly illnesses in the unbroken wilderness with few defenses. Episodic disease outbreaks swept across the frontier like wildfire, often decimating settlements and taking the lives of multiple children in the same family. As a father living in present-day Ohio, it is hard to imagine the panic this must have instilled, and the resolve required to push forward despite the heart-wrenching costs. But this book has given me fresh insight and a few reasons to reconsider my own grievances in the relative utopia we’ve carved out of the Wild West.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Casey Ross, national technology correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812982525/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812982525&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ca6e6c07db5238906a40e5ea31a25d71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Luke Dittrich\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe book weaves the neuroscience legend of Henry Molaison with author Luke Dittrich’s own family dramas. After Dittrich’s grandfather operated on Molaison’s brain in an effort to treat his debilitating epilepsy, he wasn’t able to form any short-term memories. For decades after the surgery, researchers worked with Molaison to better understand how human memory works. Patient H.M.’s story is interesting enough. But when the story is mentioned, the surgeon is usually a minor player. This time, Dittrich brings his grandfather to life — and uses his family’s own history to explore some of the darker chapters in neuroscience history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kate Sheridan, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525552960/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0525552960&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=0abcda54b107dd77066adae0db4d637f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Darius The Great is Not Okay”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Adib Khorram\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAdib Khorram’s debut novel is about many things: identity, immigration, family, friendship. It’s also about living with clinical depression as a teen, and being a teen with a parent who has depression. Khorram is able to give readers a window into living with mental illness without making it the sole focus of the characters or their stories. And while it’s technically a young adult book, I’d recommend it to adults of all ages.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Megan Thielking, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How Tech Aims to Save Big Ag From Climate Change",
"headTitle": "How Tech Aims to Save Big Ag From Climate Change | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>“Reckoning in the Central Valley” is a collaboration between \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a> magazine and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science\u003c/a> examining how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities of California agriculture. \u003c/em>\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\">T\u003c/span>he disrupters of Silicon Valley and its tributaries have trained their GPS on the most fundamental of all human needs — food. In San Francisco earlier this spring, 1,300 venture capitalists, gene scientists, bio-tech visionaries and startup aspirants gathered to probe what they consider to be the nearly digitally virgin terrain of agriculture. It’s a terrain that’s being profoundly transformed by the biggest disrupter of all: climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Howard Yana-Shapiro, Mars Corporation']‘Nothing we knew in the past is a fact today.’[/pullquote]As attendees at the fifth annual World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit trooped from ballroom to ballroom at the Hilton, plotting the future of agriculture, more than half a million acres of Central Valley fields, once filled with tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, and other crops sat empty for another day of nothing happening. They are fields out of commission, fallowed by two symptoms of climate volatility that are challenging the agricultural practices in the Central Valley and across the country — too little water, or water that’s too salty for cultivating crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Reckoning in the Central Valley' link1='https://baynature.org/article/a-time-of-reckoning-in-the-central-valley/,How a Hotter, Drier, Saltier Central Valley Is Upending Ag and Spurring Conservation' link2='https://baynature.org/2019/06/21/photos-climate-change-arrives-in-the-central-valley/,Photo Essay: Climate Change Arrives in the Central Valley' hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/BAY20NATURE20LOGO20SUMMER-no20tag.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone at the summit, who paid almost $2,400 to be there for two days, is well aware that climate change is reshaping agriculture: Temperature, rainfall and the imbalances that lead to extreme weather are all in a kind of atmospheric free-for-all, as greenhouse gases accumulate and volatility accelerates. And that’s just the beginning, as the federal government’s \u003ca href=\"https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/10/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Climate Assessment\u003c/a> told us last year: There is more turbulence to come. Losses will likely \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/114/12/E2285\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">accelerate\u003c/a> as the weather changes; new pests and diseases that were wholly unanticipated a decade ago are heading north across the US, following the heat; extreme destructive events multiply in their number and intensity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the summit convened, the Midwest was reeling from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-floods-exclusive/exclusive-more-than-1-million-acres-of-us-cropland-ravaged-by-floods-idUSKCN1RA2AW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">devastating cyclone \u003c/a>that left hundreds of thousand of acres underwater. A team of scientists of scientists from UC Merced \u003ca href=\"https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/8/3/25/htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sounded the alarm\u003c/a> last year in the peer-reviewed journal\u003ca href=\"https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> agronomy\u003c/a>: “Adaptation,” they said, “was a matter of the utmost urgency.” For farmers in California, they warned, there is accelerating volatility — year after year of never-before-experienced deviations from what had been the norms of heat and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, as Howard Yana-Shapiro, chief Agricultural Officer for the Mars Corporation, put it in an interview at the Hilton, “Nothing we knew in the past is a fact today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943790\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Women work in a cacao beans workshop in Soubre, Ivory Coast, in 2017. \u003ccite>(SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s sobering news for Big Ag, which requires predictability above all. Mainstream food production counts on using the same seeds across vastly different ecological zones, sustained by a set of identical and reproducible chemical inputs. But the rate of disruption in the fundamental elements that foster food growth\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>sun, rain, soil\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>is \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3061\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">outpacing\u003c/a> the ability of even major seed breeders to keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not knowing what’s coming that haunts the attendees at the Ag-Tech Summit. Mars was at the summit because the three main ingredients the company relies on for its candy — peanuts, \u003ca href=\"https://impactforestry.org/2016/09/13/the-ivory-coast-a-case-study-on-climate-change-and-the-chocolate-we-eat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cacao\u003c/a> and mint — are experiencing devastating losses, and Yana-Shapiro is running test plots in Davis to find more resilient ways of growing them. Land O’Lakes was there because \u003ca href=\"http://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-will-affect-dairy-cows-and-milk-production-in-the-uk-new-study-101843\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dairy farmers\u003c/a> face a combination of plunging prices and shifting conditions for the silage they grow for their cows. Driscoll’s was there out of concern for how much water they’ll be able to supply for their berries. And two giant grain traders, Cargill and ADM, were anxious about destabilization of their cereal and grain supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Reckoning in the Central Valley' link1='https://wp.me/p6iq8L-89Dx,Centers of Insurrection: Central Valley Farmers Reckon With Climate Change' link2='https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2019/06/23/the-disrupters-meet-the-disruption-how-tech-aims-to-save-big-ag-from-climate-change,The Disrupters Meet the Disruption: How Tech Aims to Save Big Ag From Climate Change' hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/kqed-logo-black.jpg']\u003cb>How, Then, Will We Grow Food?\u003c/b>\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\">I\u003c/span>nto this whirlpool of disruption come the disrupters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s about a hundred miles from the Hilton in San Francisco to the heart of the Central Valley, around Modesto, but it might as well be a million. There was barely a farmer in sight, among the men and women boasting name tags like Amazon Web Services, Google Launchpad, Rabo AgriFinance (a bank), Lazard (financiers), Microsoft, Immarsat (satellites that provide ag-related imagery), IBM, Wells Fargo, and Evogene (specializing in gene sequencing).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The self-titled Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller, who is CEO of X, the company in charge of Google’s advanced technology division, launched the proceedings with a brief staccato call for a ‘moonshot’ for agriculture. He wasn’t overly specific as to what that would be — it was a roomful of potential competitors and start-ups seeking cash — but he came to the Continental Ballroom with a portfolio of already-launched initiatives by X of what the company calls “computational agriculture.” That means applying \u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610549/exclusive-alphabet-x-is-exploring-new-ways-to-use-ai-in-food-production/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-03-27&utm_campaign=Technology+Review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to the hurly-burly hard work of conjuring food from the earth — from sensors that can signal the prime time for harvest to autonomous vehicles capable of harvesting crops or applying pesticides at record-breaking speeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thing about food, you start talking about the moon but you always end up closer to Earth. In the hallways of the Hilton, under the wannabe chandeliers, came the buzzwords, like mantras: sustainability, resilience, good for the planet, ROI (return on investment), and, soon enough, win-win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Charles Baron, Farmers Business Network']‘A real ‘disruption’ would be if your seed doesn’t need to be blanketed with glyphosate.’[/pullquote]Prowling the conversations and presentations, never seen but omnipresent, was the “unicorn,” the billion dollar company-to-be that would transform farm fields and enable them to withstand the onrushing changes — the way Uber transformed the taxi business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Was the unicorn a new robot capable of traversing apple orchards and plucking fruit without human intervention? Could it be the new hyper-sensitive pest monitor which can provide a stream of acre-by-acre data about pest populations and narrow the target for spraying insecticides? Or was it the microbe dropped into the soil that encourages crop-friendly nematodes (aka, worms) to reproduce and populate the fields, but kills the nematodes hostile to crops?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it’s the new genetic interventions that can sterilize pest populations and \u003cem>— Hey! — genetic interventions could even someday allow plants to flourish in a drought!\u003c/em> (This one is nowhere near any horizon, however distant, due to the complex genetics of how plants integrate and use water — but this was a conference of relentless optimists.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top of the list was more data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Imagine if all of the data we have access to today is a grain of sand,” Matt Crisp, Vice President of Benson Hill Bio Systems, a leading bio-tech firm, intoned from the dais. “Then in 10 years we’ll be walking on the beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943800\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943800\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1355\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-800x529.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-768x508.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1020x675.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1200x794.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1920x1270.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A worker digs a ditch next to a fallow field in 2015 in Hanford, about 35 miles south of Fresno. As California entered its fourth year of severe drought, farmers in the Central Valley struggled to keep crops watered as wells run dry and government water allocations were reduced or terminated. Many opted to leave acres of their fields fallow. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For example: Install pest-tracking sensors that use an algorithm to identify which insect species in a field threaten the crop, and which don’t. Insert sensors into the soil to monitor water absorption, and identify where additional irrigation might be essential. Or, suggested an executive at the European airplane manufacturer Airbus: Hire our satellite fleet to capture photos that can tell you where fields are drying and whether cover crops are enriching soils.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the more advanced ideas actually signaled a return to earlier knowledge: the soil. After a half a century in which soil has been treated as a kind of platform for an environment constructed from synthetic agri-chemicals, attention is returning to how plant crops might draw what they need from soil itself. In other words, a 10,000-year-old idea dating to the domestication of agriculture is in vogue once again, with a Silicon Valley bio-tech twist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Biology is the next building material to solve the challenges of agriculture,” Karsten Temme, CEO and co-founder of Pivot-Bio, commented in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pivotbio.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pivot-Bio\u003c/a> has looked inside the genomes of microbes that spend their life in soil, and figured out a way to unlock their ability to turn nitrogen into mineral nourishment for plants. Which means unlocking capacities they used to have before industrial agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When modern fertilizers came along,” Temme said, “the microbes lost their ability to metabolize nitrogen in a way that was beneficial to the plants. They went into hibernation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His genetic intervention is aimed at triggering that nascent function back into action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Who is Disrupting What? \u003c/b>\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\">O\u003c/span>ver the two days, a question hung in the air: What precisely are the disrupters aiming to disrupt?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were promises of small-scale disruption to be sure, including those non-chemical soil treatments designed to short-circuit the reproductive capacity of nematodes\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>aka, worms\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>that attack crops; the sensors for identifying already moist areas in fields and thus guide more targeted irrigation; and Pivot Bio’s nitrogen stimulant for micro-organisms, reducing the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applications. All could conceivably reduce the need for synthetic chemicals and ensure less wasted water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his keynote, Neal Gutterson, the Chief Technology Officer of Corteva, the agri-chemical division of the two merged chemical giants DowDuPont, offered five company goals on PowerPoint\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>aphorisms for agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our job,” he said, “is simplifying the life of farmers and consumers. Consumers want cleaner labels, less waste, environmental sustainability, increasing yields, and to reduce our environmental footprint.” For America’s largest agri-chemical company, that meant, for one, more efficient ways of delivering the company’s agri-chemicals. For example, more use of drones to identify areas of insect infestation — and thus target the application of pesticides. It also meant more active bio-tech initiatives, including genome alterations aimed at increasing yields. Gutterson highlighted the company’s development of a new herbicide, called Enlist Duo, that he claimed is less “prone to drift” onto a neighbor’s field than the herbicides of their competitors, such as the glyphosate weedkiller produced by competitors like Monsanto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a bigger picture. Climate change strains the half-century of agricultural practices that are based on fighting nature, breeding seeds that require pesticides to survive, or geoengineering them to enable resistance to the company’s own herbicides, as in the case with glyphosate, hence insulating the seed through chemical interventions from the environment around them. It’s a system heavily dependent on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers and mono-cropping, and contributes greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world’s three dominant agri-chemical companies — Monsanto/Bayer, Corteva (the renamed agricultural chemical and seed division of the merged DowDuPont), and Syngenta, now owned by ChemChina, the largest chemical company in China — were among the ‘Platinum’ sponsors of the conference, their logos plastered behind the speakers on the dais, speakers who were there to consider how to shake up the status quo that those companies contributed mightily to creating over the last half-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, several big disruptions were already happening far from the Hilton and independent of any of the initiatives suggested there. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather/historic-floods-hit-nebraska-after-bomb-cyclone-storm-idUSKCN1QY00Y\">‘bomb cyclone’\u003c/a> that hit Nebraska and elsewhere in the Midwest left hundreds of thousands of acres of farm fields and crops underwater, demonstrating the fragile status of the Midwest’s commodity agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And on the very same day the summit commenced at the Hilton, a federal judge in San Francisco, in a courtroom barely a mile from the Hilton, declared Monsanto’s corporate parent Bayer liable for the cancer caused by its weedkiller Roundup to a 70-year-old man who had applied it to his property outside Santa Rosa for several decades. That verdict presents a direct threat to the financial stability of Monsanto’s new corporate parent, and to the practice of tying a seed so closely to a chemical. (One week later, the court ruled that the man, Charles Hardeman, was entitled to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707439575/jury-awards-80-million-in-damages-in-roundup-weed-killer-cancer-trial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$80 million\u003c/a>) in damages. Bayer/Monsanto is appealing the verdict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A real ‘disruption’ would be if your seed doesn’t need to be blanketed with glyphosate,” quipped Charles Baron, a co-founder and Vice President of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fbn.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Farmers Business Network\u003c/a>, which provides data to farmers independent of the major seed and chemical companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the face of the biggest climate disruption in recorded history, the billions of dollars in the room and the sharpest technical minds were thinking of how to bulletproof the status quo with greater and greater levels of technological intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conference, like the phenomenon we all face, had a poignant ring of sci-fi — as some of the world’s most sophisticated players in agriculture, high-tech, and venture capital, accustomed to a playing field they can shape, contended with a new global playing field already shifting in a million ways they cannot guide and over which they have little control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its part, Bayer celebrated its participation in the summit by announcing its latest innovation — a newly hybridized broccoli with a higher crown that simplifies the machine harvesting of broccoli. It’s name: High-Rise broccoli.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The summit ended. The search for the unicorn continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Schapiro is an investigative journalist specializing in the environment. His most recent book is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Resistance-Fight-Save-Supply/dp/1510705767/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Seeds+of+Resistance%2C+Mark+Schapiro&qid=1561401325&s=books&sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Seeds of Resistance: The Fight To Save Our Food Supply,\u003c/a>” \u003ci>an investigation into the \u003c/i>\u003ci>seeds needed to survive climate disruption and the fight to control them. His previous book, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/End-Stationarity-Searching-Normal-Carbon/dp/1603586806/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1561403133&sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The End of Stationarity: \u003c/a>\u003c/i>\u003ci>Searching for the New Normal in the Age of Carbon Shock” \u003c/i>\u003ci>reveals the hidden costs of climate change. Schapiro\u003c/i> is also a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. You can find him on Twitter, @schapiro.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Reckoning in the Central Valley” is a collaboration between KQED Science and Bay Nature magazine, examining how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities of California agriculture. \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature magazine\u003c/a> is an independent, nonprofit publication that reports on the environment in the greater Bay Area.\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>\u003cem>“Reckoning in the Central Valley” is a collaboration between \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a> magazine and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science\u003c/a> examining how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities of California agriculture. \u003c/em>\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\">T\u003c/span>he disrupters of Silicon Valley and its tributaries have trained their GPS on the most fundamental of all human needs — food. In San Francisco earlier this spring, 1,300 venture capitalists, gene scientists, bio-tech visionaries and startup aspirants gathered to probe what they consider to be the nearly digitally virgin terrain of agriculture. It’s a terrain that’s being profoundly transformed by the biggest disrupter of all: climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As attendees at the fifth annual World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit trooped from ballroom to ballroom at the Hilton, plotting the future of agriculture, more than half a million acres of Central Valley fields, once filled with tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, and other crops sat empty for another day of nothing happening. They are fields out of commission, fallowed by two symptoms of climate volatility that are challenging the agricultural practices in the Central Valley and across the country — too little water, or water that’s too salty for cultivating crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"link1": "https://baynature.org/article/a-time-of-reckoning-in-the-central-valley/,How a Hotter, Drier, Saltier Central Valley Is Upending Ag and Spurring Conservation",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone at the summit, who paid almost $2,400 to be there for two days, is well aware that climate change is reshaping agriculture: Temperature, rainfall and the imbalances that lead to extreme weather are all in a kind of atmospheric free-for-all, as greenhouse gases accumulate and volatility accelerates. And that’s just the beginning, as the federal government’s \u003ca href=\"https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/10/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Climate Assessment\u003c/a> told us last year: There is more turbulence to come. Losses will likely \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/114/12/E2285\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">accelerate\u003c/a> as the weather changes; new pests and diseases that were wholly unanticipated a decade ago are heading north across the US, following the heat; extreme destructive events multiply in their number and intensity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the summit convened, the Midwest was reeling from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-floods-exclusive/exclusive-more-than-1-million-acres-of-us-cropland-ravaged-by-floods-idUSKCN1RA2AW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">devastating cyclone \u003c/a>that left hundreds of thousand of acres underwater. A team of scientists of scientists from UC Merced \u003ca href=\"https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/8/3/25/htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sounded the alarm\u003c/a> last year in the peer-reviewed journal\u003ca href=\"https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> agronomy\u003c/a>: “Adaptation,” they said, “was a matter of the utmost urgency.” For farmers in California, they warned, there is accelerating volatility — year after year of never-before-experienced deviations from what had been the norms of heat and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, as Howard Yana-Shapiro, chief Agricultural Officer for the Mars Corporation, put it in an interview at the Hilton, “Nothing we knew in the past is a fact today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943790\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-649472306-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Women work in a cacao beans workshop in Soubre, Ivory Coast, in 2017. \u003ccite>(SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s sobering news for Big Ag, which requires predictability above all. Mainstream food production counts on using the same seeds across vastly different ecological zones, sustained by a set of identical and reproducible chemical inputs. But the rate of disruption in the fundamental elements that foster food growth\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>sun, rain, soil\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>is \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3061\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">outpacing\u003c/a> the ability of even major seed breeders to keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not knowing what’s coming that haunts the attendees at the Ag-Tech Summit. Mars was at the summit because the three main ingredients the company relies on for its candy — peanuts, \u003ca href=\"https://impactforestry.org/2016/09/13/the-ivory-coast-a-case-study-on-climate-change-and-the-chocolate-we-eat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cacao\u003c/a> and mint — are experiencing devastating losses, and Yana-Shapiro is running test plots in Davis to find more resilient ways of growing them. Land O’Lakes was there because \u003ca href=\"http://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-will-affect-dairy-cows-and-milk-production-in-the-uk-new-study-101843\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dairy farmers\u003c/a> face a combination of plunging prices and shifting conditions for the silage they grow for their cows. Driscoll’s was there out of concern for how much water they’ll be able to supply for their berries. And two giant grain traders, Cargill and ADM, were anxious about destabilization of their cereal and grain supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"link1": "https://wp.me/p6iq8L-89Dx,Centers of Insurrection: Central Valley Farmers Reckon With Climate Change",
"link2": "https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2019/06/23/the-disrupters-meet-the-disruption-how-tech-aims-to-save-big-ag-from-climate-change,The Disrupters Meet the Disruption: How Tech Aims to Save Big Ag From Climate Change",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cb>How, Then, Will We Grow Food?\u003c/b>\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\">I\u003c/span>nto this whirlpool of disruption come the disrupters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s about a hundred miles from the Hilton in San Francisco to the heart of the Central Valley, around Modesto, but it might as well be a million. There was barely a farmer in sight, among the men and women boasting name tags like Amazon Web Services, Google Launchpad, Rabo AgriFinance (a bank), Lazard (financiers), Microsoft, Immarsat (satellites that provide ag-related imagery), IBM, Wells Fargo, and Evogene (specializing in gene sequencing).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The self-titled Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller, who is CEO of X, the company in charge of Google’s advanced technology division, launched the proceedings with a brief staccato call for a ‘moonshot’ for agriculture. He wasn’t overly specific as to what that would be — it was a roomful of potential competitors and start-ups seeking cash — but he came to the Continental Ballroom with a portfolio of already-launched initiatives by X of what the company calls “computational agriculture.” That means applying \u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610549/exclusive-alphabet-x-is-exploring-new-ways-to-use-ai-in-food-production/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-03-27&utm_campaign=Technology+Review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to the hurly-burly hard work of conjuring food from the earth — from sensors that can signal the prime time for harvest to autonomous vehicles capable of harvesting crops or applying pesticides at record-breaking speeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thing about food, you start talking about the moon but you always end up closer to Earth. In the hallways of the Hilton, under the wannabe chandeliers, came the buzzwords, like mantras: sustainability, resilience, good for the planet, ROI (return on investment), and, soon enough, win-win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘A real ‘disruption’ would be if your seed doesn’t need to be blanketed with glyphosate.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Prowling the conversations and presentations, never seen but omnipresent, was the “unicorn,” the billion dollar company-to-be that would transform farm fields and enable them to withstand the onrushing changes — the way Uber transformed the taxi business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Was the unicorn a new robot capable of traversing apple orchards and plucking fruit without human intervention? Could it be the new hyper-sensitive pest monitor which can provide a stream of acre-by-acre data about pest populations and narrow the target for spraying insecticides? Or was it the microbe dropped into the soil that encourages crop-friendly nematodes (aka, worms) to reproduce and populate the fields, but kills the nematodes hostile to crops?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it’s the new genetic interventions that can sterilize pest populations and \u003cem>— Hey! — genetic interventions could even someday allow plants to flourish in a drought!\u003c/em> (This one is nowhere near any horizon, however distant, due to the complex genetics of how plants integrate and use water — but this was a conference of relentless optimists.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top of the list was more data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Imagine if all of the data we have access to today is a grain of sand,” Matt Crisp, Vice President of Benson Hill Bio Systems, a leading bio-tech firm, intoned from the dais. “Then in 10 years we’ll be walking on the beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943800\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943800\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1355\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-800x529.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-768x508.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1020x675.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1200x794.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/GettyImages-471007868-1920x1270.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A worker digs a ditch next to a fallow field in 2015 in Hanford, about 35 miles south of Fresno. As California entered its fourth year of severe drought, farmers in the Central Valley struggled to keep crops watered as wells run dry and government water allocations were reduced or terminated. Many opted to leave acres of their fields fallow. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For example: Install pest-tracking sensors that use an algorithm to identify which insect species in a field threaten the crop, and which don’t. Insert sensors into the soil to monitor water absorption, and identify where additional irrigation might be essential. Or, suggested an executive at the European airplane manufacturer Airbus: Hire our satellite fleet to capture photos that can tell you where fields are drying and whether cover crops are enriching soils.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the more advanced ideas actually signaled a return to earlier knowledge: the soil. After a half a century in which soil has been treated as a kind of platform for an environment constructed from synthetic agri-chemicals, attention is returning to how plant crops might draw what they need from soil itself. In other words, a 10,000-year-old idea dating to the domestication of agriculture is in vogue once again, with a Silicon Valley bio-tech twist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Biology is the next building material to solve the challenges of agriculture,” Karsten Temme, CEO and co-founder of Pivot-Bio, commented in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pivotbio.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pivot-Bio\u003c/a> has looked inside the genomes of microbes that spend their life in soil, and figured out a way to unlock their ability to turn nitrogen into mineral nourishment for plants. Which means unlocking capacities they used to have before industrial agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When modern fertilizers came along,” Temme said, “the microbes lost their ability to metabolize nitrogen in a way that was beneficial to the plants. They went into hibernation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His genetic intervention is aimed at triggering that nascent function back into action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Who is Disrupting What? \u003c/b>\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\">O\u003c/span>ver the two days, a question hung in the air: What precisely are the disrupters aiming to disrupt?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were promises of small-scale disruption to be sure, including those non-chemical soil treatments designed to short-circuit the reproductive capacity of nematodes\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>aka, worms\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>that attack crops; the sensors for identifying already moist areas in fields and thus guide more targeted irrigation; and Pivot Bio’s nitrogen stimulant for micro-organisms, reducing the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applications. All could conceivably reduce the need for synthetic chemicals and ensure less wasted water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his keynote, Neal Gutterson, the Chief Technology Officer of Corteva, the agri-chemical division of the two merged chemical giants DowDuPont, offered five company goals on PowerPoint\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>aphorisms for agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our job,” he said, “is simplifying the life of farmers and consumers. Consumers want cleaner labels, less waste, environmental sustainability, increasing yields, and to reduce our environmental footprint.” For America’s largest agri-chemical company, that meant, for one, more efficient ways of delivering the company’s agri-chemicals. For example, more use of drones to identify areas of insect infestation — and thus target the application of pesticides. It also meant more active bio-tech initiatives, including genome alterations aimed at increasing yields. Gutterson highlighted the company’s development of a new herbicide, called Enlist Duo, that he claimed is less “prone to drift” onto a neighbor’s field than the herbicides of their competitors, such as the glyphosate weedkiller produced by competitors like Monsanto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a bigger picture. Climate change strains the half-century of agricultural practices that are based on fighting nature, breeding seeds that require pesticides to survive, or geoengineering them to enable resistance to the company’s own herbicides, as in the case with glyphosate, hence insulating the seed through chemical interventions from the environment around them. It’s a system heavily dependent on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers and mono-cropping, and contributes greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world’s three dominant agri-chemical companies — Monsanto/Bayer, Corteva (the renamed agricultural chemical and seed division of the merged DowDuPont), and Syngenta, now owned by ChemChina, the largest chemical company in China — were among the ‘Platinum’ sponsors of the conference, their logos plastered behind the speakers on the dais, speakers who were there to consider how to shake up the status quo that those companies contributed mightily to creating over the last half-century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, several big disruptions were already happening far from the Hilton and independent of any of the initiatives suggested there. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather/historic-floods-hit-nebraska-after-bomb-cyclone-storm-idUSKCN1QY00Y\">‘bomb cyclone’\u003c/a> that hit Nebraska and elsewhere in the Midwest left hundreds of thousands of acres of farm fields and crops underwater, demonstrating the fragile status of the Midwest’s commodity agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And on the very same day the summit commenced at the Hilton, a federal judge in San Francisco, in a courtroom barely a mile from the Hilton, declared Monsanto’s corporate parent Bayer liable for the cancer caused by its weedkiller Roundup to a 70-year-old man who had applied it to his property outside Santa Rosa for several decades. That verdict presents a direct threat to the financial stability of Monsanto’s new corporate parent, and to the practice of tying a seed so closely to a chemical. (One week later, the court ruled that the man, Charles Hardeman, was entitled to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707439575/jury-awards-80-million-in-damages-in-roundup-weed-killer-cancer-trial\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$80 million\u003c/a>) in damages. Bayer/Monsanto is appealing the verdict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A real ‘disruption’ would be if your seed doesn’t need to be blanketed with glyphosate,” quipped Charles Baron, a co-founder and Vice President of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fbn.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Farmers Business Network\u003c/a>, which provides data to farmers independent of the major seed and chemical companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the face of the biggest climate disruption in recorded history, the billions of dollars in the room and the sharpest technical minds were thinking of how to bulletproof the status quo with greater and greater levels of technological intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conference, like the phenomenon we all face, had a poignant ring of sci-fi — as some of the world’s most sophisticated players in agriculture, high-tech, and venture capital, accustomed to a playing field they can shape, contended with a new global playing field already shifting in a million ways they cannot guide and over which they have little control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its part, Bayer celebrated its participation in the summit by announcing its latest innovation — a newly hybridized broccoli with a higher crown that simplifies the machine harvesting of broccoli. It’s name: High-Rise broccoli.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The summit ended. The search for the unicorn continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Schapiro is an investigative journalist specializing in the environment. His most recent book is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Resistance-Fight-Save-Supply/dp/1510705767/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Seeds+of+Resistance%2C+Mark+Schapiro&qid=1561401325&s=books&sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Seeds of Resistance: The Fight To Save Our Food Supply,\u003c/a>” \u003ci>an investigation into the \u003c/i>\u003ci>seeds needed to survive climate disruption and the fight to control them. His previous book, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/End-Stationarity-Searching-Normal-Carbon/dp/1603586806/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1561403133&sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The End of Stationarity: \u003c/a>\u003c/i>\u003ci>Searching for the New Normal in the Age of Carbon Shock” \u003c/i>\u003ci>reveals the hidden costs of climate change. Schapiro\u003c/i> is also a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. You can find him on Twitter, @schapiro.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Reckoning in the Central Valley” is a collaboration between KQED Science and Bay Nature magazine, examining how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities of California agriculture. \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature magazine\u003c/a> is an independent, nonprofit publication that reports on the environment in the greater Bay Area.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Newsom Pursuing His Own 'Damn Satellite'",
"headTitle": "Newsom Pursuing His Own ‘Damn Satellite’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Whatever happened to Jerry Brown’s satellite?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former governor delighted activists at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/tag/global-climate-action-summit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Climate Action Summit\u003c/a> last September when he announced that if President Trump stops funding for climate research, California would launch “its own damn satellite” to monitor methane emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What became known as “the damn satellite” plan around Sacramento is now in the hands of Kate Gordon, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior adviser on climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s administration is moving forward with its own version of the damn satellite, Gordon told the crowd at Bloomberg’s “Data for Good Exchange” in San Francisco’s Financial District Tuesday night. The event this year focused on using data science to tackle California’s water crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gordon said the idea behind the satellite is for the data to be widely shared, “especially as the federal government steps back from capturing climate data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the event, Gordon said methane emissions are important to track, but that there are a “fairly small number of actors in California that emit most of the unregulated methane.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meaning, it’s not really a matter of detection but regulation. Still, the satellites can be useful in other ways, she said. “There are all these other things that satellites can do, and the technology works on a micro scale.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the state can use the satellite to determine chlorophyll levels in vegetation, which can help identify if a parched forest is a wildfire risk. “How close is the vegetation to the built infrastructure? Where do we need to harden those structures or do vegetation management? That’s huge. That’s fire management, basically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E, the state’s largest electrical utility, now uses NASA’s Aqua, Terra and VIIRS satellites in its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1942292/pge-wants-to-make-a-massive-investment-in-weather-stations-heres-why\">effort\u003c/a> to prevent catastrophic wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown originally mentioned the satellite during a barn burner of a speech at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco in 2016. His comments were in response to reports that Trump could end NASA’s role in climate research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch it’s own damn satellite,” he roared. “We’re going to collect that data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MLHWFO6DwE]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Brown’s office told \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-gov-jerry-brown-launch-satellite-track-greenhouse-gas-emissions-n909811\">reporters\u003c/a> the satellite would be developed in conjunction with San Francisco-based Planet Labs and launched by 2021. A representative of the company said it is still involved in the project but did not have any updates, beyond what it wrote in a blog \u003ca href=\"https://www.planet.com/pulse/state-of-california-and-planet-announce-groundbreaking-initiative-to-support-action-on-climate-change/\">post\u003c/a> last September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The partnership aims to achieve a long-term, sustainable model for developing satellite technologies that would enable us to collect certain climate data to encourage better decision-making,” the company wrote. “With accurate measurement of and greater transparency on climate data, governments, businesses, scientists, and citizens around the world can develop more targeted and effective mitigation strategies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email, Jenn Phillips, a senior scientist with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, said the project is being paid for by \u003ca href=\"https://www.overlookinternational.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Overlook International Foundation\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.granthamfoundation.org/\">Grantham Foundation\u003c/a>, but “costs are difficult to estimate at this stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It will be a very compact unit (about the size of a shoebox),” she wrote. “The cost of these smaller satellites is orders of magnitude lower than the older much larger satellites (and rockets) that were common even a decade ago.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gordon said the state has yet to fund the satellite beyond paying for time to research its potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data a satellite would provide is more important than ever, Gordon told the Bloomberg audience, as California is dealing with a range of climate-related crises, from contaminated drinking water to catastrophic wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today, the state is dealing with the liability, the risk, the cost,” of climate change, she said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "What became known as Jerry Brown's 'damn satellite' plan around Sacramento has been inherited by the Newsom administration, which plans to use funding from two environmentally focused foundations. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Whatever happened to Jerry Brown’s satellite?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former governor delighted activists at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/tag/global-climate-action-summit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Climate Action Summit\u003c/a> last September when he announced that if President Trump stops funding for climate research, California would launch “its own damn satellite” to monitor methane emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What became known as “the damn satellite” plan around Sacramento is now in the hands of Kate Gordon, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior adviser on climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s administration is moving forward with its own version of the damn satellite, Gordon told the crowd at Bloomberg’s “Data for Good Exchange” in San Francisco’s Financial District Tuesday night. The event this year focused on using data science to tackle California’s water crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gordon said the idea behind the satellite is for the data to be widely shared, “especially as the federal government steps back from capturing climate data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the event, Gordon said methane emissions are important to track, but that there are a “fairly small number of actors in California that emit most of the unregulated methane.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meaning, it’s not really a matter of detection but regulation. Still, the satellites can be useful in other ways, she said. “There are all these other things that satellites can do, and the technology works on a micro scale.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the state can use the satellite to determine chlorophyll levels in vegetation, which can help identify if a parched forest is a wildfire risk. “How close is the vegetation to the built infrastructure? Where do we need to harden those structures or do vegetation management? That’s huge. That’s fire management, basically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E, the state’s largest electrical utility, now uses NASA’s Aqua, Terra and VIIRS satellites in its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1942292/pge-wants-to-make-a-massive-investment-in-weather-stations-heres-why\">effort\u003c/a> to prevent catastrophic wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown originally mentioned the satellite during a barn burner of a speech at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco in 2016. His comments were in response to reports that Trump could end NASA’s role in climate research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch it’s own damn satellite,” he roared. “We’re going to collect that data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/5MLHWFO6DwE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/5MLHWFO6DwE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Brown’s office told \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-gov-jerry-brown-launch-satellite-track-greenhouse-gas-emissions-n909811\">reporters\u003c/a> the satellite would be developed in conjunction with San Francisco-based Planet Labs and launched by 2021. A representative of the company said it is still involved in the project but did not have any updates, beyond what it wrote in a blog \u003ca href=\"https://www.planet.com/pulse/state-of-california-and-planet-announce-groundbreaking-initiative-to-support-action-on-climate-change/\">post\u003c/a> last September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The partnership aims to achieve a long-term, sustainable model for developing satellite technologies that would enable us to collect certain climate data to encourage better decision-making,” the company wrote. “With accurate measurement of and greater transparency on climate data, governments, businesses, scientists, and citizens around the world can develop more targeted and effective mitigation strategies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email, Jenn Phillips, a senior scientist with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, said the project is being paid for by \u003ca href=\"https://www.overlookinternational.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Overlook International Foundation\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.granthamfoundation.org/\">Grantham Foundation\u003c/a>, but “costs are difficult to estimate at this stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It will be a very compact unit (about the size of a shoebox),” she wrote. “The cost of these smaller satellites is orders of magnitude lower than the older much larger satellites (and rockets) that were common even a decade ago.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gordon said the state has yet to fund the satellite beyond paying for time to research its potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data a satellite would provide is more important than ever, Gordon told the Bloomberg audience, as California is dealing with a range of climate-related crises, from contaminated drinking water to catastrophic wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today, the state is dealing with the liability, the risk, the cost,” of climate change, she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>California lawmakers are poised to fund the cleanup of dirty drinking water in the state’s poorest communities — a problem most everyone agrees needs to be addressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" citation=\"State Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont\" size=\"small\"]‘I would caution that every worthy cause should not be financed through this fund.’[/pullquote] Not everyone, however, agrees on where the money should come from to pay for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The issue? The Legislature wants to use revenue from California’s cap-and-trade climate change program, which was created to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by making companies pay for the right to emit them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money the program generates is required by law to go toward programs that reduce the planet-warming gases. While that mandate hasn’t stopped lawmakers in the past from allocating funds to projects that are, arguably, only marginally related to greenhouse gas reduction, it could leave the funding for water cleanup open to a legal challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State attorneys made that clear to the Legislature last year in a legal opinion asserting cap-and trade money can, for the time being, only be spent “for purposes that reasonably relate to the reduction of [greenhouse gas] emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Legislative Counsel prepared the opinion for state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, the chair of the subcommittee that oversees the cap-and-trade program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He voiced his frustration with the state’s plan to spend the funds on water cleanup on the Senate floor last week, saying it “further weakens the integrity of our Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AB 32 requires the Governor and the Legislature to only use revenues from the auctions of Cap and Trade for programs that reduce carbon emissions into our atmosphere,” Wieckowski said. AB 32 is California’s landmark climate change law, which sets targets for reductions in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obviously, this does not bode well for future GGRF budgets,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While AB 32 was set to expire in 2020, the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Legislature\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> passed an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11593491/brown-schwarzenegger-celebrate-extension-of-cap-and-trade\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">extension\u003c/span>\u003c/a> through 2030 \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">two years ago.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That bill, AB 398, also removes the limits on how cap-and-trade money is spent \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">as of Jan. 1, 2021, according to the Legislative Counsel’s opinion. The analysis attributes the freeing of those funds to the way AB 398 was written and because of its passage by a supermajority, both of which transformed cap-and-trade revenue from a fee, designated for specific use, into a tax, available for general spending. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wieckowski said on the Senate floor he was worried about how cap-and-trade money might be “broadened to include other uses” after 2021. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>“I would caution that every worthy cause should not be financed through this fund,” he said. “We have been instructed by the scientific community that our window is closing, and we may even be at the point of no return on permanent, irreversible climate consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Newsom administration doesn’t see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Gordon, director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, said it’s time for California to stop thinking about climate issues in a “segregated budget box” with separate policies for reducing emissions and addressing climate impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the administration is looking to integrate climate considerations into housing, fire management and water policy. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The governor’s focus on putting new funds into the infill infrastructure fund is a climate policy, because it’s about building housing in denser areas so people drive less,” she said. “That’s climate policy. How do we think about fire management as a climate policy? How do we think about water movement as a climate policy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clean Drinking Water\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across California, about a million people lack access to safe drinking water, even though the state has spent $3 billion since 2010 to solve the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, state lawmakers have fought over plans to address the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a tax on water bills that would fund programs to rebuild broken drinking water infrastructure in some of the state’s poorest communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Legislature didn’t approve the plan, with some lawmakers worried that their constituents wouldn’t accept a new monthly tax given the state’s huge budget surplus. (The political peril entailed in voting for new taxes was driven home last June, when Orange County voters \u003ca href=\"https://voiceofoc.org/2018/06/josh-newman-is-recalled-ending-democrats-supermajority-in-state-senate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recalled\u003c/a> Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman after his vote to increase the gas tax.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So instead of the new water tax, lawmakers crafted a compromise that includes $100 million from cap-and-trade revenue and $33.4 million from the general fund. A trailer bill also seeks to use 5% of the cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and a member of the cap-and-trade oversight committee, said the new plan marks a “real shift,” and not for the good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are moving towards something that very clearly is not about climate,” he said. “It’s about water quality and it’s about water access. It’s not really about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Newsom administration originally argued the expenditure on the water plan is in compliance with the cap-and-trade directive because trucks will no longer have to deliver bottled water to people whose tap water is undrinkable, and so will reduce emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cullenward, who in addition to being on the cap-and-trade oversight committee is the policy director for the climate group \u003ca href=\"http://www.nearzero.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near Zero\u003c/a>, said that’s a stretch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is getting much closer to the line, if it’s not over the line,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gordon, who also advises Newsom on climate issues, said the water plan would also replace the existing water delivery system with one that’s more energy efficient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A massive amount of our energy goes into moving water, and making that more efficient would have a huge impact,” she said. “If you’re not resilient, then your systems fall apart. We have a climate impact that’s creating this situation and we need to solve this situation in a way that reduces emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The water expenditure is just the latest appropriation to rile critics of the way cap-and-trade money is spent. Former Gov. Jerry Brown drew \u003ca href=\"https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/01/10/critics-uniting-against-california-high-speed-rail-funding-plan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">criticism\u003c/a> when he spent more than $1 billion from the fund on the state’s beleaguered high-speed rail project. More questionable was Brown’s 2013 \u003ca href=\"https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992624\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">diver\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992624\">sion\u003c/a> of $500 million cap-and-trade dollars to help balance the state’s budget, although the money was eventually repaid. Last week the Los Angeles Times published an \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cap-and-trade-safe-drinking-water-budget-20190614-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">editorial\u003c/a> saying that lawmakers are turning cap-and-trade revenue into a “slush fund.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enviro Groups Split\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The debate over using cap-and-trade funds on clean drinking water has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">split\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">the\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">environmental\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">community\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the state’s largest environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, argue that the program should primarily be used to stave off the worst impacts of climate change by curbing emissions. Kathryn Phillips, director of the Sierra Club California, told \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CALmatters\u003c/a> that the money for the water project should have been taken out of the general fund instead of cap-and-trade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But environmental justice groups have fought cap and trade for years, arguing that it allows industry to pay to pollute in communities already burdened with pollution. These groups have also advocated that any funds from the program be used to meet the needs of communities most impacted by dirty air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That includes places like Fresno and the Central Valley, where they are struggling not only with toxic drinking water, but also some of the worst air quality in the state,” said Marie Choi, spokesperson for Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “For us, solutions aren’t about carbon counting, it’s about making our neighborhoods and people healthy and whole again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last three years, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, an advocacy group for lower-income communities, pushed state lawmakers to approve a water tax, with the money going to pay for clean water programs in the San Joaquin and Coachella valleys, among other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These places are most impacted by the hot, dry conditions exacerbated by climate change, the group argues, and in light of the tax plan’s failure, the group wants to see the current proposal to use cap-and-trade money enacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought in particular has impacted drinking water quantity and quality,” said Phoebe Seaton, the group’s co-director. “We have seen since the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s inception the link between drinking water and climate, from an adaptation side and from a climate mitigation side,”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941438/millions-for-climate-environmental-priorities-in-newsoms-may-budget\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">presented\u003c/a> his May budget revision, he defended his proposed tax on water bills, saying it would be a “proud day, when the Legislature and the governor can align on providing a basic fundamental right. That’s clean and drinkable water at an affordable price for the most vulnerable Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even then, he signaled an openness to alternatives. “I’m not consumed by process, but by outcome,” he said in answer to a reporter’s question. “But we will get to a solution.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> Not everyone, however, agrees on where the money should come from to pay for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The issue? The Legislature wants to use revenue from California’s cap-and-trade climate change program, which was created to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by making companies pay for the right to emit them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money the program generates is required by law to go toward programs that reduce the planet-warming gases. While that mandate hasn’t stopped lawmakers in the past from allocating funds to projects that are, arguably, only marginally related to greenhouse gas reduction, it could leave the funding for water cleanup open to a legal challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State attorneys made that clear to the Legislature last year in a legal opinion asserting cap-and trade money can, for the time being, only be spent “for purposes that reasonably relate to the reduction of [greenhouse gas] emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Legislative Counsel prepared the opinion for state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, the chair of the subcommittee that oversees the cap-and-trade program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He voiced his frustration with the state’s plan to spend the funds on water cleanup on the Senate floor last week, saying it “further weakens the integrity of our Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AB 32 requires the Governor and the Legislature to only use revenues from the auctions of Cap and Trade for programs that reduce carbon emissions into our atmosphere,” Wieckowski said. AB 32 is California’s landmark climate change law, which sets targets for reductions in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obviously, this does not bode well for future GGRF budgets,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While AB 32 was set to expire in 2020, the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Legislature\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> passed an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11593491/brown-schwarzenegger-celebrate-extension-of-cap-and-trade\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">extension\u003c/span>\u003c/a> through 2030 \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">two years ago.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That bill, AB 398, also removes the limits on how cap-and-trade money is spent \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">as of Jan. 1, 2021, according to the Legislative Counsel’s opinion. The analysis attributes the freeing of those funds to the way AB 398 was written and because of its passage by a supermajority, both of which transformed cap-and-trade revenue from a fee, designated for specific use, into a tax, available for general spending. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wieckowski said on the Senate floor he was worried about how cap-and-trade money might be “broadened to include other uses” after 2021. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>“I would caution that every worthy cause should not be financed through this fund,” he said. “We have been instructed by the scientific community that our window is closing, and we may even be at the point of no return on permanent, irreversible climate consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Newsom administration doesn’t see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Gordon, director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, said it’s time for California to stop thinking about climate issues in a “segregated budget box” with separate policies for reducing emissions and addressing climate impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the administration is looking to integrate climate considerations into housing, fire management and water policy. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The governor’s focus on putting new funds into the infill infrastructure fund is a climate policy, because it’s about building housing in denser areas so people drive less,” she said. “That’s climate policy. How do we think about fire management as a climate policy? How do we think about water movement as a climate policy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clean Drinking Water\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across California, about a million people lack access to safe drinking water, even though the state has spent $3 billion since 2010 to solve the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, state lawmakers have fought over plans to address the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a tax on water bills that would fund programs to rebuild broken drinking water infrastructure in some of the state’s poorest communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Legislature didn’t approve the plan, with some lawmakers worried that their constituents wouldn’t accept a new monthly tax given the state’s huge budget surplus. (The political peril entailed in voting for new taxes was driven home last June, when Orange County voters \u003ca href=\"https://voiceofoc.org/2018/06/josh-newman-is-recalled-ending-democrats-supermajority-in-state-senate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recalled\u003c/a> Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman after his vote to increase the gas tax.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So instead of the new water tax, lawmakers crafted a compromise that includes $100 million from cap-and-trade revenue and $33.4 million from the general fund. A trailer bill also seeks to use 5% of the cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and a member of the cap-and-trade oversight committee, said the new plan marks a “real shift,” and not for the good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are moving towards something that very clearly is not about climate,” he said. “It’s about water quality and it’s about water access. It’s not really about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Newsom administration originally argued the expenditure on the water plan is in compliance with the cap-and-trade directive because trucks will no longer have to deliver bottled water to people whose tap water is undrinkable, and so will reduce emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cullenward, who in addition to being on the cap-and-trade oversight committee is the policy director for the climate group \u003ca href=\"http://www.nearzero.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near Zero\u003c/a>, said that’s a stretch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is getting much closer to the line, if it’s not over the line,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gordon, who also advises Newsom on climate issues, said the water plan would also replace the existing water delivery system with one that’s more energy efficient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A massive amount of our energy goes into moving water, and making that more efficient would have a huge impact,” she said. “If you’re not resilient, then your systems fall apart. We have a climate impact that’s creating this situation and we need to solve this situation in a way that reduces emissions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The water expenditure is just the latest appropriation to rile critics of the way cap-and-trade money is spent. Former Gov. Jerry Brown drew \u003ca href=\"https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/01/10/critics-uniting-against-california-high-speed-rail-funding-plan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">criticism\u003c/a> when he spent more than $1 billion from the fund on the state’s beleaguered high-speed rail project. More questionable was Brown’s 2013 \u003ca href=\"https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992624\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">diver\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992624\">sion\u003c/a> of $500 million cap-and-trade dollars to help balance the state’s budget, although the money was eventually repaid. Last week the Los Angeles Times published an \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cap-and-trade-safe-drinking-water-budget-20190614-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">editorial\u003c/a> saying that lawmakers are turning cap-and-trade revenue into a “slush fund.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enviro Groups Split\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The debate over using cap-and-trade funds on clean drinking water has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">split\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">the\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">environmental\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\">community\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the state’s largest environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, argue that the program should primarily be used to stave off the worst impacts of climate change by curbing emissions. Kathryn Phillips, director of the Sierra Club California, told \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-clean-drinking-water-funding-greenhouse-gas-fund-climate-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CALmatters\u003c/a> that the money for the water project should have been taken out of the general fund instead of cap-and-trade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But environmental justice groups have fought cap and trade for years, arguing that it allows industry to pay to pollute in communities already burdened with pollution. These groups have also advocated that any funds from the program be used to meet the needs of communities most impacted by dirty air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That includes places like Fresno and the Central Valley, where they are struggling not only with toxic drinking water, but also some of the worst air quality in the state,” said Marie Choi, spokesperson for Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “For us, solutions aren’t about carbon counting, it’s about making our neighborhoods and people healthy and whole again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last three years, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, an advocacy group for lower-income communities, pushed state lawmakers to approve a water tax, with the money going to pay for clean water programs in the San Joaquin and Coachella valleys, among other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These places are most impacted by the hot, dry conditions exacerbated by climate change, the group argues, and in light of the tax plan’s failure, the group wants to see the current proposal to use cap-and-trade money enacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought in particular has impacted drinking water quantity and quality,” said Phoebe Seaton, the group’s co-director. “We have seen since the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s inception the link between drinking water and climate, from an adaptation side and from a climate mitigation side,”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941438/millions-for-climate-environmental-priorities-in-newsoms-may-budget\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">presented\u003c/a> his May budget revision, he defended his proposed tax on water bills, saying it would be a “proud day, when the Legislature and the governor can align on providing a basic fundamental right. That’s clean and drinkable water at an affordable price for the most vulnerable Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even then, he signaled an openness to alternatives. “I’m not consumed by process, but by outcome,” he said in answer to a reporter’s question. “But we will get to a solution.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>If civilizations are remembered for what they leave behind, our time might be labeled the Plastic Age. Plastic can endure for centuries. It’s everywhere, even in our clothes, from polyester leisure suits to fleece jackets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Silicon Valley startup is trying to get the plastic out of clothing and put something else in: biopolymers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A polymer is a long-chain molecule made of lots of identical units. Polymers are durable and often elastic. Plastic is a polymer made from petroleum products. But biopolymers occur often in nature — cellulose in wood or silk from silkworms — and unlike plastic, they can be broken down into natural materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Molly Morse manufactures biopolymers that she hopes will replace some kinds of plastic. She runs a small company called Mango Materials. Mango is her favorite fruit, and she wanted her company to sound different from other tech enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We’re not your typical Silicon Valley startup company,” Morse says. “We’re manufacturing polymers at a waste-water treatment plant. We’re not a bunch of guys in a garage coding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did she end up making bioplastic at a sewage treatment plant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morse says it started when she was in elementary school. She went to an aquarium and stumbled on an exhibit about plastic trash floating in the ocean. “There was this huge, gigantic-like fish-tank-type structure full of clamshells, like [plastic foam] clamshells from McDonald’s,” she recalls. “And I was floored … completely horrified. It changed my life and I was like, that is freaking ridiculous, and I’m going to change it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_21550\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-21550 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/09/photo-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Representing the Pacific Gyre, a suspended ceiling of plastic trash floats over the heads of viewers at “Washed Ashore” exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo. (Sharol Nelson/Embry)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She followed through. She went to Stanford University and got a doctorate in environmental engineering. At a scientific conference in 2006, she met another young engineer, Anne Schauer-Gimenez. “I think we were up to like 4 in the morning or something,” Schauer-Gimenez says, “just talking about research and how this process works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The process was how to manufacture biopolymers — using bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are certain kinds of bacteria that eat methane. The bacteria use it to make their own biopolymers in their cells, especially if you feed them well. “If we were to get really fat from eating a lot of ice cream or chocolate,” Morse explains, “we’d accumulate fat inside our bodies. These bacteria, same thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schauer-Gimenez adds: “To me, microorganisms kind of run the show on planet Earth anyway, so why not let them help us with this process?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make biopolymers, the bacteria need lots of food. That’s why Mango Materials set up a field site at a sewage treatment plant called Silicon Valley Clean Water in Redwood City, Calif., next to the San Francisco Bay. They got funding from the National Science Foundation, among other backers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='left' citation='Molly Morse']‘And I was floored … completely horrified. It changed my life and I was like, that is freaking ridiculous, and I’m going to change it.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sewage, or at least the methane gas that sewage emits, is food for bacteria. Treatment plants usually burn off the methane or just vent it into the air. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming when it goes into the atmosphere. Mango feeds it to the bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s done in a fermenter set up outside, nestled between big steel tanks full of sewage. Engineer Allison Pieja, a third member of the Mango leadership team, shows off their invention. It looks kind of like a big beer keg with pipes sticking in it like intravenous drips. “This is where the magic happens,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pieja is the bug expert at Mango. “We add the methane and oxygen continuously and kind of drip in our secret sauce based on how the bacteria are growing,” she says. The secret sauce is an additive the team developed to keep the process going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, when the bacteria are fattened up, the team breaks them open and harvests the biopolymer. They dry it and turn it into pellets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, they’ve shipped almost 2,000 pounds of their biopolymer to companies interested in using it. Their principal target market is textiles (though they say the biopolymer works for packaging, too). They’ve produced brightly colored threads that look and feel “plasticky,” like polyester maybe. The hope is to weave the biopolymer into clothing to replace plastics in textiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943493\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943493\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-800x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-160x120.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-768x575.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sleeve made from biopolymer for clothing. The Mango team is working with several companies to test how well their biopolymer will work in textiles. \u003ccite>(Chris Joyce/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It would be biodegradable clothing, which Schauer-Gimenez says freaks people out. ” ‘Oh my gosh, you’re going to make a swimsuit out of your material? I’m going into the ocean and it’s going to biodegrade off my body!’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, it doesn’t quite work like that.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To degrade, biopolymers need warm temperatures and the right bacteria around to chew them up, and the process takes weeks or months of constant exposure. Morse acknowledges that if conditions aren’t right, though — say in a dry Arizona desert or at the bottom of the ocean — it will take longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s one of the drawbacks of biopolymers so far; some haven’t lived up to their promise to biodegrade quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biology professor \u003ca href=\"http://www.citadel.edu/root/biology-facultystaff/47-academics/schools/ssm/biology/2436-weinstein-bio\">John Weinstein\u003c/a> at The Citadel in South Carolina put corn-based polymer bags in a wetland and found they degraded even more slowly than regular plastic bags. “You’ve created a new material,” he says of the bioplastic, “but how does it break down? I was surprised.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal government and the state of California have penalized companies for selling biodegradable “plastic” that actually takes years to break down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Making a statement — ‘biodegradable’ — that is misleading, especially to the general public,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.egr.msu.edu/people/profile/narayan\">Ramani Narayan\u003c/a>, a chemical engineer at Michigan State University and an expert on bioplastics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says it’s all about the environmental conditions. And the longer something takes to biodegrade, the longer it’s litter. “In that intervening period, it is going to have impacts, and that is what needs to be carefully considered,” Narayan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, a big market in biopolymers made from feedstocks such as corn could raise food prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Schauer-Gimenez']‘To me, microorganisms kind of run the show on planet Earth anyway, so why not let them help us with this process?’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plant-based biopolymers can be composted at an industrial facility that uses high heat and pressure. But Narayan points out that the industry in the U.S. is in its infancy. As for recycling them, he says the recycling industry is already overwhelmed. The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest figures, for 2015, show only 9.1% of U.S. plastic waste was recycled. That number is thought to be even lower now that China and other countries have stopped recycling the waste — as little as 2.2% is recycled in the U.S., according to research by engineer Jan Dell, founder of the anti-pollution group The Last Beach Cleanup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t have the right waste management infrastructure in play” to recycle new plastic replacements, Narayan says, “then all the things we do at the top end of it is going to be useless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team at Mango Materials says their material (a form of polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA) is different from most biopolymers and doesn’t need to be recycled, but will biodegrade in a month or two in the right conditions. Their products are currently being tested independently to confirm that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morse acknowledges there’s a lot more to do to pave the way for biopolymers, and she urges people to use less plastic and reuse things instead of throwing them away. But she’s following that childhood dream — to find something better than plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We wouldn’t be [doing this] unless we firmly believed that this is a solution to a massive global problem,” Morse says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A problem that won’t go away on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 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=Replacing+Plastic%3A+Can+Bacteria+Help+Us+Break+The+Habit%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Entrepreneurs are eager to find substitutes for plastic that naturally degrade. One option is a \"natural\" plastic made by microbes and then eaten by them. But the process is still in the early days.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If civilizations are remembered for what they leave behind, our time might be labeled the Plastic Age. Plastic can endure for centuries. It’s everywhere, even in our clothes, from polyester leisure suits to fleece jackets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Silicon Valley startup is trying to get the plastic out of clothing and put something else in: biopolymers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A polymer is a long-chain molecule made of lots of identical units. Polymers are durable and often elastic. Plastic is a polymer made from petroleum products. But biopolymers occur often in nature — cellulose in wood or silk from silkworms — and unlike plastic, they can be broken down into natural materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Molly Morse manufactures biopolymers that she hopes will replace some kinds of plastic. She runs a small company called Mango Materials. Mango is her favorite fruit, and she wanted her company to sound different from other tech enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We’re not your typical Silicon Valley startup company,” Morse says. “We’re manufacturing polymers at a waste-water treatment plant. We’re not a bunch of guys in a garage coding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did she end up making bioplastic at a sewage treatment plant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morse says it started when she was in elementary school. She went to an aquarium and stumbled on an exhibit about plastic trash floating in the ocean. “There was this huge, gigantic-like fish-tank-type structure full of clamshells, like [plastic foam] clamshells from McDonald’s,” she recalls. “And I was floored … completely horrified. It changed my life and I was like, that is freaking ridiculous, and I’m going to change it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_21550\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-21550 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/09/photo-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Representing the Pacific Gyre, a suspended ceiling of plastic trash floats over the heads of viewers at “Washed Ashore” exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo. (Sharol Nelson/Embry)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She followed through. She went to Stanford University and got a doctorate in environmental engineering. At a scientific conference in 2006, she met another young engineer, Anne Schauer-Gimenez. “I think we were up to like 4 in the morning or something,” Schauer-Gimenez says, “just talking about research and how this process works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The process was how to manufacture biopolymers — using bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are certain kinds of bacteria that eat methane. The bacteria use it to make their own biopolymers in their cells, especially if you feed them well. “If we were to get really fat from eating a lot of ice cream or chocolate,” Morse explains, “we’d accumulate fat inside our bodies. These bacteria, same thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schauer-Gimenez adds: “To me, microorganisms kind of run the show on planet Earth anyway, so why not let them help us with this process?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make biopolymers, the bacteria need lots of food. That’s why Mango Materials set up a field site at a sewage treatment plant called Silicon Valley Clean Water in Redwood City, Calif., next to the San Francisco Bay. They got funding from the National Science Foundation, among other backers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sewage, or at least the methane gas that sewage emits, is food for bacteria. Treatment plants usually burn off the methane or just vent it into the air. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming when it goes into the atmosphere. Mango feeds it to the bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s done in a fermenter set up outside, nestled between big steel tanks full of sewage. Engineer Allison Pieja, a third member of the Mango leadership team, shows off their invention. It looks kind of like a big beer keg with pipes sticking in it like intravenous drips. “This is where the magic happens,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pieja is the bug expert at Mango. “We add the methane and oxygen continuously and kind of drip in our secret sauce based on how the bacteria are growing,” she says. The secret sauce is an additive the team developed to keep the process going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, when the bacteria are fattened up, the team breaks them open and harvests the biopolymer. They dry it and turn it into pellets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, they’ve shipped almost 2,000 pounds of their biopolymer to companies interested in using it. Their principal target market is textiles (though they say the biopolymer works for packaging, too). They’ve produced brightly colored threads that look and feel “plasticky,” like polyester maybe. The hope is to weave the biopolymer into clothing to replace plastics in textiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943493\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943493\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-800x599.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-160x120.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/pha-knitted-sleeve_cut-768x575.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sleeve made from biopolymer for clothing. The Mango team is working with several companies to test how well their biopolymer will work in textiles. \u003ccite>(Chris Joyce/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It would be biodegradable clothing, which Schauer-Gimenez says freaks people out. ” ‘Oh my gosh, you’re going to make a swimsuit out of your material? I’m going into the ocean and it’s going to biodegrade off my body!’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, it doesn’t quite work like that.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To degrade, biopolymers need warm temperatures and the right bacteria around to chew them up, and the process takes weeks or months of constant exposure. Morse acknowledges that if conditions aren’t right, though — say in a dry Arizona desert or at the bottom of the ocean — it will take longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s one of the drawbacks of biopolymers so far; some haven’t lived up to their promise to biodegrade quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biology professor \u003ca href=\"http://www.citadel.edu/root/biology-facultystaff/47-academics/schools/ssm/biology/2436-weinstein-bio\">John Weinstein\u003c/a> at The Citadel in South Carolina put corn-based polymer bags in a wetland and found they degraded even more slowly than regular plastic bags. “You’ve created a new material,” he says of the bioplastic, “but how does it break down? I was surprised.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal government and the state of California have penalized companies for selling biodegradable “plastic” that actually takes years to break down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Making a statement — ‘biodegradable’ — that is misleading, especially to the general public,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.egr.msu.edu/people/profile/narayan\">Ramani Narayan\u003c/a>, a chemical engineer at Michigan State University and an expert on bioplastics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says it’s all about the environmental conditions. And the longer something takes to biodegrade, the longer it’s litter. “In that intervening period, it is going to have impacts, and that is what needs to be carefully considered,” Narayan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, a big market in biopolymers made from feedstocks such as corn could raise food prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plant-based biopolymers can be composted at an industrial facility that uses high heat and pressure. But Narayan points out that the industry in the U.S. is in its infancy. As for recycling them, he says the recycling industry is already overwhelmed. The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest figures, for 2015, show only 9.1% of U.S. plastic waste was recycled. That number is thought to be even lower now that China and other countries have stopped recycling the waste — as little as 2.2% is recycled in the U.S., according to research by engineer Jan Dell, founder of the anti-pollution group The Last Beach Cleanup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t have the right waste management infrastructure in play” to recycle new plastic replacements, Narayan says, “then all the things we do at the top end of it is going to be useless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team at Mango Materials says their material (a form of polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA) is different from most biopolymers and doesn’t need to be recycled, but will biodegrade in a month or two in the right conditions. Their products are currently being tested independently to confirm that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morse acknowledges there’s a lot more to do to pave the way for biopolymers, and she urges people to use less plastic and reuse things instead of throwing them away. But she’s following that childhood dream — to find something better than plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We wouldn’t be [doing this] unless we firmly believed that this is a solution to a massive global problem,” Morse says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A problem that won’t go away on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 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=Replacing+Plastic%3A+Can+Bacteria+Help+Us+Break+The+Habit%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "SFPUC Growing Plants in Hospital-Like Nursery to Protect Water Quality",
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"content": "\u003cp>Most plant nurseries are a scene of colorful chaos — bags of soil strewn about, pools of water collecting beneath ceramic pots, and a patchwork of plants existing in tight quarters. But these conditions can create a breeding ground for plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is trying something different at its new native plant nursery in Sunol. To avoid infecting plants, the botanists here take precautions more akin to a laboratory than a commercial nursery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nursery sits atop the Alameda Creek Watershed, which lies east of Fremont. Here, dry grasses paint the surrounding Diablo hills golden, with dense patches of dark green oak trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SFPUC owns 35,000 acres of land in the watershed, which supplies up to 30 million gallons of water a day to Bay Area residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beneath the surface of the grass, funguses that have spread through the soil attack plant roots, causing decay and ultimately death. Up to half of the tan oaks and 1 in 5 coast live oaks in this area died over a 10-year period due to sudden oak death, according to the SFPUC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Native California flora such as oaks, mugwort and monkeyflower are vital in watershed habitats to filter pollutants and prevent erosion. But theses species have often succumbed to quickly spreading disease. When the commission had to plant these natives in the Alameda Creek Watershed, it took extreme measures to prevent infection, but they were ineffective. So now, the commission is growing its own native plants. If successful, the project could provide a new model for restoring disease-ravaged ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission will finish planting the first batch of Sunol nursery- grown natives, like rushes and iris-grasses, by the end of June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943409\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1943409 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-800x573.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"573\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-800x573.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-768x550.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-1020x730.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-1200x859.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zenaido Rios and Jose Pulido plant California native plants on the Sunol property of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The native plants were grown at the Sunol Native Plant Nursery, which was built on the property. (Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stringent Measures Were Ineffective\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under state and federal law, when the commission wants to build anything on watershed land, subtracting habitat, it has to compensate by planting additional native plants, says Tim Ramirez who manages the SFPUC’s natural resources and lands division. When the commission undertook such a project in the Alameda Creek Watershed, it knew native plants coming from commercial nurseries might spread botanical diseases in the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it required nurseries growing the plants to place the natives over 3 feet off the ground and for nursery employees to disinfect their shoes. It also asked contractors working in the field to wear clean clothes, and clean their boots and equipment before work. The PUC also tested natives for pathogens before and after they were planted in the watershed. But still, nursery-raised trees such as oaks and sycamores and shrubs like mugwort and monkeyflower brought disease into the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s counter-intuitive to the goal of restoration, if you’re planting plants that are already sick,” says Mia Ingolia, a biologist and botanist with SFPUC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission decided to try growing its own plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nursery Like a Hospital\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To keep plants disease-free, the Sunol Nursery uses sterile techniques more often seen in labs. Any seeds entering the nursery must be bathed in bleach, and botanists use latex gloves and spray stainless steel planting tools with disinfectants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On entering and exiting the nursery, all visitors must bathe their shoes in soapy water. No trucks or contractors can enter the grounds. Trucks dump soil from outside, over a gate and into a loading station. From there, the team takes buckets of soil to a “steamwagon,” where dirt is steam-cleaned to get rid of weed seeds and plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent;\">Before the native plants are put in the soil, they’re certified to be root-rot free. To do this nursery workers water the plants and catch the water. They then take an organic green pear, prick it with a needle, and place it in the captured water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After three days, if you look at that pear, and it has a lesion on it, that looks like a rotting pear that you see on your counter … and it’s not mushy, it’s hard, then you know that you have a positive,” Ingolia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far no plants grown in the Sunol nursery have tested positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Seed to Soil\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SFPUC contractors will finish planting the first batch of plants in June. These plants are being used to create areas in an on-site industrial yard where runoff and rainfall can collect and be filtered through the native plants before entering the watershed. This will help improve the clarity of water moving from the yard into the watershed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943410\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1943410 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-800x559.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-800x559.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-768x536.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-1020x712.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-1200x838.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mia Ingolia, a biologist and botanist for the Sunol Native Plant Nursery, looks out over a new planting area on SFPUC property. (Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But “it may be a while until native species like oaks are able to be planted in the watershed,” said Ramirez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While state and federal regulators like to see oaks that are already mature being planted, the commission is taking a different route. In the future, it wants to plant certified disease-free acorns in the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want you to mitigate right away and plant and have it be restored as quickly as possible,” says Ramirez, “so we have to ask them also to be patient.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, he says, the extra time it takes to grow your own native plants is worth it in the fight against plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because once you have [diseases] in your watershed, or you bring them into your watershed, it’s even more expensive and time- consuming to try to minimize the risk, or if you are brave, to try to eradicate some of these things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This summer, the team will head back out to the watershed to collect more native plant seeds. This time they’ll collect flowers like California poppies, fiddlenecks and lupines, and start the next round of plantings in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Most plant nurseries are a scene of colorful chaos — bags of soil strewn about, pools of water collecting beneath ceramic pots, and a patchwork of plants existing in tight quarters. But these conditions can create a breeding ground for plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is trying something different at its new native plant nursery in Sunol. To avoid infecting plants, the botanists here take precautions more akin to a laboratory than a commercial nursery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nursery sits atop the Alameda Creek Watershed, which lies east of Fremont. Here, dry grasses paint the surrounding Diablo hills golden, with dense patches of dark green oak trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SFPUC owns 35,000 acres of land in the watershed, which supplies up to 30 million gallons of water a day to Bay Area residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beneath the surface of the grass, funguses that have spread through the soil attack plant roots, causing decay and ultimately death. Up to half of the tan oaks and 1 in 5 coast live oaks in this area died over a 10-year period due to sudden oak death, according to the SFPUC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Native California flora such as oaks, mugwort and monkeyflower are vital in watershed habitats to filter pollutants and prevent erosion. But theses species have often succumbed to quickly spreading disease. When the commission had to plant these natives in the Alameda Creek Watershed, it took extreme measures to prevent infection, but they were ineffective. So now, the commission is growing its own native plants. If successful, the project could provide a new model for restoring disease-ravaged ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission will finish planting the first batch of Sunol nursery- grown natives, like rushes and iris-grasses, by the end of June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943409\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1943409 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-800x573.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"573\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-800x573.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-768x550.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-1020x730.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001-1200x859.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Sunol_001.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zenaido Rios and Jose Pulido plant California native plants on the Sunol property of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The native plants were grown at the Sunol Native Plant Nursery, which was built on the property. (Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stringent Measures Were Ineffective\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under state and federal law, when the commission wants to build anything on watershed land, subtracting habitat, it has to compensate by planting additional native plants, says Tim Ramirez who manages the SFPUC’s natural resources and lands division. When the commission undertook such a project in the Alameda Creek Watershed, it knew native plants coming from commercial nurseries might spread botanical diseases in the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it required nurseries growing the plants to place the natives over 3 feet off the ground and for nursery employees to disinfect their shoes. It also asked contractors working in the field to wear clean clothes, and clean their boots and equipment before work. The PUC also tested natives for pathogens before and after they were planted in the watershed. But still, nursery-raised trees such as oaks and sycamores and shrubs like mugwort and monkeyflower brought disease into the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s counter-intuitive to the goal of restoration, if you’re planting plants that are already sick,” says Mia Ingolia, a biologist and botanist with SFPUC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission decided to try growing its own plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nursery Like a Hospital\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To keep plants disease-free, the Sunol Nursery uses sterile techniques more often seen in labs. Any seeds entering the nursery must be bathed in bleach, and botanists use latex gloves and spray stainless steel planting tools with disinfectants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On entering and exiting the nursery, all visitors must bathe their shoes in soapy water. No trucks or contractors can enter the grounds. Trucks dump soil from outside, over a gate and into a loading station. From there, the team takes buckets of soil to a “steamwagon,” where dirt is steam-cleaned to get rid of weed seeds and plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent;\">Before the native plants are put in the soil, they’re certified to be root-rot free. To do this nursery workers water the plants and catch the water. They then take an organic green pear, prick it with a needle, and place it in the captured water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After three days, if you look at that pear, and it has a lesion on it, that looks like a rotting pear that you see on your counter … and it’s not mushy, it’s hard, then you know that you have a positive,” Ingolia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far no plants grown in the Sunol nursery have tested positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Seed to Soil\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SFPUC contractors will finish planting the first batch of plants in June. These plants are being used to create areas in an on-site industrial yard where runoff and rainfall can collect and be filtered through the native plants before entering the watershed. This will help improve the clarity of water moving from the yard into the watershed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943410\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1943410 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-800x559.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-800x559.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-768x536.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-1020x712.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006-1200x838.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS37489_Sunol_006.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mia Ingolia, a biologist and botanist for the Sunol Native Plant Nursery, looks out over a new planting area on SFPUC property. (Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But “it may be a while until native species like oaks are able to be planted in the watershed,” said Ramirez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While state and federal regulators like to see oaks that are already mature being planted, the commission is taking a different route. In the future, it wants to plant certified disease-free acorns in the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want you to mitigate right away and plant and have it be restored as quickly as possible,” says Ramirez, “so we have to ask them also to be patient.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, he says, the extra time it takes to grow your own native plants is worth it in the fight against plant diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because once you have [diseases] in your watershed, or you bring them into your watershed, it’s even more expensive and time- consuming to try to minimize the risk, or if you are brave, to try to eradicate some of these things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This summer, the team will head back out to the watershed to collect more native plant seeds. This time they’ll collect flowers like California poppies, fiddlenecks and lupines, and start the next round of plantings in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Federal land managers on Wednesday proposed sweeping rule changes to a landmark environmental law that would allow them to fast-track certain forest management projects, including logging and prescribed burning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Forest Service, under Chief Vicki Christiansen, is proposing revisions to its National Environmental Policy Act regulations that could limit environmental review and public input on projects ranging from forest health and wildfire mitigation to infrastructure upgrades to commercial logging on federal land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do more analysis than we need, we take more time than we need and we slow down important work to protect communities,” Christiansen told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed rule changes include an expansion of “categorical exclusions.” These are often billed as tools that give land managers the discretion to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/11/28/671572816/fast-tracking-logging-on-federal-lands-may-not-lessen-wildfire-risk\">bypass full-blown environmental studies\u003c/a> in places where they can demonstrate there would be no severe impacts or degradation to the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Gale, with the conservation group \u003ca href=\"https://www.backcountryhunters.org/\">Backcountry Hunters & Anglers\u003c/a>, says that if applied carefully and narrowly to certain projects, these exclusions could help lower the fire risk. But he’s skeptical because the administration recently rolled back \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713616827/trump-administration-moves-forward-with-proposal-to-re-define-waterway-protectio\">protections for clean water and wildlife\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We also don’t want to see this become the Trojan horse for unchecked resource extraction,” Gale says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service insists this is not about ramping up commercial logging in public forests. On average, according to Christiansen, it can take big restoration projects that generally have broad support as long as two years to approve. She predicts that time could be cut by more than half if the rule changes move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let me be clear that the Forest Service will continue to deliver high-quality, science-based analysis,” she said. “We’re proposing more efficiency, not shortcutting. In fact, [we’re] enhancing, where we can, public involvement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal agencies have long complained of “analysis paralysis” when it comes to getting large landscape-scale projects approved. Policymakers frequently decry what they call frivolous lawsuits by litigious-minded environmental groups who \u003ca href=\"https://www.sidneyherald.com/national/news/environmental-groups-challenge-bridger-mountains-logging-project/article_b1fdc1a4-347d-53e8-ae29-104aa2c6177e.html\">use the courts to try to stop logging\u003c/a> on public land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to the government’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-337\">own analysis\u003c/a> — the last done in 2010 during the Obama administration — fewer than one-fifth of all timber and forest projects are appealed by citizens or environmental groups. A bigger holdup is budget cuts, particularly in the Forest Service, where money has been diverted away from wildlife, habitat and forestry programs to pay for the skyrocketing costs of wildfire suppression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed rule changes are subject to a 60-day public comment period. Barring litigation or other holdups, the Forest Service hopes to finalize them by summer of next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 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=Trump+Administration+Seeking+To+Overhaul+Forest+Management+Rules+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Federal land managers on Wednesday proposed sweeping rule changes to a landmark environmental law that would allow them to fast-track certain forest management projects, including logging and prescribed burning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Forest Service, under Chief Vicki Christiansen, is proposing revisions to its National Environmental Policy Act regulations that could limit environmental review and public input on projects ranging from forest health and wildfire mitigation to infrastructure upgrades to commercial logging on federal land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do more analysis than we need, we take more time than we need and we slow down important work to protect communities,” Christiansen told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed rule changes include an expansion of “categorical exclusions.” These are often billed as tools that give land managers the discretion to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/11/28/671572816/fast-tracking-logging-on-federal-lands-may-not-lessen-wildfire-risk\">bypass full-blown environmental studies\u003c/a> in places where they can demonstrate there would be no severe impacts or degradation to the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Gale, with the conservation group \u003ca href=\"https://www.backcountryhunters.org/\">Backcountry Hunters & Anglers\u003c/a>, says that if applied carefully and narrowly to certain projects, these exclusions could help lower the fire risk. But he’s skeptical because the administration recently rolled back \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713616827/trump-administration-moves-forward-with-proposal-to-re-define-waterway-protectio\">protections for clean water and wildlife\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We also don’t want to see this become the Trojan horse for unchecked resource extraction,” Gale says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service insists this is not about ramping up commercial logging in public forests. On average, according to Christiansen, it can take big restoration projects that generally have broad support as long as two years to approve. She predicts that time could be cut by more than half if the rule changes move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let me be clear that the Forest Service will continue to deliver high-quality, science-based analysis,” she said. “We’re proposing more efficiency, not shortcutting. In fact, [we’re] enhancing, where we can, public involvement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal agencies have long complained of “analysis paralysis” when it comes to getting large landscape-scale projects approved. Policymakers frequently decry what they call frivolous lawsuits by litigious-minded environmental groups who \u003ca href=\"https://www.sidneyherald.com/national/news/environmental-groups-challenge-bridger-mountains-logging-project/article_b1fdc1a4-347d-53e8-ae29-104aa2c6177e.html\">use the courts to try to stop logging\u003c/a> on public land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to the government’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-337\">own analysis\u003c/a> — the last done in 2010 during the Obama administration — fewer than one-fifth of all timber and forest projects are appealed by citizens or environmental groups. A bigger holdup is budget cuts, particularly in the Forest Service, where money has been diverted away from wildlife, habitat and forestry programs to pay for the skyrocketing costs of wildfire suppression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed rule changes are subject to a 60-day public comment period. Barring litigation or other holdups, the Forest Service hopes to finalize them by summer of next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 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=Trump+Administration+Seeking+To+Overhaul+Forest+Management+Rules+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "There May Be Way More Plastic in Your Diet Than You Thought",
"headTitle": "There May Be Way More Plastic in Your Diet Than You Thought | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s no secret that plastic pollution litters the streets, fouls rivers, and drifts across oceans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, it’s in people, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average person in the U.S. consumes between 74,000 and 121,000 particles of plastic every year through food that they eat, the beverages that they drink, and the air that they breathe, according to new research from marine biologists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults consume more than children, and men consume more than women, the researchers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Plastics are everywhere,” Garth Covernton, a co-author on the paper. “We need to re-evaluate our relationship with plastics as a society. We’ve been irresponsibly using plastics for the last 70 or so years, and exponentially increasing our plastic production every single year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research\u003c/a> from UC Santa Barbara, published two years ago, half of all the plastic that ever existed was produced within the prior 13 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimate\u003c/a> from the new study, which appeared last week in the scientific journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology\u003c/em>, is based on 402 data points from 26 different studies that examined plastics in things that people might consume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies show that these tiny particles, known as microplastic, have been found in ambient air, salt, sugar, bottled water, honey, seafood, and tap water — one study even found it in beer. Scientists define microplastics as any particles up to 5 millimeters across, or about the size of a single piece of confetti, though many are so small they’re invisible to the human eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To come up with his consumption estimates, Covernton correlated the documented presence of microplastics in food with the recommended dietary intake for people in the U.S., as determined by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, he says, it’s a low-ball estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t know how much plastic is in red meat, poultry, grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, so Covernton’s estimate accounts for only 15% of the average person’s caloric intake. He says the actual amount is likely far higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to start really reconsidering whether we want to keep making this huge amount of plastic which continually contaminates our environment and our food,” Covernton said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study draws a “rational estimate in terms of [plastic consumption] count” for the average American, according to John Torkelson, a chemical engineer with a focus on plastics at Northwestern University , who was not involved in the study. “They did a service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, some of the study’s research conclusions might be too strong, says Torkelson, who is involved in a new plastic and public health \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">program\u003c/a> at the \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">Institute for Sustainability and Energy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, better recycling programs might be a more effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastic, rather than reducing plastic production and use, as suggested in the paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, Torkelson suggests that the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u003c/a> is not so much an issue of general use plastic, “but how waste is handled in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he agrees that plastic in the ocean is a significant problem, Torkelson says more research is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, marine biologists in California published a separate study that found that Monterey Bay is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943007/the-new-pollution-monterey-bay-is-swimming-in-microplastic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">swimming in microplastic\u003c/a> and suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its biggest \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101871514/study-monterey-bay-infested-by-microplastic-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repository of small plastic-debris\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfei.org/projects/microplastic-pollution#sthash.HVX6YVS4.35Vdgyzi.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microplastic Project\u003c/a> at the San Francisco Estuary Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1915692/hunting-for-plastic-in-californias-protected-ocean-waters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found\u003c/a> that wastewater treatment plants discharged 7 million plastic particles into San Francisco Bay each day, possibly more than any other major water body in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plastic in the ocean is a particular problem because it’s consumed by mussels, sponges and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/science/filter-feeding\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filter feeders\u003c/a>. The plastic is indistinguishable from the food normally consumed by these small ocean creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, plastics can enter the larger food web. In 2014, \u003ca href=\"/www.expeditionmed.eu/fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Van-Cauwenberghe-2014-microplastics-in-cultured-shellfish1.pdf\">one study\u003c/a> found an average portion of oysters from the Atlantic Ocean contains around 50 plastic bits, while mussels from a farm in Germany had 90.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covernton’s paper mostly focused on the American diet, but it notes that seafood is a significant source of ingested plastic for people anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That could mean that in certain parts of the world where seafood is a much greater part of the diet — Japan, or other parts of Asia — there could be a greater impact,” Torkelson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is all that plastic harmful to humans? Covernton says more research is needed on that, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t fully understand it yet,” he says. “It’s early days in terms of the risk to human health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s no secret that plastic pollution litters the streets, fouls rivers, and drifts across oceans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, it’s in people, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average person in the U.S. consumes between 74,000 and 121,000 particles of plastic every year through food that they eat, the beverages that they drink, and the air that they breathe, according to new research from marine biologists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults consume more than children, and men consume more than women, the researchers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Plastics are everywhere,” Garth Covernton, a co-author on the paper. “We need to re-evaluate our relationship with plastics as a society. We’ve been irresponsibly using plastics for the last 70 or so years, and exponentially increasing our plastic production every single year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research\u003c/a> from UC Santa Barbara, published two years ago, half of all the plastic that ever existed was produced within the prior 13 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimate\u003c/a> from the new study, which appeared last week in the scientific journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology\u003c/em>, is based on 402 data points from 26 different studies that examined plastics in things that people might consume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies show that these tiny particles, known as microplastic, have been found in ambient air, salt, sugar, bottled water, honey, seafood, and tap water — one study even found it in beer. Scientists define microplastics as any particles up to 5 millimeters across, or about the size of a single piece of confetti, though many are so small they’re invisible to the human eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To come up with his consumption estimates, Covernton correlated the documented presence of microplastics in food with the recommended dietary intake for people in the U.S., as determined by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, he says, it’s a low-ball estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t know how much plastic is in red meat, poultry, grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, so Covernton’s estimate accounts for only 15% of the average person’s caloric intake. He says the actual amount is likely far higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to start really reconsidering whether we want to keep making this huge amount of plastic which continually contaminates our environment and our food,” Covernton said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study draws a “rational estimate in terms of [plastic consumption] count” for the average American, according to John Torkelson, a chemical engineer with a focus on plastics at Northwestern University , who was not involved in the study. “They did a service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, some of the study’s research conclusions might be too strong, says Torkelson, who is involved in a new plastic and public health \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">program\u003c/a> at the \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">Institute for Sustainability and Energy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, better recycling programs might be a more effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastic, rather than reducing plastic production and use, as suggested in the paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, Torkelson suggests that the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u003c/a> is not so much an issue of general use plastic, “but how waste is handled in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he agrees that plastic in the ocean is a significant problem, Torkelson says more research is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, marine biologists in California published a separate study that found that Monterey Bay is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943007/the-new-pollution-monterey-bay-is-swimming-in-microplastic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">swimming in microplastic\u003c/a> and suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its biggest \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101871514/study-monterey-bay-infested-by-microplastic-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repository of small plastic-debris\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfei.org/projects/microplastic-pollution#sthash.HVX6YVS4.35Vdgyzi.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microplastic Project\u003c/a> at the San Francisco Estuary Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1915692/hunting-for-plastic-in-californias-protected-ocean-waters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found\u003c/a> that wastewater treatment plants discharged 7 million plastic particles into San Francisco Bay each day, possibly more than any other major water body in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plastic in the ocean is a particular problem because it’s consumed by mussels, sponges and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/science/filter-feeding\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filter feeders\u003c/a>. The plastic is indistinguishable from the food normally consumed by these small ocean creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, plastics can enter the larger food web. In 2014, \u003ca href=\"/www.expeditionmed.eu/fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Van-Cauwenberghe-2014-microplastics-in-cultured-shellfish1.pdf\">one study\u003c/a> found an average portion of oysters from the Atlantic Ocean contains around 50 plastic bits, while mussels from a farm in Germany had 90.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covernton’s paper mostly focused on the American diet, but it notes that seafood is a significant source of ingested plastic for people anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That could mean that in certain parts of the world where seafood is a much greater part of the diet — Japan, or other parts of Asia — there could be a greater impact,” Torkelson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is all that plastic harmful to humans? Covernton says more research is needed on that, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t fully understand it yet,” he says. “It’s early days in terms of the risk to human health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Path to Zero-Emission Transportation Means \u003ci>Everything\u003c/i> Must Go Electric",
"headTitle": "The Path to Zero-Emission Transportation Means Everything Must Go Electric | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"dropcap\">Work used to be much simpler for the California Department of Transportation: Widen highways, fill potholes, build new freeways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alas, those quaint days are gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To get an idea of what planners must prepare for, state officials recently hosted a demonstration of a drone air taxi that will require devising a “highway above the ground,” said Reza Navai, a Caltrans transportation planner. “If you think transportation on the ground is complex.…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such sci-fi-like transit is one of many high-tech changes coming as California implements its planned electrification of transportation to radically reduce greenhouse-gas \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/californias-climate-fight-gets-harder-soon-big-culprit-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emissions\u003c/a>. The path to zero, as in \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/will-california-ban-gas-powered-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">zero-emission vehicles\u003c/a>, extends well beyond flying taxis and the 5 million electric cars the state hopes will be on its roads by 2030. Everything—\u003cem>everything\u003c/em>—will be replaced with an electric analog: from boats, planes and trains to delivery vans to farm tractors and even forklifts. The to-do list stretches as long as California’s seemingly endless blacktop, with freight as a major challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s transportation gurus envision technology that will ping driverless vehicles with an automated message when they stray from their lanes, “smart” roads that charge electric cars and trucks as they pass and an electrified Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main freight corridor. California has already widened its painted lane stripes to six inches from four so self-driving vehicles can better “see” the road. Ultimately, the highways themselves will be redesigned and constructed with different materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s transportation agency, which updates its master plan every five years, is currently preparing a look at 2050. While officials cannot predict each new technological wrinkle, Reza said, “We must be able to consider all the possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To achieve a\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-rising-vehicle-emissions-despite-growth-in-electric-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> carbon-free transportation\u003c/a> future, California will need to cover a lot more ground in a short time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If California’s trying to be a leader, we have to go as fast as possible,” said Lew Fulton, who studies sustainable transportation at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies. “Policies are critical to try to speed this up and try to push the envelope, and get all the manufacturers scared enough that they start producing what we need. Carrots and sticks. Carrots being pricing and incentives, sticks being regulatory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state has spent more than \u003ca href=\"http://www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/press-releases/2018/10/25/carb-approves-483-million-funding-plan-for-clean-transportation-investments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$1 billion\u003c/a> dollars in the last five years to encourage research, subsidize the exchange of internal combustion vehicles for zero-emission options, formulate cleaner fuels and expand vital charging infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is working with technology firms to clean up heavily polluting marine fuels belching from container ships at California ports. And state funds are helping Central Valley farmers, who are on a waiting list to crush their aging farm equipment and receive rebates to replace it with fuel-efficient models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such projects may get a boost from California’s Tesla-owner governor, Gavin Newsom, as budget negotiations wrap up this month. His proposed spending plan includes nearly $24 billion for all aspects of transportation, a 6% increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, a group of legislators has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/CALSTARTletter.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expressed support\u003c/a> for a nonprofit organization’s proposal that 15% of annual revenue from cap-and-trade auctions go to programs to clean up emissions from trucks, buses and off-road vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"infogram-embed\">\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://infogram.com/transportationtrucking-facts-1hmr6g3dgvo34nl\">https://infogram.com/transportationtrucking-facts-1hmr6g3dgvo34nl\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Few transportation modes have clean-engine options as advanced as those for passenger cars. Buses are the exception. The Chinese company BYD, manufacturing electric buses in Lancaster, is the largest in North America and has produced more than 300 buses, including nearly half of the Antelope Valley Transit Authority’s pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city of Los Angeles has \u003ca href=\"https://thesource.metro.net/2017/07/27/as-metro-pursues-electric-bus-fleet-by-2030-three-bus-contracts-go-to-board-on-thursday/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pledged\u003c/a> to convert its bus fleet—second-largest in the country—to electric by 2030, though mechanical and performance \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-20180520-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">problems\u003c/a> plagued the rollout of its BYD vehicles. Many other transit districts have similar goals and include school buses. The financial burden of those commitments is softened by state \u003ca href=\"https://www.californiahvip.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">vouchers\u003c/a> for up to $200,000 toward the purchase of each zero-emission bus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The availability of some electric all-terrain recreational vehicles, farm machinery and specialty equipment such as cherry-pickers and front-end loaders has produced niche markets. Generally, though, the readily available transportation technology stops where the road ends: Electrification of trains, planes and ships is less advanced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A state \u003ca href=\"https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/tech/techreport/ogv_tech_report.pdf?_ga=2.214068434.430973912.1559599041-177476988.1546391733\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analysis\u003c/a> found that ocean-going vessels still depend on heavily polluting marine fuels and, aside from nuclear powered-engines for military use, zero- and near-zero technologies are not currently available. Among smaller vessels, the famed Red and White \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/We-Can-Go-Greener-San-Francisco-Tour-Boat-Company-Launches-Hybrid-Electric-Ferry-510888701.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fleet\u003c/a> that tours San Francisco Bay added a new hybrid-electric ferry this week. And electric-battery passenger \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/passenger-ferries-are-going-electric-cb70b29f-fb19-4a10-bf53-24df0d9985bd.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ferries\u003c/a> may soon operate in Washington state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ships docking in California’s ports frequently forgo using diesel generators to operate and instead plug into shore-side electric power. But even when stationary, big vessels have a massive appetite: A nine-cylinder ship engine—five-stories tall and weighing 1,500 tons—can produce enough power to run 30,000 homes for a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s busy docks teem with those ships. About 40% of containerized goods that come into the United States enter through California, said the state’s Environmental Protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld. Their sulfur-based fuel “has to be heated up before you can use it—very energy-intensive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soot belching from Pacific vessels has been detected as far inland as Oklahoma, he said. When Blumenfeld was regional director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, it pushed through rules that require ships to switch to low-sulfur fuel 200 miles from the coast by next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But trucking is the major freight challenge for California. More than 97% of the state’s big rigs operate on diesel fuel, which is highly polluting and a significant contributor to detrimental health effects on those residing near transit corridors. Currently only a handful of electric or hybrid heavy-duty truck options exists, mostly prototypes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943158\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943158\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cars sit in miles-long traffic jam on southbound highway 101 as they approach a flooded section of the freeway on December 3, 2014 in Mill Valley, California. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I see 100% electrification as being far off; there just aren’t any of those trucks on the road,” said Brandon Taylor, director of transportation for GSC Logistics, a freight company operating at the Port of Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSC is testing a prototype electric semi. “We know electric is going to be the future, but the technology is not there yet. It’s going to be a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freight represents a transportation problem somewhat of our own making: We desire—and order online—more and more stuff, for delivery \u003cem>right now.\u003c/em> With each mouse click, delivery vans and trucks flood the state’s highways and neighborhood streets, dispatched to cover what supply-chain planners call “the last mile” of residential delivery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 20% of trips in the United States \u003ca href=\"https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">are\u003c/a>, in fact, less than a mile. But it’s too late to shut off the merchandise-delivery tap, and freight accounts for about a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/ogm/cs_freight_action_plan/Documents/CSFAP_Main%20Document_FINAL_07272016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">third \u003c/a>of the California Gross Domestic Product\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The influx of these trucks and vans runs counter to one of California’s bottom-line goals: to reduce not just the number of vehicles on roads but also, and more critically, the miles they travel. The mid-sized delivery vans taking the package handoff from heavy-duty trucks are turning over odometers at a dizzying rate; in Southern California, an \u003ca href=\"http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/sr_710/images/sr_710_faqs_goods_movement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimated \u003c/a>85% of truck traffic is dedicated to local deliveries and short hops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future is likely to include on-demand trucking. Predictably, there’s an app for that, Uber Freight, which launched in California in 2017. It’s one of a handful of load-matching apps that connect shippers with smaller, more nimble trucks plying local routes. The system is intended to increase efficiency and decrease total miles driven. Additionally, electric trucks can return to a home base at night to be recharged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same applies to another innovation expected to ease this delivery-vehicle Sigalert: Widespread adoption of 3D printers that will construct products closer to where consumers live, shrinking delivery areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big rigs in California not subject to the smog inspections that have \u003ca href=\"https://www.bar.ca.gov/Consumer/Smog_Check_Program_History.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">applied to cars\u003c/a> since 1982, partly due to early pushback from trucking companies and insurmountable complexities involved in regulating out-of-state vehicles. But that could change: A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB210\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bill \u003c/a>advancing in the Legislature would create smog checks for big diesel trucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more efficient parking, with real-time information about empty spots, would allow drivers to use 25% less fuel to find them, according to a recent Caltrans plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state will need to retrofit highways to allow charging of electric freight trucks, which some experts say may still be a decade away. Planners are examining exactly what an electric-truck stop would require: Big trucks need big batteries and very large charging infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utility companies in California, Oregon and Washington are underwriting a study that will examine how to provide electric charging and hydrogen fueling along the entirety of Interstate 5, with bays for next-generation semi-trucks running on batteries or hydrogen gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state air board contributed $41 million to a test program at the port of Los Angeles, which two years ago set aside a mile of highway with an overhead charging system to refuel prototype electric trucks, much like electric cable cars operate. Ten big rigs that run on hydrogen-electric hybrid engines are coming next year, added to 16,000 trucks that work the port every year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently there is only a handful of electric or hybrid heavy-duty trucks, and those are prototypes. State regulators recognize that innovation doesn’t always align with government goals and deadlines and is planning for clean technology where feasible. Like everything else, it’s not going to be cheap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost of an electric semi-tractor trailer, $300,000 and more, is more than twice that of a traditional diesel truck. That can be a burden on mom and pop companies, 90% of whose fleets contain six or fewer trucks and who operate on relatively tight margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to be tough,” even with state subsidies, said Chris Shimoda, lobbyist for the California Trucking Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shimoda said his members don’t care what type of fuel the state requires. “Everybody knows this is the direction California is going,” he said. “It’s easy to say we have a goal of eliminating fossil fuels, but as I think everyone would admit, the details of how to get there are important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the Port of Oakland, with freight-train horns blaring in the background, Taylor said by phone that it’s eerie to see—but not hear—his company’s electric big-rig pull into one of the loading bays. “It kind of sneaks up on you,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has been testing the truck for more than a year, underwritten partly by a state grant, and expects delivery of two more in the fall. Taylor uses the truck to move containers around the port but has yet to put it on the road, echoing the “range anxiety” associated with electric cars. His truck’s battery runs out and needs recharging after 120 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The steep cost of replacing entire trucking fleets with electric vehicles, even with subsidies, may be a burden on small companies, he acknowledged. But improving air quality is a worthy goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve seen myself the difference as the diesel engines have gotten cleaner and cleaner,” Taylor said. “It used to be that with all the trucks working the port, I’d get a headache after an hour or two.” Now he doesn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I guess it can only get better with electrics,” he said. “I’m not sure how it’s all going to work, but it’s happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"dropcap\">Work used to be much simpler for the California Department of Transportation: Widen highways, fill potholes, build new freeways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alas, those quaint days are gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To get an idea of what planners must prepare for, state officials recently hosted a demonstration of a drone air taxi that will require devising a “highway above the ground,” said Reza Navai, a Caltrans transportation planner. “If you think transportation on the ground is complex.…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such sci-fi-like transit is one of many high-tech changes coming as California implements its planned electrification of transportation to radically reduce greenhouse-gas \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/californias-climate-fight-gets-harder-soon-big-culprit-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emissions\u003c/a>. The path to zero, as in \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/will-california-ban-gas-powered-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">zero-emission vehicles\u003c/a>, extends well beyond flying taxis and the 5 million electric cars the state hopes will be on its roads by 2030. Everything—\u003cem>everything\u003c/em>—will be replaced with an electric analog: from boats, planes and trains to delivery vans to farm tractors and even forklifts. The to-do list stretches as long as California’s seemingly endless blacktop, with freight as a major challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s transportation gurus envision technology that will ping driverless vehicles with an automated message when they stray from their lanes, “smart” roads that charge electric cars and trucks as they pass and an electrified Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main freight corridor. California has already widened its painted lane stripes to six inches from four so self-driving vehicles can better “see” the road. Ultimately, the highways themselves will be redesigned and constructed with different materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s transportation agency, which updates its master plan every five years, is currently preparing a look at 2050. While officials cannot predict each new technological wrinkle, Reza said, “We must be able to consider all the possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To achieve a\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/articles/california-rising-vehicle-emissions-despite-growth-in-electric-cars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> carbon-free transportation\u003c/a> future, California will need to cover a lot more ground in a short time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If California’s trying to be a leader, we have to go as fast as possible,” said Lew Fulton, who studies sustainable transportation at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies. “Policies are critical to try to speed this up and try to push the envelope, and get all the manufacturers scared enough that they start producing what we need. Carrots and sticks. Carrots being pricing and incentives, sticks being regulatory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state has spent more than \u003ca href=\"http://www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/press-releases/2018/10/25/carb-approves-483-million-funding-plan-for-clean-transportation-investments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$1 billion\u003c/a> dollars in the last five years to encourage research, subsidize the exchange of internal combustion vehicles for zero-emission options, formulate cleaner fuels and expand vital charging infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is working with technology firms to clean up heavily polluting marine fuels belching from container ships at California ports. And state funds are helping Central Valley farmers, who are on a waiting list to crush their aging farm equipment and receive rebates to replace it with fuel-efficient models.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such projects may get a boost from California’s Tesla-owner governor, Gavin Newsom, as budget negotiations wrap up this month. His proposed spending plan includes nearly $24 billion for all aspects of transportation, a 6% increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, a group of legislators has \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/CALSTARTletter.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expressed support\u003c/a> for a nonprofit organization’s proposal that 15% of annual revenue from cap-and-trade auctions go to programs to clean up emissions from trucks, buses and off-road vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"infogram-embed\">\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://infogram.com/transportationtrucking-facts-1hmr6g3dgvo34nl\">https://infogram.com/transportationtrucking-facts-1hmr6g3dgvo34nl\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Few transportation modes have clean-engine options as advanced as those for passenger cars. Buses are the exception. The Chinese company BYD, manufacturing electric buses in Lancaster, is the largest in North America and has produced more than 300 buses, including nearly half of the Antelope Valley Transit Authority’s pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city of Los Angeles has \u003ca href=\"https://thesource.metro.net/2017/07/27/as-metro-pursues-electric-bus-fleet-by-2030-three-bus-contracts-go-to-board-on-thursday/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pledged\u003c/a> to convert its bus fleet—second-largest in the country—to electric by 2030, though mechanical and performance \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-20180520-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">problems\u003c/a> plagued the rollout of its BYD vehicles. Many other transit districts have similar goals and include school buses. The financial burden of those commitments is softened by state \u003ca href=\"https://www.californiahvip.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">vouchers\u003c/a> for up to $200,000 toward the purchase of each zero-emission bus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The availability of some electric all-terrain recreational vehicles, farm machinery and specialty equipment such as cherry-pickers and front-end loaders has produced niche markets. Generally, though, the readily available transportation technology stops where the road ends: Electrification of trains, planes and ships is less advanced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A state \u003ca href=\"https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/tech/techreport/ogv_tech_report.pdf?_ga=2.214068434.430973912.1559599041-177476988.1546391733\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analysis\u003c/a> found that ocean-going vessels still depend on heavily polluting marine fuels and, aside from nuclear powered-engines for military use, zero- and near-zero technologies are not currently available. Among smaller vessels, the famed Red and White \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/We-Can-Go-Greener-San-Francisco-Tour-Boat-Company-Launches-Hybrid-Electric-Ferry-510888701.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fleet\u003c/a> that tours San Francisco Bay added a new hybrid-electric ferry this week. And electric-battery passenger \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/passenger-ferries-are-going-electric-cb70b29f-fb19-4a10-bf53-24df0d9985bd.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ferries\u003c/a> may soon operate in Washington state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ships docking in California’s ports frequently forgo using diesel generators to operate and instead plug into shore-side electric power. But even when stationary, big vessels have a massive appetite: A nine-cylinder ship engine—five-stories tall and weighing 1,500 tons—can produce enough power to run 30,000 homes for a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s busy docks teem with those ships. About 40% of containerized goods that come into the United States enter through California, said the state’s Environmental Protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld. Their sulfur-based fuel “has to be heated up before you can use it—very energy-intensive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soot belching from Pacific vessels has been detected as far inland as Oklahoma, he said. When Blumenfeld was regional director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, it pushed through rules that require ships to switch to low-sulfur fuel 200 miles from the coast by next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But trucking is the major freight challenge for California. More than 97% of the state’s big rigs operate on diesel fuel, which is highly polluting and a significant contributor to detrimental health effects on those residing near transit corridors. Currently only a handful of electric or hybrid heavy-duty truck options exists, mostly prototypes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943158\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943158\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/RS13356_459889074-qut.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cars sit in miles-long traffic jam on southbound highway 101 as they approach a flooded section of the freeway on December 3, 2014 in Mill Valley, California. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I see 100% electrification as being far off; there just aren’t any of those trucks on the road,” said Brandon Taylor, director of transportation for GSC Logistics, a freight company operating at the Port of Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSC is testing a prototype electric semi. “We know electric is going to be the future, but the technology is not there yet. It’s going to be a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freight represents a transportation problem somewhat of our own making: We desire—and order online—more and more stuff, for delivery \u003cem>right now.\u003c/em> With each mouse click, delivery vans and trucks flood the state’s highways and neighborhood streets, dispatched to cover what supply-chain planners call “the last mile” of residential delivery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 20% of trips in the United States \u003ca href=\"https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">are\u003c/a>, in fact, less than a mile. But it’s too late to shut off the merchandise-delivery tap, and freight accounts for about a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/ogm/cs_freight_action_plan/Documents/CSFAP_Main%20Document_FINAL_07272016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">third \u003c/a>of the California Gross Domestic Product\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The influx of these trucks and vans runs counter to one of California’s bottom-line goals: to reduce not just the number of vehicles on roads but also, and more critically, the miles they travel. The mid-sized delivery vans taking the package handoff from heavy-duty trucks are turning over odometers at a dizzying rate; in Southern California, an \u003ca href=\"http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/sr_710/images/sr_710_faqs_goods_movement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimated \u003c/a>85% of truck traffic is dedicated to local deliveries and short hops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future is likely to include on-demand trucking. Predictably, there’s an app for that, Uber Freight, which launched in California in 2017. It’s one of a handful of load-matching apps that connect shippers with smaller, more nimble trucks plying local routes. The system is intended to increase efficiency and decrease total miles driven. Additionally, electric trucks can return to a home base at night to be recharged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same applies to another innovation expected to ease this delivery-vehicle Sigalert: Widespread adoption of 3D printers that will construct products closer to where consumers live, shrinking delivery areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big rigs in California not subject to the smog inspections that have \u003ca href=\"https://www.bar.ca.gov/Consumer/Smog_Check_Program_History.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">applied to cars\u003c/a> since 1982, partly due to early pushback from trucking companies and insurmountable complexities involved in regulating out-of-state vehicles. But that could change: A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB210\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bill \u003c/a>advancing in the Legislature would create smog checks for big diesel trucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more efficient parking, with real-time information about empty spots, would allow drivers to use 25% less fuel to find them, according to a recent Caltrans plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state will need to retrofit highways to allow charging of electric freight trucks, which some experts say may still be a decade away. Planners are examining exactly what an electric-truck stop would require: Big trucks need big batteries and very large charging infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utility companies in California, Oregon and Washington are underwriting a study that will examine how to provide electric charging and hydrogen fueling along the entirety of Interstate 5, with bays for next-generation semi-trucks running on batteries or hydrogen gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state air board contributed $41 million to a test program at the port of Los Angeles, which two years ago set aside a mile of highway with an overhead charging system to refuel prototype electric trucks, much like electric cable cars operate. Ten big rigs that run on hydrogen-electric hybrid engines are coming next year, added to 16,000 trucks that work the port every year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently there is only a handful of electric or hybrid heavy-duty trucks, and those are prototypes. State regulators recognize that innovation doesn’t always align with government goals and deadlines and is planning for clean technology where feasible. Like everything else, it’s not going to be cheap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost of an electric semi-tractor trailer, $300,000 and more, is more than twice that of a traditional diesel truck. That can be a burden on mom and pop companies, 90% of whose fleets contain six or fewer trucks and who operate on relatively tight margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to be tough,” even with state subsidies, said Chris Shimoda, lobbyist for the California Trucking Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shimoda said his members don’t care what type of fuel the state requires. “Everybody knows this is the direction California is going,” he said. “It’s easy to say we have a goal of eliminating fossil fuels, but as I think everyone would admit, the details of how to get there are important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the Port of Oakland, with freight-train horns blaring in the background, Taylor said by phone that it’s eerie to see—but not hear—his company’s electric big-rig pull into one of the loading bays. “It kind of sneaks up on you,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has been testing the truck for more than a year, underwritten partly by a state grant, and expects delivery of two more in the fall. Taylor uses the truck to move containers around the port but has yet to put it on the road, echoing the “range anxiety” associated with electric cars. His truck’s battery runs out and needs recharging after 120 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The steep cost of replacing entire trucking fleets with electric vehicles, even with subsidies, may be a burden on small companies, he acknowledged. But improving air quality is a worthy goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve seen myself the difference as the diesel engines have gotten cleaner and cleaner,” Taylor said. “It used to be that with all the trucks working the port, I’d get a headache after an hour or two.” Now he doesn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I guess it can only get better with electrics,” he said. “I’m not sure how it’s all going to work, but it’s happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Who’s Checking Your Neighborhood for Flammable Brush? Maybe No One",
"headTitle": "Who’s Checking Your Neighborhood for Flammable Brush? Maybe No One | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s one of the most confounding sights of California’s recent firestorms: One home is completely destroyed, and another right next door is still standing, even untouched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"small\"]Cal Fire inspected just 17% of properties in 2018 in areas where the agency is responsible for checking defensible space, according to a KQED analysis of almost a half-million inspection records. That is just over half of the agency’s 33% goal.[/pullquote]Might be luck. Or it could be because that homeowner took care of the property’s “defensible space,” an area around the building where flammable brush and grass have been cut back, depriving the fire of fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts say even a few homes surrounded by too much growth can put an entire neighborhood at risk. So in many parts of the state, inspectors go door to door, checking a home’s defensible space and issuing citations for violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a KQED investigation has found homes and buildings in Northern California, in some of the most at-risk fire areas in the state, are rarely inspected \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency responsible for checking defensible space in much of California\u003c/span>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one Cal Fire region in the Sierra Nevada, just 6% of properties were inspected in 2018. In the Bay Area, Cal Fire inspected just 12% of properties in its jurisdiction that includes Napa and Sonoma counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, in Southern California coastal counties, county fire departments are checking homes at much higher rates, with some counties looking at 100% of properties and sending homeowners multiple reminders to make their houses safer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should be doing more, doing better,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension, after reviewing the findings. “We need to have more people aware they live on a fire-prone landscape and taking action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"small\" citation=\"Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Glendale\"]‘Having one property that’s badly out of compliance can put an entire neighborhood at risk.’[/pullquote]Cal Fire, for its part, says it’s struggling to meet its inspection goals due to a lack of inspectors and resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many Californians, a defensible space inspection will be the only exposure to wildfire planning they get.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s not too many other ways people will learn about the vulnerability of their own home other than having an inspector or firefighter at their property,” Moritz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lake County: Many Fires, Few Inspections\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One place struggling to enforce defensible space is also one of the hardest hit by wildfires in recent years: Lake County, just north of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cal Fire unit that covers Lake County inspected just 12% of properties in its overall region in 2018. Local fire departments have also tried to do inspections, but have been busy with the catastrophic fires of recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, the \u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1226\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valley Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> burned almost 2,000 homes and structures in the county. Then came the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1390\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clayton Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2016, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1876\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sulphur Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2017 and the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6073/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mendocino Complex\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2018. That four-county blaze was the largest in state history, scorching 717 square miles, a bigger area than is taken up by the cities of Houston or Phoenix.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1943083\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_190607C.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve burned up about 45 percent of our county land mass,” said Willie Sapeta, fire chief for the Lake County Fire Protection District. “Lake County as a whole is suffering from PTSD just because everyone is so traumatized by it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sapeta has seen first-hand the difference that maintaining defensible space can make. In 2015, the Clayton Fire was racing through tall grass and brush on the outskirts of the town of Lower Lake. But it slowed down when it approached the Lower Lake Historic Schoolhouse Museum; there, the grasses had been mowed within 100 feet of the wooden building, creating a buffer. The shrubs around the museum also had large gaps between them, another important defensible space tactic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum, and the buildings behind it, were left untouched by the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Definitely a big part of Lower Lake was saved by having that defensible space in place,” Sapeta said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, the hills remain covered with dead, blackened trees, but the undergrowth has sprung back, fed by this winter’s abundant rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with the scars of wildfire still visible, Sapeta says, many homeowners still haven’t cleared their defensible space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Life happens,” he said. “They’ve got kids. They’ve got jobs. And then all of a sudden they don’t realize we’re in June and all that brush is right up against their home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The firefighters in Sapeta’s fire district, one of several covering the county, try to make defensible space inspections when they can. But mostly they’re responding to emergency calls like fires, car crashes and heart attacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943085\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943085\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-800x752.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"752\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-800x752.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-160x150.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-768x722.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-1020x959.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lake County, where Willie Sapeta leads the fire protection district, passed a defensible space ordinance for the first time this year. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To really educate homeowners and enforce the rules, Sapeta says, he needs dedicated inspectors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would love to have a fire prevention program where I’ve got a staff of six or eight people,” he said. “Nothing more in the world I’d love, to be able to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the funds, however, aren’t there. “It takes everything we have just to keep our doors open. The small rural counties just don’t have the resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lake County’s Board of Supervisors passed its first defensible space ordinance earlier this year, despite the opposition of some members of the public concerned about the cost of clearing their properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, even without additional funding, inspectors are visiting homes for the first time. To do that, the planning department is temporarily pulling building inspectors off their jobs to focus on vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Other counties are in the same boat, particularly like Butte and Shasta counties,” said Mary Jane Montana, Lake County’s chief building official. “None of us have a lot money, and we’re faced with the same thing. So, we kind of just had to say, ‘We’re doing it this year.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘Everybody Wants to Save Their Community’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire safety is very different in other parts of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"small\" citation=\"Fire Protection District Chief Willie Sapeta, on the lack of defensible space inspections in Lake County\"]‘It takes everything we have just to keep our doors open. The small rural counties just don’t have the resources.’[/pullquote]“All these homes have chimneys,” said Charles Butler, code enforcement officer for San Diego Fire-Rescue, squinting at a row of suburban homes. “Another thing I look for is tree canopy up over the chimney. That is a violation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler enters the information on an iPad, something he does at thousands of homes every year. He’s one of five inspectors responsible for about 45,000 homes in San Diego’s wildland-urban interface, where houses are nestled against open space or rugged canyons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he finds dead brush or tall weeds, he leaves the homeowner a notice about what to fix, with several weeks to comply. The city then does another inspection, and if the work still isn’t complete, follows up a third time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If problems persist, the city hires a contractor to clear the brush. The owner is then on the hook for the cost, and a lien is put on their property. The city has to resort to this process, called “forced abatement,” on a few dozen properties each year, often at \u003ca href=\"https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/science-environment/this-company-will-clear-fire-hazards-from-your-property-whether-you-asked-it-to-or-not/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">considerable cost \u003c/a>to the owner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people who don’t follow the rules are elderly or financially burdened, says Marcy Garcia\u003cstrong>,\u003c/strong> San Diego Fire-Rescue’s code compliance supervisor. In those cases, the city tries to connect violators with local fire-safe councils, the community-led groups that have \u003ca href=\"http://firesafesdcounty.org/dsap/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grants or have other resources\u003c/a> available to help get the work done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943081\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943081\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-800x714.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"714\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-800x714.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-160x143.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-768x685.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-1020x910.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego code enforcement officer Charles Butler enters defensible space inspection data. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Garcia says the overall compliance rate is high because the city provides crucial reminders to homeowners who may care about fire safety but haven’t gotten around to fixing their property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially in the areas where there have been fires before, they’re very receptive to it,” said Garcia. “Everybody wants to save their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cal Fire Struggling\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to local governments, Cal Fire is also responsible for enforcing defensible space regulations, for more than 750,000 homes and buildings within 31 million acres that fall outside city and town limits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across that territory, Cal Fire is struggling to meet its inspection goals, especially in rural Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A defensible space law, passed in 2005, \u003ca href=\"http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/communications_firesafety_100feet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">requires a 100-foot buffer\u003c/a> around homes in fire zones. From zero to 30 feet, homeowners must create a “lean and green” zone by trimming trees so they don’t hang over roofs and clearing dead grass and brush. Between 30 and 100 feet, they must keep shrubs spaced apart and grasses mowed to 4 inches or less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our goal is to inspect every property in our responsibility area every three years,” said Steven Hawks, deputy chief for Cal Fire’s wildland fire-prevention engineering program. “Defensible space is a critical component to a home surviving a wildland fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire reports it’s close to its goal. From July 2017 through June 2018, it completed 217,666 inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But doesn’t mean Cal Fire visited 217,666 properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of almost a half- million inspection records shows the agency’s inspection rate was just 17% of properties in 2018, far below the agency’s 33% goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason for the discrepancy is that Cal Fire includes multiple trips to the same properties that failed a first inspection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also includes visits in areas where responsibility for inspections has been handed to county fire departments. And those rates are dramatically higher than Cal Fire’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Orange County and Ventura County fire departments each inspect 100% of properties in risky fire zones every year. The Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara County fire departments get to around 60%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Cal Fire sends money to those counties, as well as Marin and Kern, because they do their own firefighting, it generally doesn’t cover the costs of their entire defensible space programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943088\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"1050\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B-160x224.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s defensible space law requires managing vegetation 100 feet around structures. \u003ccite>(Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Achieving those high inspection rates takes substantial county investment. Some county fire departments have dedicated teams of year-round inspectors, while others rely on firefighting engine crews.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It does take resources and commitment, but we do it because it’s one of the most important programs in the department,” says Ventura County Fire Marshal Massoud Araghi. “This is what we believe will save structures and will help our firefighters be safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Araghi estimated a 99.9% compliance rate from the county’s homeowners, something he attributes to annual inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very important the time period is consistent,” he said. “Everyone knows they have to have it clean by a certain time. If you have long periods of time in between, you won’t be successful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Resources Lacking\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some high-risk fire areas where Cal Fire does inspections, properties receive dramatically few inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the low end, just 6% of properties received inspections in 2018 by the Cal Fire unit that covers the Sierra Nevada counties of Amador, El Dorado, Sacramento and Alpine. At that rate, which has remained mostly consistent since 2010, each property would be visited about once every 16 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same pattern is found in the nearby rural counties of Nevada, Yuba, Placer, Sierra and Sutter, where 7% of properties were inspected in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties, where recent fires have been historically devastating, Cal Fire inspected just 12% of properties last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire gives several reasons for the low numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, the agency hires between four and six defensible space inspectors in each of its 21 units throughout the state, but those inspectors are only funded to work three months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in 2011, that money came from a $152 annual fee on homeowners within Cal Fire’s jurisdiction\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>But the levy was opposed by many in rural counties who saw it as an added tax, and in 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to suspend it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, Cal Fire’s defensible space funding has come from revenue generated by the state’s cap-and-trade program, designed to lower carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without more funding, Cal Fire Deputy Chief Hawks says, it will be tough to increase the inspection rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another issue is that inspectors are not distributed in proportion to the number of properties in each region. A Cal Fire unit that covers 35,000 properties has four seasonal inspectors, for example, but one with double that number has just six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943091\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943091\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-800x657.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"657\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-800x657.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-160x131.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-768x630.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-1020x837.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cal Fire firefighter Tony Kochis discusses defensible space with a homeowner in Yountville, California in 2014. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We should look at the numbers like you’re looking at them,” Hawks told KQED. “We may have some units that have a larger number of parcels than others, and they should get more of the resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire has the power to hire contractors to clean up properties when homeowners don’t comply, but it’s not something the agency currently does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t really have the staff to accomplish that mission,” Hawks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, Hawks says, Cal Fire hasn’t been able to hire enough people to take care of its defensible space responsibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have not been able to fill our defensible space inspectors in every unit every year,” he said. “So having enough qualified people on the list to fill our positions is important.” Hawks could not provide numbers for how many positions have gone unfilled or the reasons why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Typically, some inspections are done by the agency’s firefighters during down times. But with fire seasons getting longer and more intense, there hasn’t been much of that in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s difficult with the fire seasons being the way they’ve been,” Hawks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Doubling Inspections\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawmakers in Sacramento are now considering a bill, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AB 1516\u003c/a>, that mandates Cal Fire do inspections at a rate double what it does now. The bill requires the agency to inspect properties once every three years, beginning in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to change the way that we think about clearing the foliage off of private property,” said the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Glendale. “Having one property that’s badly out of compliance can put an entire neighborhood at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would also create new defensible space rules specifically for the zone within five feet of a building, something many defensible space experts recommend. Cal Fire would be responsible for identifying which kinds of plants homeowners aren’t allowed to grow in that zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would say absolutely the zero-to-5 feet is the most important place to focus on,” said Alexandra Syphard, chief scientist at Sage Underwriters, a company that evaluates the fire risk of homes for the insurance industry. “The things that tend to be the most important are those things that are right up against the house: trees overhanging your roof, vegetation that’s touching the structure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many homes are ignited by embers that are blown ahead of a wildfire as opposed to actually being lit by flames. If a tree or bush next to a house catches fire that way, it can spread to the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defensible space can reduce that risk and also give firefighters the necessary space to maneuver and defend a home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t have to be drastic,” said Syphard. “You can still have a lot of vegetation on your property, but reducing it by at least 20% is a critical threshold where you do significantly improve survival chances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she cautions that there’s no guarantee a home will be spared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of homes with more defensible space than is even required are still destroyed by fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With many Californians struggling to get fire insurance policies, there’s also a push for insurance companies to consider the maintenance of defensible space when setting rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to look at how do we allow Californians to get maybe a discount for mitigating wildfire risk, for hardening their home … similar to what we give in terms of discounts for good drivers,” said Ricardo Lara, California’s insurance commissioner. “We’re pushing insurance companies now, and surprisingly they’re coming to the table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire has not said what doubling inspections would cost, but if AB 1516 passes, the agency would request the funding as part of its annual budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do need more resources for Cal Fire,” said Assemblymember Friedman. “I do believe that Governor Newsom is very serious about investing to make our communities more resilient to fire and he’ll see the wisdom in investing in these kinds of programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"780\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https://kqednews.carto.com/builder/eb7d93a3-2cc8-410e-826a-22d3e7e97721/embed\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A KQED investigation found homes and buildings in rural parts of Northern California, in some of the state's most fire-prone areas, are rarely inspected for brush and grass that can ignite and put whole neighborhoods in jeopardy.",
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"description": "A KQED investigation found homes and buildings in rural parts of Northern California, in some of the state's most fire-prone areas, are rarely inspected for brush and grass that can ignite and put whole neighborhoods in jeopardy.",
"title": "Who’s Checking Your Neighborhood for Flammable Brush? Maybe No One | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s one of the most confounding sights of California’s recent firestorms: One home is completely destroyed, and another right next door is still standing, even untouched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "Cal Fire inspected just 17% of properties in 2018 in areas where the agency is responsible for checking defensible space, according to a KQED analysis of almost a half-million inspection records. That is just over half of the agency’s 33% goal.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Might be luck. Or it could be because that homeowner took care of the property’s “defensible space,” an area around the building where flammable brush and grass have been cut back, depriving the fire of fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts say even a few homes surrounded by too much growth can put an entire neighborhood at risk. So in many parts of the state, inspectors go door to door, checking a home’s defensible space and issuing citations for violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a KQED investigation has found homes and buildings in Northern California, in some of the most at-risk fire areas in the state, are rarely inspected \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency responsible for checking defensible space in much of California\u003c/span>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one Cal Fire region in the Sierra Nevada, just 6% of properties were inspected in 2018. In the Bay Area, Cal Fire inspected just 12% of properties in its jurisdiction that includes Napa and Sonoma counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, in Southern California coastal counties, county fire departments are checking homes at much higher rates, with some counties looking at 100% of properties and sending homeowners multiple reminders to make their houses safer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should be doing more, doing better,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension, after reviewing the findings. “We need to have more people aware they live on a fire-prone landscape and taking action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Having one property that’s badly out of compliance can put an entire neighborhood at risk.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Cal Fire, for its part, says it’s struggling to meet its inspection goals due to a lack of inspectors and resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many Californians, a defensible space inspection will be the only exposure to wildfire planning they get.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s not too many other ways people will learn about the vulnerability of their own home other than having an inspector or firefighter at their property,” Moritz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lake County: Many Fires, Few Inspections\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One place struggling to enforce defensible space is also one of the hardest hit by wildfires in recent years: Lake County, just north of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cal Fire unit that covers Lake County inspected just 12% of properties in its overall region in 2018. Local fire departments have also tried to do inspections, but have been busy with the catastrophic fires of recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, the \u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1226\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valley Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> burned almost 2,000 homes and structures in the county. Then came the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1390\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clayton Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2016, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1876\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sulphur Fire\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2017 and the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6073/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mendocino Complex\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2018. That four-county blaze was the largest in state history, scorching 717 square miles, a bigger area than is taken up by the cities of Houston or Phoenix.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1943083\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_190607C.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve burned up about 45 percent of our county land mass,” said Willie Sapeta, fire chief for the Lake County Fire Protection District. “Lake County as a whole is suffering from PTSD just because everyone is so traumatized by it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sapeta has seen first-hand the difference that maintaining defensible space can make. In 2015, the Clayton Fire was racing through tall grass and brush on the outskirts of the town of Lower Lake. But it slowed down when it approached the Lower Lake Historic Schoolhouse Museum; there, the grasses had been mowed within 100 feet of the wooden building, creating a buffer. The shrubs around the museum also had large gaps between them, another important defensible space tactic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum, and the buildings behind it, were left untouched by the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Definitely a big part of Lower Lake was saved by having that defensible space in place,” Sapeta said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, the hills remain covered with dead, blackened trees, but the undergrowth has sprung back, fed by this winter’s abundant rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with the scars of wildfire still visible, Sapeta says, many homeowners still haven’t cleared their defensible space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Life happens,” he said. “They’ve got kids. They’ve got jobs. And then all of a sudden they don’t realize we’re in June and all that brush is right up against their home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The firefighters in Sapeta’s fire district, one of several covering the county, try to make defensible space inspections when they can. But mostly they’re responding to emergency calls like fires, car crashes and heart attacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943085\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943085\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-800x752.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"752\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-800x752.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-160x150.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-768x722.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county-1020x959.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/lake-county.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lake County, where Willie Sapeta leads the fire protection district, passed a defensible space ordinance for the first time this year. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To really educate homeowners and enforce the rules, Sapeta says, he needs dedicated inspectors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would love to have a fire prevention program where I’ve got a staff of six or eight people,” he said. “Nothing more in the world I’d love, to be able to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the funds, however, aren’t there. “It takes everything we have just to keep our doors open. The small rural counties just don’t have the resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lake County’s Board of Supervisors passed its first defensible space ordinance earlier this year, despite the opposition of some members of the public concerned about the cost of clearing their properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, even without additional funding, inspectors are visiting homes for the first time. To do that, the planning department is temporarily pulling building inspectors off their jobs to focus on vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Other counties are in the same boat, particularly like Butte and Shasta counties,” said Mary Jane Montana, Lake County’s chief building official. “None of us have a lot money, and we’re faced with the same thing. So, we kind of just had to say, ‘We’re doing it this year.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘Everybody Wants to Save Their Community’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire safety is very different in other parts of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘It takes everything we have just to keep our doors open. The small rural counties just don’t have the resources.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“All these homes have chimneys,” said Charles Butler, code enforcement officer for San Diego Fire-Rescue, squinting at a row of suburban homes. “Another thing I look for is tree canopy up over the chimney. That is a violation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler enters the information on an iPad, something he does at thousands of homes every year. He’s one of five inspectors responsible for about 45,000 homes in San Diego’s wildland-urban interface, where houses are nestled against open space or rugged canyons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he finds dead brush or tall weeds, he leaves the homeowner a notice about what to fix, with several weeks to comply. The city then does another inspection, and if the work still isn’t complete, follows up a third time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If problems persist, the city hires a contractor to clear the brush. The owner is then on the hook for the cost, and a lien is put on their property. The city has to resort to this process, called “forced abatement,” on a few dozen properties each year, often at \u003ca href=\"https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/science-environment/this-company-will-clear-fire-hazards-from-your-property-whether-you-asked-it-to-or-not/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">considerable cost \u003c/a>to the owner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people who don’t follow the rules are elderly or financially burdened, says Marcy Garcia\u003cstrong>,\u003c/strong> San Diego Fire-Rescue’s code compliance supervisor. In those cases, the city tries to connect violators with local fire-safe councils, the community-led groups that have \u003ca href=\"http://firesafesdcounty.org/dsap/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grants or have other resources\u003c/a> available to help get the work done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943081\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943081\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-800x714.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"714\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-800x714.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-160x143.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-768x685.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire-1020x910.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/san-diego-fire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego code enforcement officer Charles Butler enters defensible space inspection data. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Garcia says the overall compliance rate is high because the city provides crucial reminders to homeowners who may care about fire safety but haven’t gotten around to fixing their property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially in the areas where there have been fires before, they’re very receptive to it,” said Garcia. “Everybody wants to save their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cal Fire Struggling\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to local governments, Cal Fire is also responsible for enforcing defensible space regulations, for more than 750,000 homes and buildings within 31 million acres that fall outside city and town limits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across that territory, Cal Fire is struggling to meet its inspection goals, especially in rural Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A defensible space law, passed in 2005, \u003ca href=\"http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/communications_firesafety_100feet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">requires a 100-foot buffer\u003c/a> around homes in fire zones. From zero to 30 feet, homeowners must create a “lean and green” zone by trimming trees so they don’t hang over roofs and clearing dead grass and brush. Between 30 and 100 feet, they must keep shrubs spaced apart and grasses mowed to 4 inches or less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our goal is to inspect every property in our responsibility area every three years,” said Steven Hawks, deputy chief for Cal Fire’s wildland fire-prevention engineering program. “Defensible space is a critical component to a home surviving a wildland fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire reports it’s close to its goal. From July 2017 through June 2018, it completed 217,666 inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But doesn’t mean Cal Fire visited 217,666 properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of almost a half- million inspection records shows the agency’s inspection rate was just 17% of properties in 2018, far below the agency’s 33% goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason for the discrepancy is that Cal Fire includes multiple trips to the same properties that failed a first inspection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also includes visits in areas where responsibility for inspections has been handed to county fire departments. And those rates are dramatically higher than Cal Fire’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Orange County and Ventura County fire departments each inspect 100% of properties in risky fire zones every year. The Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara County fire departments get to around 60%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Cal Fire sends money to those counties, as well as Marin and Kern, because they do their own firefighting, it generally doesn’t cover the costs of their entire defensible space programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943088\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1943088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"1050\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/KQEDScience_Defensible_SideBar_190607B-160x224.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s defensible space law requires managing vegetation 100 feet around structures. \u003ccite>(Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Achieving those high inspection rates takes substantial county investment. Some county fire departments have dedicated teams of year-round inspectors, while others rely on firefighting engine crews.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It does take resources and commitment, but we do it because it’s one of the most important programs in the department,” says Ventura County Fire Marshal Massoud Araghi. “This is what we believe will save structures and will help our firefighters be safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Araghi estimated a 99.9% compliance rate from the county’s homeowners, something he attributes to annual inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very important the time period is consistent,” he said. “Everyone knows they have to have it clean by a certain time. If you have long periods of time in between, you won’t be successful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Resources Lacking\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some high-risk fire areas where Cal Fire does inspections, properties receive dramatically few inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the low end, just 6% of properties received inspections in 2018 by the Cal Fire unit that covers the Sierra Nevada counties of Amador, El Dorado, Sacramento and Alpine. At that rate, which has remained mostly consistent since 2010, each property would be visited about once every 16 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same pattern is found in the nearby rural counties of Nevada, Yuba, Placer, Sierra and Sutter, where 7% of properties were inspected in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties, where recent fires have been historically devastating, Cal Fire inspected just 12% of properties last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire gives several reasons for the low numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, the agency hires between four and six defensible space inspectors in each of its 21 units throughout the state, but those inspectors are only funded to work three months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in 2011, that money came from a $152 annual fee on homeowners within Cal Fire’s jurisdiction\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>But the levy was opposed by many in rural counties who saw it as an added tax, and in 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to suspend it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, Cal Fire’s defensible space funding has come from revenue generated by the state’s cap-and-trade program, designed to lower carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without more funding, Cal Fire Deputy Chief Hawks says, it will be tough to increase the inspection rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another issue is that inspectors are not distributed in proportion to the number of properties in each region. A Cal Fire unit that covers 35,000 properties has four seasonal inspectors, for example, but one with double that number has just six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943091\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943091\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-800x657.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"657\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-800x657.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-160x131.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-768x630.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited-1020x837.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/Cal-fire-edited.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cal Fire firefighter Tony Kochis discusses defensible space with a homeowner in Yountville, California in 2014. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We should look at the numbers like you’re looking at them,” Hawks told KQED. “We may have some units that have a larger number of parcels than others, and they should get more of the resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire has the power to hire contractors to clean up properties when homeowners don’t comply, but it’s not something the agency currently does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t really have the staff to accomplish that mission,” Hawks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, Hawks says, Cal Fire hasn’t been able to hire enough people to take care of its defensible space responsibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have not been able to fill our defensible space inspectors in every unit every year,” he said. “So having enough qualified people on the list to fill our positions is important.” Hawks could not provide numbers for how many positions have gone unfilled or the reasons why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Typically, some inspections are done by the agency’s firefighters during down times. But with fire seasons getting longer and more intense, there hasn’t been much of that in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s difficult with the fire seasons being the way they’ve been,” Hawks said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Doubling Inspections\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawmakers in Sacramento are now considering a bill, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AB 1516\u003c/a>, that mandates Cal Fire do inspections at a rate double what it does now. The bill requires the agency to inspect properties once every three years, beginning in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to change the way that we think about clearing the foliage off of private property,” said the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Glendale. “Having one property that’s badly out of compliance can put an entire neighborhood at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would also create new defensible space rules specifically for the zone within five feet of a building, something many defensible space experts recommend. Cal Fire would be responsible for identifying which kinds of plants homeowners aren’t allowed to grow in that zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would say absolutely the zero-to-5 feet is the most important place to focus on,” said Alexandra Syphard, chief scientist at Sage Underwriters, a company that evaluates the fire risk of homes for the insurance industry. “The things that tend to be the most important are those things that are right up against the house: trees overhanging your roof, vegetation that’s touching the structure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many homes are ignited by embers that are blown ahead of a wildfire as opposed to actually being lit by flames. If a tree or bush next to a house catches fire that way, it can spread to the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defensible space can reduce that risk and also give firefighters the necessary space to maneuver and defend a home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t have to be drastic,” said Syphard. “You can still have a lot of vegetation on your property, but reducing it by at least 20% is a critical threshold where you do significantly improve survival chances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she cautions that there’s no guarantee a home will be spared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of homes with more defensible space than is even required are still destroyed by fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With many Californians struggling to get fire insurance policies, there’s also a push for insurance companies to consider the maintenance of defensible space when setting rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to look at how do we allow Californians to get maybe a discount for mitigating wildfire risk, for hardening their home … similar to what we give in terms of discounts for good drivers,” said Ricardo Lara, California’s insurance commissioner. “We’re pushing insurance companies now, and surprisingly they’re coming to the table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire has not said what doubling inspections would cost, but if AB 1516 passes, the agency would request the funding as part of its annual budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do need more resources for Cal Fire,” said Assemblymember Friedman. “I do believe that Governor Newsom is very serious about investing to make our communities more resilient to fire and he’ll see the wisdom in investing in these kinds of programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"780\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https://kqednews.carto.com/builder/eb7d93a3-2cc8-410e-826a-22d3e7e97721/embed\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
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