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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974232/en-sus-propias-palabras-los-residentes-de-la-ciudad-del-este-de-palo-alto-responden-al-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar-que-se-avecina\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leer en español\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rising seas due to climate change will not affect everyone equally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, the city of East Palo Alto is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1973805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">particularly vulnerable\u003c/a> to sea level rise: It’s surrounded by water on three sides; it’s low-lying; and it sits beside the southern part of the bay, where tides are highest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"science_1973805,science_1973624\"]Critical infrastructure like the Dumbarton Bridge and Highway 101 lie within or next to East Palo Alto, and a rising tide on the city’s shoreline will disrupt life for many in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to those whose homes line the city’s streets, who frequent its neighborhood stores and parks, whose neighbors are family and friends, the prospect of sea level rise is far more frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Below, three residents share their thoughts about protecting the people and places they hold dear as the world continues to warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Filiberto Zaragoza, 18, senior at Menlo-Atherton High School\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I first heard of climate change, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I was still young and just thinking, “Oh, the world is fine and everything.” But learning about it made me question, what are people really doing to help out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973715 \" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-1020x639.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"426\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-1020x639.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-800x501.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-160x100.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-768x481.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1.png 1424w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 426px) 100vw, 426px\">\u003c/a>I’ve lived in East Palo Alto all my life. We live right by the bay, surrounded by water. My number one biggest fear is coming back here in the future to see only parts of my city still left, having neighborhoods I’ve been through now underwater or flooded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I am hopeful for change. I am a core member at Youth United for Community Action, where we fight for housing, environmental justice and restorative justice. I know that in the future, as things might get worse, YUCA will still be here in East Palo Alto protecting the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ulises Barbosa, 34, works in construction\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973718\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-800x1141.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"392\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-800x1141.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1020x1455.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-160x228.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-768x1095.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1077x1536.jpeg 1077w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1436x2048.jpeg 1436w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530.jpeg 1440w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I first heard about climate change, it was bittersweet. I had mixed emotions. I was interested in learning more about the topic, but I also realized that in an unconscious way we were damaging our planet. And that made me feel very sad and powerless, because I didn’t know what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those of us who live here in East Palo Alto are afraid because we know that we’ve already been affected, and that if we don’t get to work, we’ll continue to be affected. We’d like to learn more about climate change. Right now, most of my friends and I have been taking an environmental awareness class, where they talk a lot about climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We live along the seashore. Climate change can affect the sea level enough that it could cover much of East Palo Alto, practically covering our homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope it’s not just us, but also the rest of our community, politicians and people around the world who unite to counteract this problem. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to do our part here, bit by bit, every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cristina Becerra, 16, junior at Palo Alto High School\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel really sad but hopeful, and a sense of urgency — like we have to do this now. I feel I have to tell as many people as possible about what’s going on and how they can help. I always talk to my dad about how we should go solar, and I really want to plant trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973716\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-1020x680.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"417\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\">\u003c/a>My greatest fear is that if nothing is done and the time comes and all these houses flood, a bunch of people have nowhere to go, or have to live with water on the ground. It just won’t be safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And having to worry about paying rent and fixing your house, what are they supposed to do? Where are all those people going to go?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My hope is that some changes are made. Small-scale changes like just East Palo Alto itself, the entire city going solar. That would really motivate other cities: “Oh, look at what they’re doing. We should do that, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope East Palo Alto is able to take preventive measures, building levees or just making sure that every home, especially those near the areas usually flooded, is prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974232/en-sus-propias-palabras-los-residentes-de-la-ciudad-del-este-de-palo-alto-responden-al-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar-que-se-avecina\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leer en español\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rising seas due to climate change will not affect everyone equally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, the city of East Palo Alto is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1973805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">particularly vulnerable\u003c/a> to sea level rise: It’s surrounded by water on three sides; it’s low-lying; and it sits beside the southern part of the bay, where tides are highest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Critical infrastructure like the Dumbarton Bridge and Highway 101 lie within or next to East Palo Alto, and a rising tide on the city’s shoreline will disrupt life for many in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to those whose homes line the city’s streets, who frequent its neighborhood stores and parks, whose neighbors are family and friends, the prospect of sea level rise is far more frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Below, three residents share their thoughts about protecting the people and places they hold dear as the world continues to warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Filiberto Zaragoza, 18, senior at Menlo-Atherton High School\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I first heard of climate change, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I was still young and just thinking, “Oh, the world is fine and everything.” But learning about it made me question, what are people really doing to help out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973715 \" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-1020x639.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"426\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-1020x639.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-800x501.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-160x100.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1-768x481.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/OwnWordsPhoto1.png 1424w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 426px) 100vw, 426px\">\u003c/a>I’ve lived in East Palo Alto all my life. We live right by the bay, surrounded by water. My number one biggest fear is coming back here in the future to see only parts of my city still left, having neighborhoods I’ve been through now underwater or flooded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I am hopeful for change. I am a core member at Youth United for Community Action, where we fight for housing, environmental justice and restorative justice. I know that in the future, as things might get worse, YUCA will still be here in East Palo Alto protecting the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ulises Barbosa, 34, works in construction\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973718\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-800x1141.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"392\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-800x1141.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1020x1455.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-160x228.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-768x1095.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1077x1536.jpeg 1077w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530-1436x2048.jpeg 1436w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Ulises-scaled-e1618344888530.jpeg 1440w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I first heard about climate change, it was bittersweet. I had mixed emotions. I was interested in learning more about the topic, but I also realized that in an unconscious way we were damaging our planet. And that made me feel very sad and powerless, because I didn’t know what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those of us who live here in East Palo Alto are afraid because we know that we’ve already been affected, and that if we don’t get to work, we’ll continue to be affected. We’d like to learn more about climate change. Right now, most of my friends and I have been taking an environmental awareness class, where they talk a lot about climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We live along the seashore. Climate change can affect the sea level enough that it could cover much of East Palo Alto, practically covering our homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope it’s not just us, but also the rest of our community, politicians and people around the world who unite to counteract this problem. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to do our part here, bit by bit, every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cristina Becerra, 16, junior at Palo Alto High School\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel really sad but hopeful, and a sense of urgency — like we have to do this now. I feel I have to tell as many people as possible about what’s going on and how they can help. I always talk to my dad about how we should go solar, and I really want to plant trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1973716\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-1020x680.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"417\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/Cristina.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\">\u003c/a>My greatest fear is that if nothing is done and the time comes and all these houses flood, a bunch of people have nowhere to go, or have to live with water on the ground. It just won’t be safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And having to worry about paying rent and fixing your house, what are they supposed to do? Where are all those people going to go?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My hope is that some changes are made. Small-scale changes like just East Palo Alto itself, the entire city going solar. That would really motivate other cities: “Oh, look at what they’re doing. We should do that, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope East Palo Alto is able to take preventive measures, building levees or just making sure that every home, especially those near the areas usually flooded, is prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "What Can the Bay Area Do About Rising Seas? East Palo Alto Has a Few Great Answers",
"headTitle": "What Can the Bay Area Do About Rising Seas? East Palo Alto Has a Few Great Answers | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974191/que-puede-hacer-el-area-de-la-bahia-ante-el-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar-el-este-de-palo-alto-ya-esta-proponiendo-algunas-soluciones\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Leer en español\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\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 first time the streets flooded, Appollonia Grey ‘Uhilamoelangi, known as Mama Dee in her East Palo Alto community, got a little nostalgic. The weather, though severely inclement, at least reminded her of home in Samoa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That time I was very happy,” ‘Uhilamoelangi said, about her first Bay Area deluge. “I was outside swimming in the rain, playing in the rain. There was water everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]According to projections, in 10 years or so up to two-thirds of East Palo Alto may regularly experience flooding, which could trigger cascading crises around the bay. Now, government, business and people have forged a new kind of partnership trying to prepare.[/pullquote]But East Palo Alto, with a population of 30,000, is prone to flooding, and three times over the next 30 years, torrential rains devastated the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last two floods over here, the question is, where was God?’ she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I believe in prayers. But I lived through so many disasters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Now, the bay waters being pushed higher by the effects of climate change pose an existential threat to this small community of mostly people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not hyperbole. East Palo Alto is located between San Francisco and San Jose at the western end of the Dumbarton Bridge. Of all Bay Area counties, San Mateo is the most at risk from sea level rise, and of all places in the county, East Palo Alto is one of the most vulnerable to climate-driven inundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2050 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move the map. Click the arrow to view the map legend. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=1f92f63dee1840c3b472fc341d98b11d&extent=-122.3564,37.3627,-121.9818,37.6717&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roughly 2.5 square miles of ranch-style homes and citrus trees, the city is bound by water on three sides, the San Francisquito Creek, meandering along the southern edge, the bay lying to the north and east.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, half of East Palo Alto sits within a federally \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofepa.org/sites/default/files/fileattachments/community_amp_economic_development/page/2531/fema_maps_2015_201509011239377956.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">designated flood zone\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. According to projections, in 10 years or so up to two-thirds of the land within city limits may regularly experience flooding. By mid-century, those areas could be frequently underwater during high tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"science_1973645,science_1973624\"]The effects of climate change are disproportionately impacting communities of color like those in East Palo Alto. Gentrification and an influx of tech behemoths like Facebook, Google and Amazon has changed the makeup of the city, but it’s still largely non-white, with a population of 66% Latino. Many Pacific Islanders like ‘Uhilamoelangi also live here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heavy rains regularly swell the creek and flood the city’s eastern sections, and an elevated sea level will severely exacerbate the problem, undermining the viability of East Palo Alto’s working-class community, says Derek Ouyang, a program manager and lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://bay.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Stanford Future Bay Initiative\u003c/span>\u003c/a> who works with community leaders in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you were to get to know 100 families in East Palo Alto, maybe 50 out of 100 already are right at that point at which savings are so low that … a flood event … could be that tipping point,” Ouyang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Floodwaters \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/02/03/a-flood-next-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">swamped\u003c/span>\u003c/a> more than 1,000 homes here in 1998. In 2012, the creek overtopped its banks, forcing evacuations. The city, working with its neighbors through the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, reengineered parts of its shoreline to mitigate the risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973972\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973972\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Floodwaters swamped East Palo Alto in 1998. \u003ccite>(Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For some in East Palo Alto, flooding and climate change are threatening their homes a second time. Climate refugees here from the Pacific Islands have already fled rising seas, only to face similar threats in a new country thousands of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many are collaborating with scientists, the city and the joint powers authority to save homes by restoring and creating a new wetland at the bay’s edge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While East Palo Alto’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofepa.org/sites/default/files/fileattachments/finance/page/4321/adopted_fy_2020-21_budget.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">budget\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, at $41.8 million, is 325 times smaller than San Francisco’s, the city is punching well above its weight in terms of planning for a higher tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973849\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973849\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi.jpg 480w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heleine Grewe, 17, and Leia Grewe, her mother. \u003ccite>(Kevin Stark/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet, it may not be enough. The interconnected nature of both the Bay Area’s ecosystem and infrastructure means that without a regional plan to protect all communities along the bay, East Palo Alto’s best efforts can be undermined, a fact not lost on city leadership and young activists, some of whom are teenagers frustrated they will inherit a city soon to be transformed by the fury of rising oceans and melting ice sheets.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just want a plan for the future, because if this happens and there’s going to be flooding everywhere, people should know how to respond,” said Heleine Grewe, a 17-year-old senior at Menlo-Atherton High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grewe’s maternal grandparents emigrated from Tonga, and her dad’s family arrived in a wave of Black Americans who moved to East Palo Alto in the middle of the last century. Many endured \u003ca href=\"https://bos.smcgov.org/history-east-palo-alto#:~:text=East%20Palo%20Alto%20became%20one,in%201983%3A%201%2C782%20to%201%2C767\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">blockbusting\u003c/span>\u003c/a> and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=East%20Palo%20Alto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">discriminatory housing practices\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, decades of bad policy rooted in deliberate racial segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mom, Leia, is worried the water will come purling through her back door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m thinking back to the places that weren’t ready,” she said. “Let’s talk about Katrina. That could be us in the next couple of years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Connecting the Climate Change Dots\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>‘Uhilamoelangi and her husband, Senita, known as Papa Senter, emigrated from Samoa to the United States in the mid-1970s because of the increasing frequency of hurricanes and tsunamis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of us islanders … never have a casual conversation [when we] talk about the rain, the flood,” she said. “Anytime there’s a tsunami at home, on any island, all of us connect and emotions rise.”\u003cbr>\nBut it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that she understood the link between those storms and a warming world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had no clue at all about climate change,” ‘Uhilamoelangi said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Listen to the Radio Stories\" link1=\"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/9781a65a-2213-47f8-8203-ad1201221d2f/audio.mp3,Part 1\" link2=\"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/eceb8c18-f067-4a06-97d7-ad13011a189e/audio.mp3,Part 2\" link3=\"https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/bcb8dc0d-d1ed-4496-bb0e-ad1701254f79/audio.mp3,Part 3\"]She connected the dots of flooding in East Palo Alto, severe weather in Samoa and rising seas when she met \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Violet Wulf-Saena\u003c/span> from \u003ca href=\"https://www.acterra.org/climate-resilient-communities\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Climate Resilient Communities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, a group dedicated to protecting the Peninsula’s underrepresented residents as the climate crisis grows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can ask questions that sound like stupid questions, but I always have an answer from Violet,” said Mama Dee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saena was Samoa’s original climate change officer, creating the country’s first resiliency plan. When she followed her husband to the Bay Area, she saw that the community needed to understand the looming threat. With the help of Stanford students, she went door to door in East Palo Alto, asking people what they knew about the effects of sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s easier for me, because I’m a person of color and I do come from the island,” she said. “They see that: ‘Oh, yeah, she’s part of us.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973818\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1973818 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate Resilient Communities Executive Director Violet Wulf-Saena at Cooley Landing Park in East Palo Alto. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Out of those discussions grew community climate groups aimed at educating and involving residents in East Palo Alto’s adaptation plans, as well as helping them with basic needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People want to take part in “tangible strategies,” \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wulf-Saena\u003c/span> said. “It’s not just the levee. It’s also other things that they can do themselves, like water cisterns or a rain garden system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She notes the large number of low-income residents who are going to need help. “(T)hey won’t have the means to be able to buy a car if their car is ruined by flooding. So, what programs can we implement that will help everybody?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a philosophy, if adopted by the entire Bay Area, can lead to a more climate-resilient region, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.elizabethallisonphd.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Elizabeth Allison\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, who studies the intersection of religion and ecology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that we need to adopt a sort of comprehensive ethic of care, actually, when we think about climate change,” she said. This would mean keeping in mind the entire planet, including future generations, “as if they mattered to us as much as our neighbors and friends and families do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Care is at the center of the ‘Uhilamoelangis’ organization, \u003ca href=\"https://anamatangi.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Anamantangi Polynesian Voices\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, which focuses on helping underserved new arrivals. Through person-to-person education, the couple have found a calling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are full-time volunteers for climate change,” Mama Dee said. “To avoid another disaster … where do we run?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not to higher ground, she says. The couple want East Palo Alto to remain diverse in the face of both sea level rise and gentrification, so they are sticking it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Semicircle of Protection\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in East Palo Alto will be protected in part by a new, high levee, separating a portion of the city from the San Francisquito Creek, which is connected to the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a 20-year-in-the making project [that] really started in that 1998 flood,” said Mayor Carlos Romero, standing atop the levee overlooking a neighborhood of mostly one-story homes and car-lined streets. “This was inundated. I had friends here who had 4 feet of water in their living room.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He fears another flooding event would hit East Palo Alto hard, devastating the city much like Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you were to just lie down here and look over the levee, you could see that some of the rooftops are below that levee,” he said. “Basically, it’s another Ninth Ward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973835\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973835\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-1020x764.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Mayor Carlos Romero on the new levee east of East Palo Alto. Homes to the left are the start of the city and to the right is a creek that leads to the bay. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Where this fancy new levee ends, the deteriorating structure it’s replacing picks up, providing “some protection, but not a lot,” said Tess Byler, senior project manager with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, where she oversees a program to help protect the region from sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to have the old levee entirely replaced by 2030. The project has formalized into the Strategy to Advance Flood Protection, Ecosystems and Recreation along San Francisco Bay, less cumbersomely known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/safer-bay-project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">SAFER Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed to simultaneously withstand a 100-year flood, high tide, and up to a 3.5 feet rise in sea level, this system of earthen and engineered systems, including marshes and levees, will stretch along the shoreline from the Redwood City-Menlo Park border in the north to the Palo Alto-Mountain View line in the south. Altogether, the system will have to contain a projected additional 10 feet to the current mean high-water mark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is split into nine portions, with phase one encompassing East Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Completion of the initial section, scheduled for 2024, will defend nearly 1,600 properties, mostly East Palo Alto homes, along marshes managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In Menlo Park, the plan calls for restoring more than 550 acres of former salt ponds to marsh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To enclose the circle of protection around this chunk of the bay will demand cooperation and dollars from private and government landowners as diverse as Caltrans, Facebook, and various utilities and municipalities, says Byler. Special-status wildlife must also be considered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just these invisible threads that we have to account for — things that we don’t see — the sanitary sewer alignment —and the electrical towers, which we can,” she said. “And then making sure that we’re being protective of the current high value marsh that is home to many wonderful species of birds and animals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much has yet to be decided, Byler says, including figuring out who is going to build the levees and how to clean up arsenic contamination left in the soil from an old hazardous waste plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she has confidence in the project, not only due to widespread community buy-in, but because the various entities appear to be working together, albeit not at the same pace. She says matching state money may add to the financing, which is almost complete.\u003cbr>\n“We have the funding for East Palo Alto, so that will be our initial focus,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The levee system is just one bite-size solution, though. Protecting critical infrastructure like Highway 101 will take a regional approach that includes every county in the Bay Area, says \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/staff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Len Materman\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, CEO of the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not there yet, by all nine counties,” he said. “The sooner that everybody’s on board, the better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cascading Effects\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason local stakeholders tend to expand the conversation to the entire Bay Area when they talk about solutions is that what happens in East Palo Alto doesn’t stay in East Alto, at least when it comes to the effects of climate change. A catastrophe here will ripple through the region to affect millions of inhabitants in dozens of cities bordering those on the shoreline most at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Grewes’ at-risk rent home, for instance, is roughly the same distance above sea level as the off-ramps to and from the Dumbarton Bridge. A deluged bridge could mean shutting down one of the major arteries connecting the East and South Bay, throwing the region’s already overburdened transportation system into disarray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTNaQmeCxY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same type of snowballing effects holds true for water and fuel distribution, communications systems and electricity, said Mark Stacey, an environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. The Bay Area is one interconnected ecosystem, he says, and every seawall, every dredge, every change to the bay’s edge has an impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In East Palo Alto, flooding could trigger cascading crises across the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we transform our shorelines or as our shorelines are transformed for us by sea level rise, the tidal dynamics in the bay are themselves altered,” Stacey said. “Local changes in the shoreline can have regional effects on high water levels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As tides constantly pulse into San Francisco Bay, the largest estuary along the West Coast, they sometimes dissipate gently across wetlands, and at other times raise the water level when pushing off seawalls along the shore, Stacey says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As different communities harden their shorelines against the water’s rise, future tides will slam against these seawalls, amplifying their power elsewhere along the bay and creating a feedback loop that will force the water several inches higher. This will impact millions of Bay Area residents. The southern part of the bay where East Palo Alto is located is most vulnerable to this amplification effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973862\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973862\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Dumbarton Bridge near East Palo Alto’s shoreline. \u003ccite>(JJ Harris - Techboogie/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jessica Fain, planning director for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, says East Palo Alto is a “sweet spot” where the Bay Area has the opportunity to address in one place many of the overlapping challenges related to sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All lines point to here,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The premise of the regional strategy that Fain is helping to design, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Bay Adapt\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, is that rising sea levels will affect all aspects of life.\u003cbr>\nThe agency, with no original mandate to take on sea level rise, has had to build a new kind of collaboration between cities, counties, businesses and people. It can use the carrot of grants that include guidance to conform to regional goals. Or it could try to gain a broader mandate to encourage good projects and reject unhelpful ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we’re not quite there yet,” Fain said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absent a directive to force cities and counties to coordinate their levees and other solutions, BCDC is working with community groups around the bay to encourage buy-in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the group \u003ca href=\"https://nuestracasa.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Nuestra Casa\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in East Palo Alto, program director Julio Garcia runs classes, workshops and focus groups to help give people a seat at the table in the creation of BCDC’s plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we didn’t have COVID-19, [climate change] is the number one crisis that we are facing,” Garcia said. “As a community of color, people who are workers, it is really important. Because if houses start flooding, where are we going to be moving to?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Grewes are both members of the group, where Heleine teaches an environmental justice class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would really love it if more surrounding cities would come together and kind of protect our little city,” Leia Grewe said, during a recent meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garcia’s concern, as well as Heleine’s and Leia’s, is that the expanded marshlands that can protect the homes here could also drive up housing prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll get moved out to like Stockton, Sacramento,” Leia said. “And I hate that, because when you think about East Palo Alto … a lot of our family members can’t come back. We can’t afford the property here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>East Palo Alto’s youngest City Council member, 27-year-old Antonio López, says he understands the Grewes’ concerns about gentrification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973840\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973840\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto City Council member Antonio López. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We here, certainly in the city, are fighting for you to stay here and be able to have a voice at the table,” he said. “The levees are just a symbol of us having that fighting chance of staying here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>López keeps a photo on his phone of San Francisquito Creek, swollen with rainwater, brown with mud, an inch below spilling over into neighborhood streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At the same spot the photo was taken, a green steel levee hugs the gentle turns of the creek — a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/reach-1-downstream-project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">section\u003c/span>\u003c/a> completed by the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority in 2019. East Palo Alto, working with the authority, widened the creek channel, rebuilt salt marshes and engineered the levee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Looking at the photo, “I see the anxiety of flood levels, but I also see opportunity and a reminder of where we need to be,” López said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "East Palo Alto, a small, mostly residential city, is punching well above its weight in terms of planning for the effects of accelerated climate change and the risk of rising tides.",
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"description": "East Palo Alto, a small, mostly residential city, is punching well above its weight in terms of planning for the effects of accelerated climate change and the risk of rising tides.",
"title": "What Can the Bay Area Do About Rising Seas? East Palo Alto Has a Few Great Answers | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974191/que-puede-hacer-el-area-de-la-bahia-ante-el-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar-el-este-de-palo-alto-ya-esta-proponiendo-algunas-soluciones\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Leer en español\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\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 first time the streets flooded, Appollonia Grey ‘Uhilamoelangi, known as Mama Dee in her East Palo Alto community, got a little nostalgic. The weather, though severely inclement, at least reminded her of home in Samoa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That time I was very happy,” ‘Uhilamoelangi said, about her first Bay Area deluge. “I was outside swimming in the rain, playing in the rain. There was water everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "According to projections, in 10 years or so up to two-thirds of East Palo Alto may regularly experience flooding, which could trigger cascading crises around the bay. Now, government, business and people have forged a new kind of partnership trying to prepare.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But East Palo Alto, with a population of 30,000, is prone to flooding, and three times over the next 30 years, torrential rains devastated the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last two floods over here, the question is, where was God?’ she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I believe in prayers. But I lived through so many disasters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Now, the bay waters being pushed higher by the effects of climate change pose an existential threat to this small community of mostly people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not hyperbole. East Palo Alto is located between San Francisco and San Jose at the western end of the Dumbarton Bridge. Of all Bay Area counties, San Mateo is the most at risk from sea level rise, and of all places in the county, East Palo Alto is one of the most vulnerable to climate-driven inundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2050 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move the map. Click the arrow to view the map legend. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=1f92f63dee1840c3b472fc341d98b11d&extent=-122.3564,37.3627,-121.9818,37.6717&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roughly 2.5 square miles of ranch-style homes and citrus trees, the city is bound by water on three sides, the San Francisquito Creek, meandering along the southern edge, the bay lying to the north and east.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, half of East Palo Alto sits within a federally \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofepa.org/sites/default/files/fileattachments/community_amp_economic_development/page/2531/fema_maps_2015_201509011239377956.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">designated flood zone\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. According to projections, in 10 years or so up to two-thirds of the land within city limits may regularly experience flooding. By mid-century, those areas could be frequently underwater during high tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The effects of climate change are disproportionately impacting communities of color like those in East Palo Alto. Gentrification and an influx of tech behemoths like Facebook, Google and Amazon has changed the makeup of the city, but it’s still largely non-white, with a population of 66% Latino. Many Pacific Islanders like ‘Uhilamoelangi also live here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heavy rains regularly swell the creek and flood the city’s eastern sections, and an elevated sea level will severely exacerbate the problem, undermining the viability of East Palo Alto’s working-class community, says Derek Ouyang, a program manager and lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://bay.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Stanford Future Bay Initiative\u003c/span>\u003c/a> who works with community leaders in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you were to get to know 100 families in East Palo Alto, maybe 50 out of 100 already are right at that point at which savings are so low that … a flood event … could be that tipping point,” Ouyang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Floodwaters \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/02/03/a-flood-next-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">swamped\u003c/span>\u003c/a> more than 1,000 homes here in 1998. In 2012, the creek overtopped its banks, forcing evacuations. The city, working with its neighbors through the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, reengineered parts of its shoreline to mitigate the risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973972\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973972\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/04/East-Palo-Alto-Flood-1998-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Floodwaters swamped East Palo Alto in 1998. \u003ccite>(Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For some in East Palo Alto, flooding and climate change are threatening their homes a second time. Climate refugees here from the Pacific Islands have already fled rising seas, only to face similar threats in a new country thousands of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many are collaborating with scientists, the city and the joint powers authority to save homes by restoring and creating a new wetland at the bay’s edge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While East Palo Alto’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofepa.org/sites/default/files/fileattachments/finance/page/4321/adopted_fy_2020-21_budget.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">budget\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, at $41.8 million, is 325 times smaller than San Francisco’s, the city is punching well above its weight in terms of planning for a higher tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973849\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973849\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi.jpg 480w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48667_IMG_2781-sfi-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heleine Grewe, 17, and Leia Grewe, her mother. \u003ccite>(Kevin Stark/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet, it may not be enough. The interconnected nature of both the Bay Area’s ecosystem and infrastructure means that without a regional plan to protect all communities along the bay, East Palo Alto’s best efforts can be undermined, a fact not lost on city leadership and young activists, some of whom are teenagers frustrated they will inherit a city soon to be transformed by the fury of rising oceans and melting ice sheets.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just want a plan for the future, because if this happens and there’s going to be flooding everywhere, people should know how to respond,” said Heleine Grewe, a 17-year-old senior at Menlo-Atherton High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grewe’s maternal grandparents emigrated from Tonga, and her dad’s family arrived in a wave of Black Americans who moved to East Palo Alto in the middle of the last century. Many endured \u003ca href=\"https://bos.smcgov.org/history-east-palo-alto#:~:text=East%20Palo%20Alto%20became%20one,in%201983%3A%201%2C782%20to%201%2C767\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">blockbusting\u003c/span>\u003c/a> and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=East%20Palo%20Alto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">discriminatory housing practices\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, decades of bad policy rooted in deliberate racial segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mom, Leia, is worried the water will come purling through her back door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m thinking back to the places that weren’t ready,” she said. “Let’s talk about Katrina. That could be us in the next couple of years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Connecting the Climate Change Dots\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>‘Uhilamoelangi and her husband, Senita, known as Papa Senter, emigrated from Samoa to the United States in the mid-1970s because of the increasing frequency of hurricanes and tsunamis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of us islanders … never have a casual conversation [when we] talk about the rain, the flood,” she said. “Anytime there’s a tsunami at home, on any island, all of us connect and emotions rise.”\u003cbr>\nBut it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that she understood the link between those storms and a warming world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had no clue at all about climate change,” ‘Uhilamoelangi said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>She connected the dots of flooding in East Palo Alto, severe weather in Samoa and rising seas when she met \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Violet Wulf-Saena\u003c/span> from \u003ca href=\"https://www.acterra.org/climate-resilient-communities\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Climate Resilient Communities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, a group dedicated to protecting the Peninsula’s underrepresented residents as the climate crisis grows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can ask questions that sound like stupid questions, but I always have an answer from Violet,” said Mama Dee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saena was Samoa’s original climate change officer, creating the country’s first resiliency plan. When she followed her husband to the Bay Area, she saw that the community needed to understand the looming threat. With the help of Stanford students, she went door to door in East Palo Alto, asking people what they knew about the effects of sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s easier for me, because I’m a person of color and I do come from the island,” she said. “They see that: ‘Oh, yeah, she’s part of us.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973818\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1973818 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48288_014_EastPaloAlto_SeaLevelRise_03292021-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate Resilient Communities Executive Director Violet Wulf-Saena at Cooley Landing Park in East Palo Alto. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Out of those discussions grew community climate groups aimed at educating and involving residents in East Palo Alto’s adaptation plans, as well as helping them with basic needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People want to take part in “tangible strategies,” \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wulf-Saena\u003c/span> said. “It’s not just the levee. It’s also other things that they can do themselves, like water cisterns or a rain garden system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She notes the large number of low-income residents who are going to need help. “(T)hey won’t have the means to be able to buy a car if their car is ruined by flooding. So, what programs can we implement that will help everybody?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a philosophy, if adopted by the entire Bay Area, can lead to a more climate-resilient region, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.elizabethallisonphd.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Elizabeth Allison\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, who studies the intersection of religion and ecology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that we need to adopt a sort of comprehensive ethic of care, actually, when we think about climate change,” she said. This would mean keeping in mind the entire planet, including future generations, “as if they mattered to us as much as our neighbors and friends and families do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Care is at the center of the ‘Uhilamoelangis’ organization, \u003ca href=\"https://anamatangi.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Anamantangi Polynesian Voices\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, which focuses on helping underserved new arrivals. Through person-to-person education, the couple have found a calling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are full-time volunteers for climate change,” Mama Dee said. “To avoid another disaster … where do we run?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not to higher ground, she says. The couple want East Palo Alto to remain diverse in the face of both sea level rise and gentrification, so they are sticking it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Semicircle of Protection\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in East Palo Alto will be protected in part by a new, high levee, separating a portion of the city from the San Francisquito Creek, which is connected to the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a 20-year-in-the making project [that] really started in that 1998 flood,” said Mayor Carlos Romero, standing atop the levee overlooking a neighborhood of mostly one-story homes and car-lined streets. “This was inundated. I had friends here who had 4 feet of water in their living room.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He fears another flooding event would hit East Palo Alto hard, devastating the city much like Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you were to just lie down here and look over the levee, you could see that some of the rooftops are below that levee,” he said. “Basically, it’s another Ninth Ward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973835\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973835\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-1020x764.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48549_Image-from-iOS-12-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Mayor Carlos Romero on the new levee east of East Palo Alto. Homes to the left are the start of the city and to the right is a creek that leads to the bay. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Where this fancy new levee ends, the deteriorating structure it’s replacing picks up, providing “some protection, but not a lot,” said Tess Byler, senior project manager with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, where she oversees a program to help protect the region from sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to have the old levee entirely replaced by 2030. The project has formalized into the Strategy to Advance Flood Protection, Ecosystems and Recreation along San Francisco Bay, less cumbersomely known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/safer-bay-project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">SAFER Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed to simultaneously withstand a 100-year flood, high tide, and up to a 3.5 feet rise in sea level, this system of earthen and engineered systems, including marshes and levees, will stretch along the shoreline from the Redwood City-Menlo Park border in the north to the Palo Alto-Mountain View line in the south. Altogether, the system will have to contain a projected additional 10 feet to the current mean high-water mark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is split into nine portions, with phase one encompassing East Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Completion of the initial section, scheduled for 2024, will defend nearly 1,600 properties, mostly East Palo Alto homes, along marshes managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In Menlo Park, the plan calls for restoring more than 550 acres of former salt ponds to marsh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To enclose the circle of protection around this chunk of the bay will demand cooperation and dollars from private and government landowners as diverse as Caltrans, Facebook, and various utilities and municipalities, says Byler. Special-status wildlife must also be considered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just these invisible threads that we have to account for — things that we don’t see — the sanitary sewer alignment —and the electrical towers, which we can,” she said. “And then making sure that we’re being protective of the current high value marsh that is home to many wonderful species of birds and animals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much has yet to be decided, Byler says, including figuring out who is going to build the levees and how to clean up arsenic contamination left in the soil from an old hazardous waste plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, she has confidence in the project, not only due to widespread community buy-in, but because the various entities appear to be working together, albeit not at the same pace. She says matching state money may add to the financing, which is almost complete.\u003cbr>\n“We have the funding for East Palo Alto, so that will be our initial focus,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The levee system is just one bite-size solution, though. Protecting critical infrastructure like Highway 101 will take a regional approach that includes every county in the Bay Area, says \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/staff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Len Materman\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, CEO of the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not there yet, by all nine counties,” he said. “The sooner that everybody’s on board, the better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cascading Effects\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason local stakeholders tend to expand the conversation to the entire Bay Area when they talk about solutions is that what happens in East Palo Alto doesn’t stay in East Alto, at least when it comes to the effects of climate change. A catastrophe here will ripple through the region to affect millions of inhabitants in dozens of cities bordering those on the shoreline most at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Grewes’ at-risk rent home, for instance, is roughly the same distance above sea level as the off-ramps to and from the Dumbarton Bridge. A deluged bridge could mean shutting down one of the major arteries connecting the East and South Bay, throwing the region’s already overburdened transportation system into disarray.\u003c/p>\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/2KTNaQmeCxY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/2KTNaQmeCxY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The same type of snowballing effects holds true for water and fuel distribution, communications systems and electricity, said Mark Stacey, an environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. The Bay Area is one interconnected ecosystem, he says, and every seawall, every dredge, every change to the bay’s edge has an impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In East Palo Alto, flooding could trigger cascading crises across the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we transform our shorelines or as our shorelines are transformed for us by sea level rise, the tidal dynamics in the bay are themselves altered,” Stacey said. “Local changes in the shoreline can have regional effects on high water levels.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As tides constantly pulse into San Francisco Bay, the largest estuary along the West Coast, they sometimes dissipate gently across wetlands, and at other times raise the water level when pushing off seawalls along the shore, Stacey says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As different communities harden their shorelines against the water’s rise, future tides will slam against these seawalls, amplifying their power elsewhere along the bay and creating a feedback loop that will force the water several inches higher. This will impact millions of Bay Area residents. The southern part of the bay where East Palo Alto is located is most vulnerable to this amplification effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973862\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973862\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48685_EPA_image_selects_websize-2.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Dumbarton Bridge near East Palo Alto’s shoreline. \u003ccite>(JJ Harris - Techboogie/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jessica Fain, planning director for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, says East Palo Alto is a “sweet spot” where the Bay Area has the opportunity to address in one place many of the overlapping challenges related to sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All lines point to here,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The premise of the regional strategy that Fain is helping to design, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayadapt.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Bay Adapt\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, is that rising sea levels will affect all aspects of life.\u003cbr>\nThe agency, with no original mandate to take on sea level rise, has had to build a new kind of collaboration between cities, counties, businesses and people. It can use the carrot of grants that include guidance to conform to regional goals. Or it could try to gain a broader mandate to encourage good projects and reject unhelpful ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we’re not quite there yet,” Fain said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absent a directive to force cities and counties to coordinate their levees and other solutions, BCDC is working with community groups around the bay to encourage buy-in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the group \u003ca href=\"https://nuestracasa.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">Nuestra Casa\u003c/span>\u003c/a> in East Palo Alto, program director Julio Garcia runs classes, workshops and focus groups to help give people a seat at the table in the creation of BCDC’s plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we didn’t have COVID-19, [climate change] is the number one crisis that we are facing,” Garcia said. “As a community of color, people who are workers, it is really important. Because if houses start flooding, where are we going to be moving to?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Grewes are both members of the group, where Heleine teaches an environmental justice class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would really love it if more surrounding cities would come together and kind of protect our little city,” Leia Grewe said, during a recent meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garcia’s concern, as well as Heleine’s and Leia’s, is that the expanded marshlands that can protect the homes here could also drive up housing prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll get moved out to like Stockton, Sacramento,” Leia said. “And I hate that, because when you think about East Palo Alto … a lot of our family members can’t come back. We can’t afford the property here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>East Palo Alto’s youngest City Council member, 27-year-old Antonio López, says he understands the Grewes’ concerns about gentrification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973840\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973840\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/RS48562_Image-from-iOS-30-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto City Council member Antonio López. \u003ccite>(Ezra David Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We here, certainly in the city, are fighting for you to stay here and be able to have a voice at the table,” he said. “The levees are just a symbol of us having that fighting chance of staying here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>López keeps a photo on his phone of San Francisquito Creek, swollen with rainwater, brown with mud, an inch below spilling over into neighborhood streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At the same spot the photo was taken, a green steel levee hugs the gentle turns of the creek — a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcjpa.org/reach-1-downstream-project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s2\">section\u003c/span>\u003c/a> completed by the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority in 2019. East Palo Alto, working with the authority, widened the creek channel, rebuilt salt marshes and engineered the levee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Looking at the photo, “I see the anxiety of flood levels, but I also see opportunity and a reminder of where we need to be,” López said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974195/mapa-ver-los-lugares-en-riesgo-de-inundacion-por-el-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leer en español\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2050 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move the map. Click the arrow to view the map legend. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=1f92f63dee1840c3b472fc341d98b11d&extent=-122.3564,37.3627,-121.9818,37.6717&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bay’s high tide level is going in one direction: up. Models used in the state’s latest sea level rise \u003ca href=\"http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">assessment\u003c/a>, from 2017, include an upper range defined in terms of statistically less probable events. They show the bay could rise by up to 1.9 feet by the year 2050 and 6.9 feet by the end of the century, which are greater than the levels shown in the two maps on this page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it could get even worse: Cities preparing for future flooding also have to worry about several additional feet of water crashing against their shorelines during a bad storm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already during storms, East Palo Alto and other cities along the shoreline experience coastal flooding and erosion, which will only be exacerbated by the coming rise in sea level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rising seas is one of the most certain of the effects of climate change,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/stacey\">Mark Stacey\u003c/a>, a UC Berkeley environmental engineer. “We know much of that is already baked in, and we know the seas are going to continue to rise at pace and perhaps accelerate in the coming decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Differences in scientific modeling scenarios before the year 2050 are minor, but they diverge significantly after mid-century depending on the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, which human beings will determine, and the fate of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2100 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move different directions on the map. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=64c2754019244ff7ae2ac93f22843366&extent=-122.3832,37.3647,-121.9633,37.6737&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legendlayers=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These models don’t incorporate a more extreme scenario, in which ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica collapse. If this occurs, the Bay Area could see 10 feet of sea level rise by 2100 — what Stacey calls a “massive acceleration” that’s 30 to 40 times faster than the rate of increase we’ve experienced over the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This goes beyond the scope of what we’ve thought about in planning horizons in terms of the magnitude of change that we’d be facing as a region,” he said, adding that such an increase would require a “complete rethinking of the community surrounding the entire Bay Area, and a move of infrastructure systems that would be pretty profound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s assessment says: “Aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions may substantially reduce but do not eliminate the risk to California of extreme sea-level rise from Antarctic ice loss.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Data Sources\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Projections for Bay Area flooding are from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “representative concentration pathway” 8.5 scenario as detailed in California’s latest sea level rise science \u003ca href=\"http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">assessment\u003c/a>, led by Gary Griggs from UC Santa Cruz.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The scenario assumes “there are no significant global efforts to limit or reduce emissions.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The maps uses a dynamic computer model from \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Our\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Coast\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">, \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Our\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Future\u003c/a>. Flood estimates are approximations. Data are from the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal Storm Modeling System 9 CoSMoS v2.1; Barnard et al, 2014.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide \u003ca href=\"http://connected-coastlines.pulitzercenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connected Coastlines reporting initiative\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1974195/mapa-ver-los-lugares-en-riesgo-de-inundacion-por-el-aumento-del-nivel-del-mar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leer en español\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2050 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move the map. Click the arrow to view the map legend. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=1f92f63dee1840c3b472fc341d98b11d&extent=-122.3564,37.3627,-121.9818,37.6717&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bay’s high tide level is going in one direction: up. Models used in the state’s latest sea level rise \u003ca href=\"http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">assessment\u003c/a>, from 2017, include an upper range defined in terms of statistically less probable events. They show the bay could rise by up to 1.9 feet by the year 2050 and 6.9 feet by the end of the century, which are greater than the levels shown in the two maps on this page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it could get even worse: Cities preparing for future flooding also have to worry about several additional feet of water crashing against their shorelines during a bad storm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already during storms, East Palo Alto and other cities along the shoreline experience coastal flooding and erosion, which will only be exacerbated by the coming rise in sea level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rising seas is one of the most certain of the effects of climate change,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/stacey\">Mark Stacey\u003c/a>, a UC Berkeley environmental engineer. “We know much of that is already baked in, and we know the seas are going to continue to rise at pace and perhaps accelerate in the coming decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Differences in scientific modeling scenarios before the year 2050 are minor, but they diverge significantly after mid-century depending on the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, which human beings will determine, and the fate of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch5>Bay Area 2100 Projected Sea Level Rise\u003c/h5>\n\u003cp style=\"line-height: 90%\">\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small\">\u003cem>Use your mouse to move different directions on the map. Use the + and – signs to zoom in and out. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Sources: USGS, OCOF, Pacific Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=64c2754019244ff7ae2ac93f22843366&extent=-122.3832,37.3647,-121.9633,37.6737&home=true&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=false&details=true&legendlayers=true&active_panel=legend&disable_scroll=true&theme=light\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These models don’t incorporate a more extreme scenario, in which ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica collapse. If this occurs, the Bay Area could see 10 feet of sea level rise by 2100 — what Stacey calls a “massive acceleration” that’s 30 to 40 times faster than the rate of increase we’ve experienced over the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This goes beyond the scope of what we’ve thought about in planning horizons in terms of the magnitude of change that we’d be facing as a region,” he said, adding that such an increase would require a “complete rethinking of the community surrounding the entire Bay Area, and a move of infrastructure systems that would be pretty profound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s assessment says: “Aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions may substantially reduce but do not eliminate the risk to California of extreme sea-level rise from Antarctic ice loss.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Data Sources\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Projections for Bay Area flooding are from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “representative concentration pathway” 8.5 scenario as detailed in California’s latest sea level rise science \u003ca href=\"http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">assessment\u003c/a>, led by Gary Griggs from UC Santa Cruz.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The scenario assumes “there are no significant global efforts to limit or reduce emissions.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The maps uses a dynamic computer model from \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Our\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Coast\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">, \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Our\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://ourcoastourfuture.org/\">Future\u003c/a>. Flood estimates are approximations. Data are from the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal Storm Modeling System 9 CoSMoS v2.1; Barnard et al, 2014.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"headTitle": "Earth Day 2021: 11 Bay Area Events to Get You Inspired | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, kicked off the modern environmental movement with more than 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population — hitting the streets to demand action against unchecked pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now in its 51st year, the event has transformed into a global movement with participation by more than 1 billion people across 192 countries. This year’s theme is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.earthday.org/toolkit-earth-day-2021-restore-our-earth/\">Restore Our Earth\u003c/a>,” emphasizing the importance of enlisting natural processes, emerging green technologies and innovative thinking to restore ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, on its 50th anniversary, California EPA Secretary Jared Blumenfeld \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1962618/has-earth-day-had-any-impact-california-environmental-chief-weighs-in\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said \u003c/a>Earth Day has had “a major impact on policy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back in 1970, we didn’t have the Clean Air Act, we didn’t have the Clean Water Act, we didn’t have any federal legislation, really, relating to the environment,” he said. “And people went out on the streets, made their voices heard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year Earth Day will be mainly virtual again. But with the Bay Area slowly opening up, there are some in-person options, too. Just remember to mask up and social distance. Below are a few, mostly Bay Area events to put on your radar:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrate-earth-day-outdoors-with-bandaloop-vertical-dance-open-rehearsal-tickets-150758900931\">\u003cstrong>BANDALOOP\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Vertical Dance Rehearsal Outdoors\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 4-5 p.m., Oakland, In-Person Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCelebrate Earth Day with aerial dance company BANDALOOP and special guests as the group unveils excerpts from its newest work, LOOM, weaving performance, research and education around the ancestral power and ecological impacts of textiles past, present and future. Event highlights include: Live music by Ben Juodvalkis, Chibueze Crouch, and Charles Peoples III. Special guest speakers include eco-somatic dance artist and inaugural BANDALOOP Artist-In-Residence Jes DeVille, and Phoenix Armenta from the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1974001\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1974001\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg\" alt=\"BANDALOOP dancers perform on side of building in Oakland\" width=\"800\" height=\"445\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert-768x427.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">BANDALOOP dancers perform on the side of the Breuner building in downtown Oakland. \u003ccite>(Krystal Harfert/BANDALOOP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.calacademy.org/nightlife/nightschool-earth-day-for-the-people\">\u003cstrong>California Academy of Sciences\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>NightSchool: Earth Day for the People\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nGet inspired by people and organizations radically changing both the health of the environment and their communities through “greenprint” projects that focus on sustainable development, environmental justice, and remaking the food system. Featured speakers include: Elizabeth Hiroyasu, landscape scientist at The Nature Conservancy of California; Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta, assistant professor at the University of Arizona and director of Project Harvest; and Ashley Yates, media director for Planting Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://chabotspace.org/calendar/saving-the-dark-movie-and-panel-discussion/\">\u003cstrong>Chabot Space and Science Center\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Screening: Saving the Dark\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 23 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nEnjoy a special screening and discussion of “Saving The Dark,” a documentary about astronomy and light pollution. Event highlights include film producer Sriram Murali, joined by astronomers Richard Ozer and Gerald McKeegan, to discuss the costs of light pollution, including its effects on our health, wildlife and environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/calendar/after-dark-online-earth-day\">\u003cstrong>The Exploratorium\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>After Dark Online: Earth Day\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nDiscover the work of local organizations that expose inequitable impacts of climate change and advocate for environmental justice and legislation. Event highlights include: Conversations with youth leaders from Oakland-based Youth vs. Apocalypse and a virtual screening of the short film “My 25: The Ocean Between Us,” a student film that merges memories and reality to tell an intimate story of how our oceans have changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/events/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy\u003cbr>\nEarth Day Events\u003cbr>\nMake a Monarch Butterfly Kite for Earth Day!\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nJoin National Park Service Ranger Rebecca Au and Price Sheppy as they take you step by step through building your own monarch butterfly kite to fly on Earth Day. You will also hear stories about the monarch butterfly and find out more about what you can do to help these beautiful animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/events/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>Monitoring Frogs in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 23 – Noon-1:30 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nLearn about the common and uncommon frogs you can see in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Join the conversation and find out about efforts to reintroduce and monitor the California red-legged frog, a threatened population in the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://fortmason.org/event/flix/international-ocean-film-festival-2021-earth-day/\">\u003cstrong>International Ocean Film Festival (IOFF)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Drive-in Screening at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 8:30-10:30 p.m.\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Tickets Required, $49 Per Vehicle\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nIOFF is presenting a special screening of two of its 2021 award-winning films, “Ocean Souls” and “Whales in a Changing Ocean.” This screening is part of the 18th annual IOFF taking place virtually through May 2, showcasing more than 80 independent films, representing 17 countries, reflecting IOFF’s mission of restoring, protecting and balancing ocean biodiversity through independent films. If you can’t make it to the drive-in, these films are also screening virtually. Check out this year’s festival schedule at \u003ca href=\"http://www.IntlOceanFilmFest.org/\">IntlOceanFilmFest.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/events/146656235749\">KQED\u003cbr>\nOn Common Ground: Hyper-Local Climate Resilience\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 6 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nMany people can adapt to climate change via migration, but for some, adaptation means finding the solutions to remain in place. KQED’s senior science editor, Katrin Snow, will moderate a conversation on how resiliency takes hold on a local level in two very different locations, Marin City and the Sierra Nevada. Special guests include: Terrie Harris-Green of Shore Up Marin City; Beth Rose Middleton Manning, professor and department chair of the Native American Studies Department at UC Davis; and guest reporter Janelle Marie Salanga, engagement reporting intern at the College Journalism Network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day 2021\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 21-23 – Multiday, Free Virtual Events\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nWhen you think of NASA, you might think of astronauts and missions to Mars. But NASA also has a variety of missions that focus on studying Earth, from sea level rise to hurricanes. NASA’s three-day Earth Day virtual event extravaganza features: Live presentations and chats with NASA Earth science experts; an interactive kid-friendly science fun zone with coloring and activity sheets; and Meet a Scientist videos. Plus, you can find out how you can be a scientist for NASA. There’s also an online scavenger hunt to kick off #GrowForLaunch, a chance to learn about plants grown in space and how you can start your own “space” garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/programs-and-events/earth-day\">\u003cstrong>Oakland Zoo\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Events\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22-25 – 10 a.m.-3:30p.m., Timed Tickets Required, $24-$20, Free Virtual Activities\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCelebrate animals and the planet and learn how to take action against the illegal wildlife trade. All guests must reserve a ticket for a specific date and entry time. Event highlights include an in-person scavenger hunt that will focus on animals that need saving from illegal wildlife trade. The zoo also has several online activities to help you act for the planet from the comfort of your own home, such as learning what plants attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://browercenter.org/wsff-2021\">\u003cstrong>The David Brower Center\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Wild and Scenic Film Festival Earth Day 2021\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Tickets Required, General $25, Student $15, Group Rates Available \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe Wild and Scenic Film Festival, organized by Citizens Climate Lobby Alameda County, the David Brower Center, Earth Island Institute, Green the Church, and Communities for a Better Environment, is hosting a virtual Earth Day screening with films that tell extraordinary stories of local and global front-line communities fighting for environmental justice and restoration. After the live event on the 22nd, all films will be available on-demand from April 23-27. Included with every ticket is an on-demand bonus session featuring five films about threatened wildlife and efforts to protect their habitats and save them from extinction. Get $5 off with this special code: WSFFDBC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1974013\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1974013\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg\" alt=\"earthday_wsf\" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman--160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman--768x490.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Included with every ticket is an on-demand bonus session featuring five amazing films about threatened wildlife and efforts to protect their habitats and save them from extinction. \u003ccite>(Wild and Scenic Film Festival)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Check your local event listings for additional Earth Day related community events in your neighborhood. And be sure to bookmark \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareascience.org\">bayareascience.org\u003c/a> for year-round science and environment events and festivals. Below is a reminder of a few things you can do to make every day Earth Day, courtesy of the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/ocean/earthday.html\">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1974014\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg\" alt=\"NOAAA\" width=\"800\" height=\"501\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2-768x481.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Earth Day is mainly virtual again, but there's still plenty to do and see. Check out KQED Science's event picks this year. ",
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"subhead": "Check out KQED's San Francisco Bay Area Earth Day 2021 event picks and get inspired! Enjoy mainly virtual events from the California Academy of Sciences, the Exploratorium, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the Oakland Zoo and more!",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, kicked off the modern environmental movement with more than 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population — hitting the streets to demand action against unchecked pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now in its 51st year, the event has transformed into a global movement with participation by more than 1 billion people across 192 countries. This year’s theme is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.earthday.org/toolkit-earth-day-2021-restore-our-earth/\">Restore Our Earth\u003c/a>,” emphasizing the importance of enlisting natural processes, emerging green technologies and innovative thinking to restore ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, on its 50th anniversary, California EPA Secretary Jared Blumenfeld \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1962618/has-earth-day-had-any-impact-california-environmental-chief-weighs-in\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said \u003c/a>Earth Day has had “a major impact on policy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back in 1970, we didn’t have the Clean Air Act, we didn’t have the Clean Water Act, we didn’t have any federal legislation, really, relating to the environment,” he said. “And people went out on the streets, made their voices heard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year Earth Day will be mainly virtual again. But with the Bay Area slowly opening up, there are some in-person options, too. Just remember to mask up and social distance. Below are a few, mostly Bay Area events to put on your radar:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrate-earth-day-outdoors-with-bandaloop-vertical-dance-open-rehearsal-tickets-150758900931\">\u003cstrong>BANDALOOP\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Vertical Dance Rehearsal Outdoors\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 4-5 p.m., Oakland, In-Person Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCelebrate Earth Day with aerial dance company BANDALOOP and special guests as the group unveils excerpts from its newest work, LOOM, weaving performance, research and education around the ancestral power and ecological impacts of textiles past, present and future. Event highlights include: Live music by Ben Juodvalkis, Chibueze Crouch, and Charles Peoples III. Special guest speakers include eco-somatic dance artist and inaugural BANDALOOP Artist-In-Residence Jes DeVille, and Phoenix Armenta from the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1974001\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1974001\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg\" alt=\"BANDALOOP dancers perform on side of building in Oakland\" width=\"800\" height=\"445\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/BandaLoop_Photo-by-Krystal-Harfert-768x427.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">BANDALOOP dancers perform on the side of the Breuner building in downtown Oakland. \u003ccite>(Krystal Harfert/BANDALOOP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.calacademy.org/nightlife/nightschool-earth-day-for-the-people\">\u003cstrong>California Academy of Sciences\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>NightSchool: Earth Day for the People\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nGet inspired by people and organizations radically changing both the health of the environment and their communities through “greenprint” projects that focus on sustainable development, environmental justice, and remaking the food system. Featured speakers include: Elizabeth Hiroyasu, landscape scientist at The Nature Conservancy of California; Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta, assistant professor at the University of Arizona and director of Project Harvest; and Ashley Yates, media director for Planting Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://chabotspace.org/calendar/saving-the-dark-movie-and-panel-discussion/\">\u003cstrong>Chabot Space and Science Center\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Screening: Saving the Dark\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 23 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nEnjoy a special screening and discussion of “Saving The Dark,” a documentary about astronomy and light pollution. Event highlights include film producer Sriram Murali, joined by astronomers Richard Ozer and Gerald McKeegan, to discuss the costs of light pollution, including its effects on our health, wildlife and environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/calendar/after-dark-online-earth-day\">\u003cstrong>The Exploratorium\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>After Dark Online: Earth Day\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Free Virtual Event \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nDiscover the work of local organizations that expose inequitable impacts of climate change and advocate for environmental justice and legislation. Event highlights include: Conversations with youth leaders from Oakland-based Youth vs. Apocalypse and a virtual screening of the short film “My 25: The Ocean Between Us,” a student film that merges memories and reality to tell an intimate story of how our oceans have changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/events/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy\u003cbr>\nEarth Day Events\u003cbr>\nMake a Monarch Butterfly Kite for Earth Day!\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nJoin National Park Service Ranger Rebecca Au and Price Sheppy as they take you step by step through building your own monarch butterfly kite to fly on Earth Day. You will also hear stories about the monarch butterfly and find out more about what you can do to help these beautiful animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/events/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>Monitoring Frogs in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 23 – Noon-1:30 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nLearn about the common and uncommon frogs you can see in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Join the conversation and find out about efforts to reintroduce and monitor the California red-legged frog, a threatened population in the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://fortmason.org/event/flix/international-ocean-film-festival-2021-earth-day/\">\u003cstrong>International Ocean Film Festival (IOFF)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Drive-in Screening at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 8:30-10:30 p.m.\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Tickets Required, $49 Per Vehicle\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nIOFF is presenting a special screening of two of its 2021 award-winning films, “Ocean Souls” and “Whales in a Changing Ocean.” This screening is part of the 18th annual IOFF taking place virtually through May 2, showcasing more than 80 independent films, representing 17 countries, reflecting IOFF’s mission of restoring, protecting and balancing ocean biodiversity through independent films. If you can’t make it to the drive-in, these films are also screening virtually. Check out this year’s festival schedule at \u003ca href=\"http://www.IntlOceanFilmFest.org/\">IntlOceanFilmFest.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/events/146656235749\">KQED\u003cbr>\nOn Common Ground: Hyper-Local Climate Resilience\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 6 p.m., Free Virtual Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nMany people can adapt to climate change via migration, but for some, adaptation means finding the solutions to remain in place. KQED’s senior science editor, Katrin Snow, will moderate a conversation on how resiliency takes hold on a local level in two very different locations, Marin City and the Sierra Nevada. Special guests include: Terrie Harris-Green of Shore Up Marin City; Beth Rose Middleton Manning, professor and department chair of the Native American Studies Department at UC Davis; and guest reporter Janelle Marie Salanga, engagement reporting intern at the College Journalism Network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/earth-day-2021\">\u003cstrong>National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day 2021\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 21-23 – Multiday, Free Virtual Events\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nWhen you think of NASA, you might think of astronauts and missions to Mars. But NASA also has a variety of missions that focus on studying Earth, from sea level rise to hurricanes. NASA’s three-day Earth Day virtual event extravaganza features: Live presentations and chats with NASA Earth science experts; an interactive kid-friendly science fun zone with coloring and activity sheets; and Meet a Scientist videos. Plus, you can find out how you can be a scientist for NASA. There’s also an online scavenger hunt to kick off #GrowForLaunch, a chance to learn about plants grown in space and how you can start your own “space” garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/programs-and-events/earth-day\">\u003cstrong>Oakland Zoo\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Earth Day Events\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22-25 – 10 a.m.-3:30p.m., Timed Tickets Required, $24-$20, Free Virtual Activities\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCelebrate animals and the planet and learn how to take action against the illegal wildlife trade. All guests must reserve a ticket for a specific date and entry time. Event highlights include an in-person scavenger hunt that will focus on animals that need saving from illegal wildlife trade. The zoo also has several online activities to help you act for the planet from the comfort of your own home, such as learning what plants attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://browercenter.org/wsff-2021\">\u003cstrong>The David Brower Center\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Wild and Scenic Film Festival Earth Day 2021\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>April 22 – 7 p.m., Tickets Required, General $25, Student $15, Group Rates Available \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe Wild and Scenic Film Festival, organized by Citizens Climate Lobby Alameda County, the David Brower Center, Earth Island Institute, Green the Church, and Communities for a Better Environment, is hosting a virtual Earth Day screening with films that tell extraordinary stories of local and global front-line communities fighting for environmental justice and restoration. After the live event on the 22nd, all films will be available on-demand from April 23-27. Included with every ticket is an on-demand bonus session featuring five films about threatened wildlife and efforts to protect their habitats and save them from extinction. Get $5 off with this special code: WSFFDBC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1974013\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1974013\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg\" alt=\"earthday_wsf\" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman-.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman--160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/EarthDay_WSFF-dbc-page-Elephant-and-Woman--768x490.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Included with every ticket is an on-demand bonus session featuring five amazing films about threatened wildlife and efforts to protect their habitats and save them from extinction. \u003ccite>(Wild and Scenic Film Festival)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Check your local event listings for additional Earth Day related community events in your neighborhood. And be sure to bookmark \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareascience.org\">bayareascience.org\u003c/a> for year-round science and environment events and festivals. Below is a reminder of a few things you can do to make every day Earth Day, courtesy of the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/ocean/earthday.html\">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1974014\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg\" alt=\"NOAAA\" width=\"800\" height=\"501\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Earthday-infographic_NOAA2-768x481.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>At a normal tide on a normal day on the Southern California coast, ankle-high waves glide over a narrow strip of gold sand. On one side sits the largest body of water in the world. On the other, a row of houses with a cumulative value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, propped on water-stained stilts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Property value ebbs and flows, but when it comes to coastal real estate “the trend lines are pretty clear,” says California state Sen. Ben Allen, squinting in the sun. “And they’re not pretty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the span of a 30-year mortgage, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/underwater\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than $100 billion\u003c/a> worth of American homes is expected to be at risk of chronic flooding. As the climate warms and oceans rise, narrow strips of sand such as the one Allen is standing on, will be submerged, leaving coastal communities — affluent and not — with the torturous question of how to adjust. Build seawalls? Dump sand? For how long and at what cost?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s becoming a really serious resource question for a lot of local governments,” says Allen, who represents coastal communities in the greater Los Angeles area that are spending millions to keep their beaches intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s expensive to fight the sea. It’s expensive not to do so. When property values plummet, so do property taxes. But right now property values here are still high, and Allen wants to put that value to use before it’s gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the 43-year-old Democrat has proposed legislation to create a revolving loan program, allowing California counties and communities to purchase vulnerable coastal properties. The goal would then be to rent those properties out, either to the original homeowner or someone else, and use that money to pay off the loan until the property is no longer safe to live in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Think of it like a city-run Airbnb, where the profits go to making sure nobody is left picking up the full tab when the Pacific comes to collect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a strategy that’s never been tried at such a large scale, and its implementation would come with plenty of questions, policy experts say. But there’s hope in various parts of the country that the legislation passes, putting to test a buy-to-rent strategy that could offer a more permanent solution to a growing problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘Not a Conversation … Communities Want to Have’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, Allen’s proposal is a buyout program — a government-subsidized effort to limit the state’s longer-term exposure to sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the next 30 years \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4261\">$8 billion to $10 billion\u003c/a> of existing property in California is expected to be underwater, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. An additional $6 billion to $10 billion will be at risk during high tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The magnitude of the potential impacts mean that the state cannot afford to indefinitely delay taking steps to prepare,” the report warns. “Waiting too long to initiate adaptation efforts likely will make responding effectively more difficult and costly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities have three options for dealing with that threat: They can defend those properties using seawalls and buffering beaches; they can learn to live with higher waters; or they can retreat, moving to higher ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last option is often the least popular, says Julia Stein, a project director at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s just not a conversation that a lot of coastal communities want to have,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when the conversation does come up, one of the first questions to arise is cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Del Mar, a low-lying, upscale community north of San Diego. Residents there have been in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/672285546/retreat-is-not-an-option-as-a-california-beach-town-plans-for-rising-seas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">yearslong fight\u003c/a> with the state over the term “managed retreat.” The state wants the city to consider retreating from a particularly vulnerable area. Problem is: The combined market value of the homes in that area is more than $1.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a whole lot of research out there that indicates the market value of coastal property just really doesn’t account for sea level rise in a meaningful way right now, and in the ways that it maybe should,” Stein says. “But at some point, the market is going to realize the problem. And at that point, it may be too late.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why Stein helped Allen draft his \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/2020-senate-bill-1293-allen-ben-sea-level-rise-revolving-loan-program-dead\">novel legislation\u003c/a>. She thinks the state needs to get ahead of the problem before it becomes another money pit like wildfires. Thousands of California homes are becoming uninsurable due to wildfire risk despite expensive, ever-expanding efforts to fight them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s kind of a vision of the future for some coastal properties,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rent Out Now, Save Money Later\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last 30 years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has supported buyouts of more than 43,000 U.S. homes, according to an\u003ca href=\"https://www.nrdc.org/experts/anna-weber/going-under-post-flood-buyouts-take-years-complete\"> analysis\u003c/a> by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Most are in the more flood-prone East. A few patterns have emerged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s usually homeowners who are in good standing on their mortgage, after a disaster, who probably can speak pretty good English and are well-off enough to navigate a really complicated, bureaucratic process for three to five years,” says Miyuki Hino, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just because a property owner is willing to sell a home doesn’t mean the resources exist to carry it out. Demand already exceeds supply, and demand is only going to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are facing some really unprecedented difficulties, and we need to be willing to experiment and try new things and see what works and what doesn’t,” Hino says. The California proposal fits that bill, even if she has questions about how it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Governments have long played landlord for public housing projects, but coastal real estate would be another beast altogether. There’s no guarantee that homeowners would want to participate. And there are questions of equity. Who would get prioritized for buyouts? Is potentially spending public money to buy multimillion-dollar homes the best use of those funds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andy Keeler, an economist at East Carolina University’s Department of Coastal Studies, believes the answer is yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keeler has spent years studying buy-to-rent strategies similar to that proposed in California, and he thinks they could be a useful tool for disrupting a pervasive problem when it comes to coastal real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The value of a coastal home is hugely dependent on the public sector, he says. If a city or state invests in protecting properties by building sea walls or nourishing beaches, it signals to homeowners that their property values will stay intact, so they continue to invest in their property. More investment means more reason to protect down the road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a positive feedback loop that strings out how much longer you’re going to be there,” Keeler says. “All it buys you, which is really valuable, is time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From a purely economic perspective though, it doesn’t add up. A community pays on the front end, pays again, and again, and then is left with the cleanup and emergency response in the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keeler says that link can be broken by taking properties out of the hands of private homeowners, who are getting mixed messages about the value of their homes, and putting them in the hands of the public, which has an interest in not being stuck with all of those bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities can then plan for the eventual phasing out of those properties as sea levels rise. They can plan for the decline in property taxes, and the cleanup costs associated with homes falling into the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to be looking at really massive relocation sometime in the next couple of hundred years and probably much sooner,” Keeler says. If we don’t manage the timing of that, he fears, it will manage us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nothing Is Forever \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His eyes shadowed from the bright California sun by the brim of his blue Dodgers cap, Allen pulls out his phone and opens the Zillow app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The $8.3 million house just up the beach has a monthly rental estimate of $12,500. Assuming the house could be rented at that rate, it would take about 55 years to pay off — 55 years to make back the money he’s proposing the state loans to local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the most expensive house on this stretch of beach though, and Allen says it may not be worth investing in. But it’s also the kind of property that a homeowner would fight to protect, lobbying for public investment in sea walls and other defenses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Allen’s bill passed unanimously through the state’s Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee last week, and he says he’s hopeful it will receive similar support in the broader Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody wants to come to terms with what’s happening,” he says, watching as people stroll the beach barefoot and smiling. “We want this to be here forever. We want to be able to walk along this beach and enjoy these beautiful houses and this beautiful view forever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, he says, “you can’t beat the sea.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 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=California+Has+A+New+Idea+For+Homes+At+Risk+From+Rising+Seas%3A+Buy%2C+Rent%2C+Retreat&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Sea level rise is threatening billions in coastal property. A California lawmaker is proposing a novel way to retreat from the threat: buying and renting out properties as long as they're habitable. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>At a normal tide on a normal day on the Southern California coast, ankle-high waves glide over a narrow strip of gold sand. On one side sits the largest body of water in the world. On the other, a row of houses with a cumulative value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, propped on water-stained stilts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Property value ebbs and flows, but when it comes to coastal real estate “the trend lines are pretty clear,” says California state Sen. Ben Allen, squinting in the sun. “And they’re not pretty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the span of a 30-year mortgage, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/underwater\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than $100 billion\u003c/a> worth of American homes is expected to be at risk of chronic flooding. As the climate warms and oceans rise, narrow strips of sand such as the one Allen is standing on, will be submerged, leaving coastal communities — affluent and not — with the torturous question of how to adjust. Build seawalls? Dump sand? For how long and at what cost?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s becoming a really serious resource question for a lot of local governments,” says Allen, who represents coastal communities in the greater Los Angeles area that are spending millions to keep their beaches intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s expensive to fight the sea. It’s expensive not to do so. When property values plummet, so do property taxes. But right now property values here are still high, and Allen wants to put that value to use before it’s gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the 43-year-old Democrat has proposed legislation to create a revolving loan program, allowing California counties and communities to purchase vulnerable coastal properties. The goal would then be to rent those properties out, either to the original homeowner or someone else, and use that money to pay off the loan until the property is no longer safe to live in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Think of it like a city-run Airbnb, where the profits go to making sure nobody is left picking up the full tab when the Pacific comes to collect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a strategy that’s never been tried at such a large scale, and its implementation would come with plenty of questions, policy experts say. But there’s hope in various parts of the country that the legislation passes, putting to test a buy-to-rent strategy that could offer a more permanent solution to a growing problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘Not a Conversation … Communities Want to Have’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, Allen’s proposal is a buyout program — a government-subsidized effort to limit the state’s longer-term exposure to sea level rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the next 30 years \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4261\">$8 billion to $10 billion\u003c/a> of existing property in California is expected to be underwater, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. An additional $6 billion to $10 billion will be at risk during high tide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The magnitude of the potential impacts mean that the state cannot afford to indefinitely delay taking steps to prepare,” the report warns. “Waiting too long to initiate adaptation efforts likely will make responding effectively more difficult and costly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities have three options for dealing with that threat: They can defend those properties using seawalls and buffering beaches; they can learn to live with higher waters; or they can retreat, moving to higher ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last option is often the least popular, says Julia Stein, a project director at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s just not a conversation that a lot of coastal communities want to have,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when the conversation does come up, one of the first questions to arise is cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Del Mar, a low-lying, upscale community north of San Diego. Residents there have been in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/672285546/retreat-is-not-an-option-as-a-california-beach-town-plans-for-rising-seas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">yearslong fight\u003c/a> with the state over the term “managed retreat.” The state wants the city to consider retreating from a particularly vulnerable area. Problem is: The combined market value of the homes in that area is more than $1.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a whole lot of research out there that indicates the market value of coastal property just really doesn’t account for sea level rise in a meaningful way right now, and in the ways that it maybe should,” Stein says. “But at some point, the market is going to realize the problem. And at that point, it may be too late.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why Stein helped Allen draft his \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/2020-senate-bill-1293-allen-ben-sea-level-rise-revolving-loan-program-dead\">novel legislation\u003c/a>. She thinks the state needs to get ahead of the problem before it becomes another money pit like wildfires. Thousands of California homes are becoming uninsurable due to wildfire risk despite expensive, ever-expanding efforts to fight them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s kind of a vision of the future for some coastal properties,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rent Out Now, Save Money Later\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last 30 years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has supported buyouts of more than 43,000 U.S. homes, according to an\u003ca href=\"https://www.nrdc.org/experts/anna-weber/going-under-post-flood-buyouts-take-years-complete\"> analysis\u003c/a> by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Most are in the more flood-prone East. A few patterns have emerged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s usually homeowners who are in good standing on their mortgage, after a disaster, who probably can speak pretty good English and are well-off enough to navigate a really complicated, bureaucratic process for three to five years,” says Miyuki Hino, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just because a property owner is willing to sell a home doesn’t mean the resources exist to carry it out. Demand already exceeds supply, and demand is only going to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are facing some really unprecedented difficulties, and we need to be willing to experiment and try new things and see what works and what doesn’t,” Hino says. The California proposal fits that bill, even if she has questions about how it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Governments have long played landlord for public housing projects, but coastal real estate would be another beast altogether. There’s no guarantee that homeowners would want to participate. And there are questions of equity. Who would get prioritized for buyouts? Is potentially spending public money to buy multimillion-dollar homes the best use of those funds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andy Keeler, an economist at East Carolina University’s Department of Coastal Studies, believes the answer is yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keeler has spent years studying buy-to-rent strategies similar to that proposed in California, and he thinks they could be a useful tool for disrupting a pervasive problem when it comes to coastal real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The value of a coastal home is hugely dependent on the public sector, he says. If a city or state invests in protecting properties by building sea walls or nourishing beaches, it signals to homeowners that their property values will stay intact, so they continue to invest in their property. More investment means more reason to protect down the road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a positive feedback loop that strings out how much longer you’re going to be there,” Keeler says. “All it buys you, which is really valuable, is time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From a purely economic perspective though, it doesn’t add up. A community pays on the front end, pays again, and again, and then is left with the cleanup and emergency response in the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keeler says that link can be broken by taking properties out of the hands of private homeowners, who are getting mixed messages about the value of their homes, and putting them in the hands of the public, which has an interest in not being stuck with all of those bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities can then plan for the eventual phasing out of those properties as sea levels rise. They can plan for the decline in property taxes, and the cleanup costs associated with homes falling into the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to be looking at really massive relocation sometime in the next couple of hundred years and probably much sooner,” Keeler says. If we don’t manage the timing of that, he fears, it will manage us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nothing Is Forever \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His eyes shadowed from the bright California sun by the brim of his blue Dodgers cap, Allen pulls out his phone and opens the Zillow app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The $8.3 million house just up the beach has a monthly rental estimate of $12,500. Assuming the house could be rented at that rate, it would take about 55 years to pay off — 55 years to make back the money he’s proposing the state loans to local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the most expensive house on this stretch of beach though, and Allen says it may not be worth investing in. But it’s also the kind of property that a homeowner would fight to protect, lobbying for public investment in sea walls and other defenses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Allen’s bill passed unanimously through the state’s Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee last week, and he says he’s hopeful it will receive similar support in the broader Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody wants to come to terms with what’s happening,” he says, watching as people stroll the beach barefoot and smiling. “We want this to be here forever. We want to be able to walk along this beach and enjoy these beautiful houses and this beautiful view forever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, he says, “you can’t beat the sea.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 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=California+Has+A+New+Idea+For+Homes+At+Risk+From+Rising+Seas%3A+Buy%2C+Rent%2C+Retreat&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "in-central-california-sea-otters-feast-on-purple-urchins-and-thats-good-for-kelp",
"title": "Kelp, Sea Otters and Urchins. Who's Eating Who in Monterey Bay",
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"headTitle": "Kelp, Sea Otters and Urchins. Who’s Eating Who in Monterey Bay | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">Marine scientists have observed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1949757/massive-california-kelp-decline-linked-to-ocean-heat-wave-voracious-sea-urchins\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">massive decline\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of California’s underwater kelp forests in recent years. Studies have linked the die-off to a host of factors including an ocean heat wave, a deadly sea star virus, and an influx of voracious kelp-eating sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Kelp’s long flat leaves and bulbous stems provide habitat for marine mammals, fish and invertebrates in tidal regions along California’s coast. In many regions where kelp once flourished, the ocean floor is now carpeted with spiny purple sea urchins and there’s no kelp to be found. Scientists call these zones the urchin barrens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A new study out of UC Santa Cruz reveals more about the disappearance of California’s kelp forests, finding the leafy green seaweed is faring better in places where sea otters, a natural urchin predator, are thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973221\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973221\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Most of the kelp forest ecosystem in Northern California has been replaced by urchin barrens dominated by purple sea urchins. \u003ccite>(Katie Sowul/CDFW)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Several studies have documented the collapse of the kelp ecosystem in California. The story goes something like this: A giant, warm-water “blob” first observed by scientists off the Washington coast in 2013 combined with an El Nino weather event from the south resulted in a prolonged marine heatwave in California from 2014-16. Kelp thrives in colder tidal waters, which have the nutrients it needs to survive. Faced with warmer water, the kelp essentially starved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The historically hardy plant, which can grow up to 2 feet per day, could have bounced back from the heat wave, but for a disease that that nearly eradicated sunflower stars along the West Coast. This large, 24-limbed starfish feeds on purple sea urchins; without stars around, urchin populations swelled and changed their typical hunting behavior. Instead of merely grazing on fallen kelp leaves, the urchins began gobbling up the kelp’s stalks and seed pods as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In Northern California, satellite images have revealed a roughly 95% decline in kelp forest canopy as a result of these events. But in Central California waters, kelp has fared somewhat better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The Central Coast saw a similar urchin outbreak in 2014, says Joshua Smith, a Ph.D. candidate and kelp forest researcher at UC Santa Cruz. “But what was different here was that instead of having this widespread kelp deforestation, we actually had this patchy mosaic of kelp forests interspersed with these patches of sea urchin barrens\u003ci>,” \u003c/i>he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973227\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A healthy forest of giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, in Monterey Bay. \u003ccite>(Michael Langhans)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Smith says this unique phenomenon gave his group an opportunity to look closer at the factors driving the kelp decline and its potential for recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/118/11/e2012493118\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, published this week in \u003cspan class=\"s2\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/span>, links the presence of sea otters in Monterey Bay to patches of lush, healthy kelp forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Smith called Monterey Bay “sea otter country,” pointing out more of the species inhabited the area than any other in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003ci>“\u003c/i>This is a sea otter country,” Smith said. “We have the highest abundance of sea otters here in Monterey Bay than anywhere else in the state\u003ci>.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Sea otters, like sunflower stars, are a natural predator of sea urchins. \u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“The key finding of what this actually means is that otters are so important for this ecosystem because they are maintaining these remnant patches of kelp forests,” Smith said, “And those patches of kelp are the ultimate source populations to help replenish those barren patches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The study shows that the sea otter population in Monterey Bay grew in the wake of the urchin boom, with an increased survival rate for pups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">While scientists can’t say for sure, the lack of sea otters and other urchin predators north of the San Francisco Bay may help explain why Northern California’s kelp forests have suffered more than on other parts of the coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973226\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973226\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Purple sea urchins feeding on kelp. \u003ccite>(Michael Langhans)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Sea otters haven’t been spotted on the North Coast since the 1800s, says Meredith McPherson, a UC Santa Cruz marine scientist who recently published \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01827-6\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">a separate study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> on Northern California’s kelp decline. “From what we observed in the satellite data from the last 35 years, the kelp had been doing well without sea otters as long as we still had sunflower stars. Once they were gone, there were no urchin predators left in the system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Without natural predators, McPherson says, scuba divers are helping maintain what’s left of the region’s kelp forests by plucking out interloping urchins. But while ocean temperatures and nutrient levels have normalized some since the 2014-16 heat waves, she says kelp haven’t seen any significant rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“There seems to be some evidence that some patches of kelp have reemerged in certain areas, but it’s nothing to the extent that we would expect from the historical data,” she said. “The concentrations of urchins are still really high and [are] creating the strong grazing pressure on any kind of recovery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">McPherson says while the urchin barrens persist, a full-scale kelp recovery is unlikely. Even without kelp to eat, urchins have shown resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“That’s where some people have used the term zombie urchin,” Smith said. “These urchins are remarkable in that they can persist in this starved state in the sea urchin barrens for years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Smith’s study revealed that otters largely ignore urchins in the barrens, as they lack the nutritional value of those that have kelp to forage on. Scientists say another environmental event will likely be needed to reduce urchin populations and tip the scales in favor of kelp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“A number of things could take out the urchins.” Smith said. “It could be urchin disease or it could be a bottom-scouring swell that physically wipes sea urchins off the reef.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">In the meantime, otters may be key to kelp’s chance for a long-term recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "California's underwater kelp forests are suffering massive declines. But a new study shows that sea otters are helping to preserve kelp off the Central Coast.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">Marine scientists have observed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1949757/massive-california-kelp-decline-linked-to-ocean-heat-wave-voracious-sea-urchins\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">massive decline\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of California’s underwater kelp forests in recent years. Studies have linked the die-off to a host of factors including an ocean heat wave, a deadly sea star virus, and an influx of voracious kelp-eating sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Kelp’s long flat leaves and bulbous stems provide habitat for marine mammals, fish and invertebrates in tidal regions along California’s coast. In many regions where kelp once flourished, the ocean floor is now carpeted with spiny purple sea urchins and there’s no kelp to be found. Scientists call these zones the urchin barrens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A new study out of UC Santa Cruz reveals more about the disappearance of California’s kelp forests, finding the leafy green seaweed is faring better in places where sea otters, a natural urchin predator, are thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973221\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973221\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/urchin-barren-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Most of the kelp forest ecosystem in Northern California has been replaced by urchin barrens dominated by purple sea urchins. \u003ccite>(Katie Sowul/CDFW)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Several studies have documented the collapse of the kelp ecosystem in California. The story goes something like this: A giant, warm-water “blob” first observed by scientists off the Washington coast in 2013 combined with an El Nino weather event from the south resulted in a prolonged marine heatwave in California from 2014-16. Kelp thrives in colder tidal waters, which have the nutrients it needs to survive. Faced with warmer water, the kelp essentially starved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The historically hardy plant, which can grow up to 2 feet per day, could have bounced back from the heat wave, but for a disease that that nearly eradicated sunflower stars along the West Coast. This large, 24-limbed starfish feeds on purple sea urchins; without stars around, urchin populations swelled and changed their typical hunting behavior. Instead of merely grazing on fallen kelp leaves, the urchins began gobbling up the kelp’s stalks and seed pods as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In Northern California, satellite images have revealed a roughly 95% decline in kelp forest canopy as a result of these events. But in Central California waters, kelp has fared somewhat better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The Central Coast saw a similar urchin outbreak in 2014, says Joshua Smith, a Ph.D. candidate and kelp forest researcher at UC Santa Cruz. “But what was different here was that instead of having this widespread kelp deforestation, we actually had this patchy mosaic of kelp forests interspersed with these patches of sea urchin barrens\u003ci>,” \u003c/i>he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973227\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Healthy-Kelp-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A healthy forest of giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, in Monterey Bay. \u003ccite>(Michael Langhans)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Smith says this unique phenomenon gave his group an opportunity to look closer at the factors driving the kelp decline and its potential for recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">The \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/118/11/e2012493118\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, published this week in \u003cspan class=\"s2\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/span>, links the presence of sea otters in Monterey Bay to patches of lush, healthy kelp forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Smith called Monterey Bay “sea otter country,” pointing out more of the species inhabited the area than any other in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">\u003ci>“\u003c/i>This is a sea otter country,” Smith said. “We have the highest abundance of sea otters here in Monterey Bay than anywhere else in the state\u003ci>.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Sea otters, like sunflower stars, are a natural predator of sea urchins. \u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“The key finding of what this actually means is that otters are so important for this ecosystem because they are maintaining these remnant patches of kelp forests,” Smith said, “And those patches of kelp are the ultimate source populations to help replenish those barren patches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">The study shows that the sea otter population in Monterey Bay grew in the wake of the urchin boom, with an increased survival rate for pups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">While scientists can’t say for sure, the lack of sea otters and other urchin predators north of the San Francisco Bay may help explain why Northern California’s kelp forests have suffered more than on other parts of the coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973226\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1973226\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/03/Urchin-on-Kelp-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Purple sea urchins feeding on kelp. \u003ccite>(Michael Langhans)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Sea otters haven’t been spotted on the North Coast since the 1800s, says Meredith McPherson, a UC Santa Cruz marine scientist who recently published \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01827-6\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">a separate study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> on Northern California’s kelp decline. “From what we observed in the satellite data from the last 35 years, the kelp had been doing well without sea otters as long as we still had sunflower stars. Once they were gone, there were no urchin predators left in the system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Without natural predators, McPherson says, scuba divers are helping maintain what’s left of the region’s kelp forests by plucking out interloping urchins. But while ocean temperatures and nutrient levels have normalized some since the 2014-16 heat waves, she says kelp haven’t seen any significant rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“There seems to be some evidence that some patches of kelp have reemerged in certain areas, but it’s nothing to the extent that we would expect from the historical data,” she said. “The concentrations of urchins are still really high and [are] creating the strong grazing pressure on any kind of recovery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">McPherson says while the urchin barrens persist, a full-scale kelp recovery is unlikely. Even without kelp to eat, urchins have shown resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“That’s where some people have used the term zombie urchin,” Smith said. “These urchins are remarkable in that they can persist in this starved state in the sea urchin barrens for years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">Smith’s study revealed that otters largely ignore urchins in the barrens, as they lack the nutritional value of those that have kelp to forage on. Scientists say another environmental event will likely be needed to reduce urchin populations and tip the scales in favor of kelp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“A number of things could take out the urchins.” Smith said. “It could be urchin disease or it could be a bottom-scouring swell that physically wipes sea urchins off the reef.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">In the meantime, otters may be key to kelp’s chance for a long-term recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cem>As the sun sets, hordes of tiny crustaceans called beach hoppers — also known as sand hoppers — emerge from underground burrows to frolic and feast. They eat so much decaying seaweed and other beach wrack that by morning all that’s left are ghostly outlines in the sand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As the sun sinks behind the waves, these performers awaken and get ready for their all-night show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They take cues from the tides, the moon, and their appetite, emerging from sandy underground burrows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might know them as sand fleas, but they don’t bite and they aren’t fleas. They’re called beach hoppers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These crustaceans are as small as an ant or as large as a cricket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their eyes are made up of hundreds of cells called ommatidia, but they don’t see much detail — just blurry shapes, light and dark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">Read more about \u003ca href=\"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w1024x6\">the ecological value of beach wrack\u003c/a> and how regular mechanical beach grooming affects the sandy beach ecosystem.\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">\u003ca href=\"https://explorebeaches.msi.ucsb.edu/\">Learn more about sandy beach ecosystems\u003c/a>, and the important role that beach hoppers play in the food web.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re drawn toward shadowy blobs on the horizon. They hope it’s kelp, their favorite food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they find it, they eat and eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes they even eat one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This large beach hopper is piercing the other right behind its eye, holding it in place with its claws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For protection, they dig burrows about a foot deep where the sand is damp and cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And males will fight over control of burrows, especially if there are females inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deep in the night, the beach hopper acrobatics build into a dazzling show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A powerful flick of their curled-up tail launches them skyward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They do not stick the landing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A beach hopper can jump as high as your knees, dozens of times the length of its body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a quick way to travel — toward food or mates. Or to get out of harm’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beach hoppers’ diets are mostly beach wrack — anything natural that washes ashore. Wrack is an essential source of nutrients for sandy beach ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These shredders break down the wrack into smaller parts. It’s the first step in sending nutrients into the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When predators like shorebirds or insects eat beach hoppers, they can carry these nutrients further inland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without these hungry acrobats, beaches the world over would be strewn with rotting seaweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a night of fighting and feasting, they leave only silhouettes behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the sun rises, the beach hoppers retreat to their burrows, just beyond the tide’s reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The performers need their rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another spectacle is just a night away.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">Read more about \u003ca href=\"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w1024x6\">the ecological value of beach wrack\u003c/a> and how regular mechanical beach grooming affects the sandy beach ecosystem.\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">\u003ca href=\"https://explorebeaches.msi.ucsb.edu/\">Learn more about sandy beach ecosystems\u003c/a>, and the important role that beach hoppers play in the food web.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re drawn toward shadowy blobs on the horizon. They hope it’s kelp, their favorite food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they find it, they eat and eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes they even eat one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This large beach hopper is piercing the other right behind its eye, holding it in place with its claws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For protection, they dig burrows about a foot deep where the sand is damp and cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And males will fight over control of burrows, especially if there are females inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deep in the night, the beach hopper acrobatics build into a dazzling show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A powerful flick of their curled-up tail launches them skyward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They do not stick the landing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A beach hopper can jump as high as your knees, dozens of times the length of its body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a quick way to travel — toward food or mates. Or to get out of harm’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beach hoppers’ diets are mostly beach wrack — anything natural that washes ashore. Wrack is an essential source of nutrients for sandy beach ecosystems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These shredders break down the wrack into smaller parts. It’s the first step in sending nutrients into the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When predators like shorebirds or insects eat beach hoppers, they can carry these nutrients further inland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without these hungry acrobats, beaches the world over would be strewn with rotting seaweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a night of fighting and feasting, they leave only silhouettes behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the sun rises, the beach hoppers retreat to their burrows, just beyond the tide’s reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The performers need their rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another spectacle is just a night away.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Flooding rains and record snow in California last week marked another extreme swing of the state’s climate pendulum. The widespread downpours triggered mudslides that \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/california-winter-storm-mudslides-cause-injury-damage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lanowblog+%28L.A.+Now%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">damaged homes and roads\u003c/a> near some of the huge fire scars from last summer, and also brought \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1356338632387280896\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some of the water\u003c/a> the state will need to end a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/202013\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">monthslong hot and dry streak\u003c/a> and douse a record-setting wildfire season that extended into January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The storm included a long stream of moisture from the subtropical Pacific Ocean, called an \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-rivers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">atmospheric river\u003c/a>, that inundated the state from north to south for three days. Atmospheric rivers are concentrated streams of moist air, generally more than 1,200 miles long, up to 620 miles wide and about 1.8 miles deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week’s torrent hit Central California hardest. Several spots reported 24-hour rainfall records and the deluge washed out a 150-foot section of Highway 1 in the vulnerable Big Sur area, where the road clings to unstable mountains that drop steeply to the sea. Just two years ago, another nearby section of the highway was also destroyed by an intense storm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists say it’s important to understand how atmospheric rivers will change as global warming drives more extremes. They’ve recently \u003ca href=\"https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/100/2/bams-d-18-0023.1.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">created a scale\u003c/a> to rate their strength. Between 1978 and 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122019/atmospheric-rivers-climate-change-flood-mudslide-risk-rising-california-west/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">10 most intense atmospheric rivers caused nearly half of all flood damage\u003c/a> in the Western United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could get worse. Stronger atmospheric rivers are part of California’s “whiplash” climate future, said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West\">Daniel Swain\u003c/a>, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “One of the things that’s really clear, the intense ones are going to become much more intense,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/janellewang/status/1355277341312729090?s=20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0140-y.epdf?author_access_token=SpNm1AkLDEG2WYpjrokbt9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N5WVXwZkTOMe5YxQC6t2N_038NWJlpDOtWZcE65BM0CfIUOL9naHt1EdpF1wss04QU_5ph14XmBsju5RABLAPbKzI7wsRPl9_D-YWN9uCCHA%3D%3D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A 2018 study\u003c/a> he co-authored showed that the odds for a scenario like the storm that caused the Great Flood of 1862, when Sacramento was partially destroyed, are “perhaps as high as 50% between 2018 and 2060.” A flood of that size would devastate towns and swamp much of California’s Central Valley, a breadbasket for the entire country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the other extreme are\u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/3858.short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> climate studies\u003c/a> showing that California’s future droughts will be hotter and more intense. Even some years with near normal seasonal rain and snow can end up dry as increasingly hot summers simply steam the water out of the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The events that were once thought to have been vanishingly rare, are not so rare anymore,” Swain said. “What we’re not used to are these really extreme events, above the top end of the scale. Those are the ones that test infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even absent an extreme event, changes to the timing, intensity and location of the moist flows will \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02882-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">affect water supplies for towns, agriculture and natural ecosystems\u003c/a>, he added. Water managers need to be prepared for climate-driven feast or famine cycles of rain, snow and runoff, for instance operating dams more flexibly to capture as much water as possible during big downpours, while still holding back enough to reduce river flood risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building the necessary resilience won’t be easy, but since a flood on the scale of the 1862 event would cause billions in damage, figuring out ways to prepare for such risks are well worth it, Swain said. In the meantime, the threats from surging atmospheric rivers are rising fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a problem in a society where we build our infrastructure to last many decades, on the assumption that our climate does not change over 50 years,” he said. Many risks from climate extremes will become “greatly elevated with regard to how we’ve designed our infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Important Global Climate Pumps\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hazards similar to those in California are driving research into how global warming will change atmospheric rivers around the world, said University of Lisbon climate scientist Alexandre Ramos. In Europe, those intensifying moisture streams will inundate the British Isles and Scandinavia more frequently, but a northward shift detected by climate scientists could leave other areas thirsty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Globally, atmospheric rivers are the \u003ca href=\"https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/home/micro-articles/atmospheric-rivers#:~:text=The%20term%20atmospheric%20river%20is,transport%20associated%20with%20extratropical%20cyclones.&text=This%20moisture%20transport%20occurs%20under,%2C%20temperature%2C%20and%20pressure%20conditions.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">largest transporters of freshwater\u003c/a> and also distribute heat energy from equatorial regions toward the poles. Those flows are shifting because global warming is \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020JD033158\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expanding\u003c/a> bulging domes of stable, warm and dry air in the subtropics, which shunts atmospheric rivers poleward, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A wet Atlantic storm that pummeled parts of the already soggy United Kingdom last week carried swaths of moist air from around Florida all the way across the Atlantic in a weather pattern similar to an atmospheric river, climate and weather researcher \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/SimonLeeWx/status/1355126950411579392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Simon Lee wrote on Twitter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture for every 1 degree Celsius of warming, so every atmospheric river can potentially hold more moisture. One recent study found that there has been an increase in the number of atmospheric rivers since the 1980s, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they are still relatively rare — about four per year — making it hard for researchers to separate a global warming signal from natural factors that could affect their frequency. But projections for the future are robust, showing that, with continued warming, up to eight atmospheric rivers could affect Europe each year, with some climate models even showing their frequency tripling, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are seeing is, the rainy seasons are getting shorter, and the precipitation will become more extreme, and the extremes will become more frequent,” Ramos said. “Increased temperature means more water in the atmosphere, lowering the threshold for extremes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Portugal, like in California, atmospheric rivers are often beneficial drought-busters that fill reservoirs, so it’s also a problem if they don’t materialize, Ramos said. His research, and other studies, suggest that global warming may already be shifting atmospheric rivers poleward. He said the research describes how recent droughts in South Africa and Australia could be linked with the poleward shift of atmospheric rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/wxjerdman/status/1355497317525319683?s=20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Atmospheric Rivers Are Becoming More Dangerous\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain’s most recent \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/29/eaba1323\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study\u003c/a> zoomed in on California and scrutinized the moisture, temperature and wind speeds of the strongest atmospheric rivers from ground level to their upper boundary, about two miles high, to assess the risks of extreme rain and snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they are infrequent, it’s hard to get a statistically valid idea about how they have changed up to now, even when grouping the data from multiple atmospheric rivers together. But figuring out the mechanics of individual events at a detailed level will help predict how they’ll behave in a warmer climate in the future, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain’s analysis delivered detailed projections of increased precipitation from atmospheric rivers: 25% to 50% more across the San Joaquin Valley, a 25% to 30% increase in the northern Sacramento Valley, and 80% more in the Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were looking at the really rare ones,” he said of the atmospheric rivers he studied. “That’s part of why we did this study, looking at events that happen a couple of times per century.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparing the results of their analysis with observations from historic extreme storms, “It’s almost as if we had a 400-year-long record,” he said. “It’s the best we can do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the strongest atmospheric rivers, the study found a 10% to 40% increase in total accumulated precipitation. It found an even greater increase in hourly maximum precipitation rates that are above the level that could be caused solely by the increased water vapor in a warmer atmosphere, which means global warming is intensifying atmospheric rivers beyond just adding water, Swain said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The large increase in maximum hourly precipitation intensity is critical because short blasts of intense precipitation pose a much greater risk of flash flooding and other hazards, such as debris flows and mudslides, than do equally large accumulations occurring over a longer period of time, the study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also found that rain and snowfall from atmospheric rivers is increasing the most, proportionately, in areas that were previously sheltered from the phenomenon, like in the rain shadows on the downwind, lee sides of mountain ranges. That could increase unexpected flood and water management challenges in areas where they are not expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These findings imply substantial challenges for water and flood management in California, given future increases in intense atmospheric river-induced precipitation extremes,” the researchers wrote in their study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain said it’s also important to remember that future atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate will change snow to rain, which increases the risks of flooding even more, based on current expectations of the snow-rain ratio. Snow, of course, piles up and melts slowly, while rain runs off into streams and rivers right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With continued global warming, the study suggests that streamflows could increase beyond what would be expected just from the precipitation increase alone, because “a substantially greater fraction of precipitation is likely to fall as rain rather than snow,” the study concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Swain, the study elicited deep concerns about the prospects for an incredibly damaging megaflood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2060, there is a 50-50 chance of seeing a megastorm on the scale that swamped the Central Valley,” he said. “Given that would be a catastrophic flood event, I don’t think we’re fully prepared for that. For me, that almost means that, by late century, it’s almost an inevitability. That’s pretty amazing for an event that happened 5 times per millennium up to now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to call these findings good news,” he said. “But they could help start discussions about how to mitigate the risks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Research suggests that much of the state will endure more extreme precipitation events that drive floods, mudslides and debris flows.",
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"title": "Another Swing of California's Climate Pendulum: Torrential Rain and Piles of Snow | KQED",
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"headline": "Another Swing of California's Climate Pendulum: Torrential Rain and Piles of Snow",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Flooding rains and record snow in California last week marked another extreme swing of the state’s climate pendulum. The widespread downpours triggered mudslides that \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/california-winter-storm-mudslides-cause-injury-damage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lanowblog+%28L.A.+Now%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">damaged homes and roads\u003c/a> near some of the huge fire scars from last summer, and also brought \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1356338632387280896\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some of the water\u003c/a> the state will need to end a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/202013\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">monthslong hot and dry streak\u003c/a> and douse a record-setting wildfire season that extended into January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The storm included a long stream of moisture from the subtropical Pacific Ocean, called an \u003ca href=\"https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-rivers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">atmospheric river\u003c/a>, that inundated the state from north to south for three days. Atmospheric rivers are concentrated streams of moist air, generally more than 1,200 miles long, up to 620 miles wide and about 1.8 miles deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week’s torrent hit Central California hardest. Several spots reported 24-hour rainfall records and the deluge washed out a 150-foot section of Highway 1 in the vulnerable Big Sur area, where the road clings to unstable mountains that drop steeply to the sea. Just two years ago, another nearby section of the highway was also destroyed by an intense storm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists say it’s important to understand how atmospheric rivers will change as global warming drives more extremes. They’ve recently \u003ca href=\"https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/100/2/bams-d-18-0023.1.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">created a scale\u003c/a> to rate their strength. Between 1978 and 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122019/atmospheric-rivers-climate-change-flood-mudslide-risk-rising-california-west/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">10 most intense atmospheric rivers caused nearly half of all flood damage\u003c/a> in the Western United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could get worse. Stronger atmospheric rivers are part of California’s “whiplash” climate future, said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West\">Daniel Swain\u003c/a>, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “One of the things that’s really clear, the intense ones are going to become much more intense,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0140-y.epdf?author_access_token=SpNm1AkLDEG2WYpjrokbt9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N5WVXwZkTOMe5YxQC6t2N_038NWJlpDOtWZcE65BM0CfIUOL9naHt1EdpF1wss04QU_5ph14XmBsju5RABLAPbKzI7wsRPl9_D-YWN9uCCHA%3D%3D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A 2018 study\u003c/a> he co-authored showed that the odds for a scenario like the storm that caused the Great Flood of 1862, when Sacramento was partially destroyed, are “perhaps as high as 50% between 2018 and 2060.” A flood of that size would devastate towns and swamp much of California’s Central Valley, a breadbasket for the entire country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the other extreme are\u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/3858.short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> climate studies\u003c/a> showing that California’s future droughts will be hotter and more intense. Even some years with near normal seasonal rain and snow can end up dry as increasingly hot summers simply steam the water out of the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The events that were once thought to have been vanishingly rare, are not so rare anymore,” Swain said. “What we’re not used to are these really extreme events, above the top end of the scale. Those are the ones that test infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even absent an extreme event, changes to the timing, intensity and location of the moist flows will \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02882-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">affect water supplies for towns, agriculture and natural ecosystems\u003c/a>, he added. Water managers need to be prepared for climate-driven feast or famine cycles of rain, snow and runoff, for instance operating dams more flexibly to capture as much water as possible during big downpours, while still holding back enough to reduce river flood risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building the necessary resilience won’t be easy, but since a flood on the scale of the 1862 event would cause billions in damage, figuring out ways to prepare for such risks are well worth it, Swain said. In the meantime, the threats from surging atmospheric rivers are rising fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a problem in a society where we build our infrastructure to last many decades, on the assumption that our climate does not change over 50 years,” he said. Many risks from climate extremes will become “greatly elevated with regard to how we’ve designed our infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Important Global Climate Pumps\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hazards similar to those in California are driving research into how global warming will change atmospheric rivers around the world, said University of Lisbon climate scientist Alexandre Ramos. In Europe, those intensifying moisture streams will inundate the British Isles and Scandinavia more frequently, but a northward shift detected by climate scientists could leave other areas thirsty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Globally, atmospheric rivers are the \u003ca href=\"https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/home/micro-articles/atmospheric-rivers#:~:text=The%20term%20atmospheric%20river%20is,transport%20associated%20with%20extratropical%20cyclones.&text=This%20moisture%20transport%20occurs%20under,%2C%20temperature%2C%20and%20pressure%20conditions.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">largest transporters of freshwater\u003c/a> and also distribute heat energy from equatorial regions toward the poles. Those flows are shifting because global warming is \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020JD033158\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expanding\u003c/a> bulging domes of stable, warm and dry air in the subtropics, which shunts atmospheric rivers poleward, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A wet Atlantic storm that pummeled parts of the already soggy United Kingdom last week carried swaths of moist air from around Florida all the way across the Atlantic in a weather pattern similar to an atmospheric river, climate and weather researcher \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/SimonLeeWx/status/1355126950411579392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Simon Lee wrote on Twitter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture for every 1 degree Celsius of warming, so every atmospheric river can potentially hold more moisture. One recent study found that there has been an increase in the number of atmospheric rivers since the 1980s, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they are still relatively rare — about four per year — making it hard for researchers to separate a global warming signal from natural factors that could affect their frequency. But projections for the future are robust, showing that, with continued warming, up to eight atmospheric rivers could affect Europe each year, with some climate models even showing their frequency tripling, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are seeing is, the rainy seasons are getting shorter, and the precipitation will become more extreme, and the extremes will become more frequent,” Ramos said. “Increased temperature means more water in the atmosphere, lowering the threshold for extremes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Portugal, like in California, atmospheric rivers are often beneficial drought-busters that fill reservoirs, so it’s also a problem if they don’t materialize, Ramos said. His research, and other studies, suggest that global warming may already be shifting atmospheric rivers poleward. He said the research describes how recent droughts in South Africa and Australia could be linked with the poleward shift of atmospheric rivers.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Atmospheric Rivers Are Becoming More Dangerous\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain’s most recent \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/29/eaba1323\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study\u003c/a> zoomed in on California and scrutinized the moisture, temperature and wind speeds of the strongest atmospheric rivers from ground level to their upper boundary, about two miles high, to assess the risks of extreme rain and snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they are infrequent, it’s hard to get a statistically valid idea about how they have changed up to now, even when grouping the data from multiple atmospheric rivers together. But figuring out the mechanics of individual events at a detailed level will help predict how they’ll behave in a warmer climate in the future, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain’s analysis delivered detailed projections of increased precipitation from atmospheric rivers: 25% to 50% more across the San Joaquin Valley, a 25% to 30% increase in the northern Sacramento Valley, and 80% more in the Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were looking at the really rare ones,” he said of the atmospheric rivers he studied. “That’s part of why we did this study, looking at events that happen a couple of times per century.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparing the results of their analysis with observations from historic extreme storms, “It’s almost as if we had a 400-year-long record,” he said. “It’s the best we can do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the strongest atmospheric rivers, the study found a 10% to 40% increase in total accumulated precipitation. It found an even greater increase in hourly maximum precipitation rates that are above the level that could be caused solely by the increased water vapor in a warmer atmosphere, which means global warming is intensifying atmospheric rivers beyond just adding water, Swain said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The large increase in maximum hourly precipitation intensity is critical because short blasts of intense precipitation pose a much greater risk of flash flooding and other hazards, such as debris flows and mudslides, than do equally large accumulations occurring over a longer period of time, the study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also found that rain and snowfall from atmospheric rivers is increasing the most, proportionately, in areas that were previously sheltered from the phenomenon, like in the rain shadows on the downwind, lee sides of mountain ranges. That could increase unexpected flood and water management challenges in areas where they are not expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These findings imply substantial challenges for water and flood management in California, given future increases in intense atmospheric river-induced precipitation extremes,” the researchers wrote in their study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain said it’s also important to remember that future atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate will change snow to rain, which increases the risks of flooding even more, based on current expectations of the snow-rain ratio. Snow, of course, piles up and melts slowly, while rain runs off into streams and rivers right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With continued global warming, the study suggests that streamflows could increase beyond what would be expected just from the precipitation increase alone, because “a substantially greater fraction of precipitation is likely to fall as rain rather than snow,” the study concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Swain, the study elicited deep concerns about the prospects for an incredibly damaging megaflood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2060, there is a 50-50 chance of seeing a megastorm on the scale that swamped the Central Valley,” he said. “Given that would be a catastrophic flood event, I don’t think we’re fully prepared for that. For me, that almost means that, by late century, it’s almost an inevitability. That’s pretty amazing for an event that happened 5 times per millennium up to now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to call these findings good news,” he said. “But they could help start discussions about how to mitigate the risks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Waves at Mavericks This Year Are Mind-blowingly Huge (Video)",
"headTitle": "The Waves at Mavericks This Year Are Mind-blowingly Huge (Video) | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpOpoLAZUL0&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every fall, Brian Garcia briefs officials across the Bay Area counties on the winter weather outlook, what he calls “my traveling road show.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Mateo County, people always ask Garcia, a National Weather Service meteorologist, if the thundering, big-wave surf spot near Half Moon Bay known as Mavericks will break. (The famous Mavericks surf competition has been cancelled \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/sports/californias-mavericks-surf-contest-canceled-indefinitely/?sba=AAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">indefinitely.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most years, he can only guess. This year, his answer was unequivocal: Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">And then some.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Break to the degree that it has?” he said. “God, I never would have been able to predict this at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Northern California surf spots are firing like crazy this winter, with beaches and reefs serving up a seemingly endless supply of pristine waves, from Big Sur to Santa Cruz, and along the Sonoma Coast and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Anyone in Northern California who has been near the Pacific Ocean in the last month knows that the surf is pumping from swell-after-swell-after-swell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen glassy, perfect big swells like this with no wind,” said Shawn Rhodes, a longtime Northern California surfer and owner of Nor Cal Surf Shop in Pacifica. “You never get it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At Mavericks, the waves rise as tall as apartment buildings and break so violently they can snap a surfboard like a toothpick. The break is only surfable under the right conditions; some years the right combination of swell, wind, and weather never materialize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year it did. Bianca Valenti, a San Francisco-based big wave surfer, says she paddled out to Mavericks nearly a dozen times in December and almost every single day of 2021 to date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been an epic run,” she said. “Mind-blowing. This is the best winter that I can remember, ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conditions were so good at Mavericks on Dec. 8 — big waves, sunshine, no wind — that Surfline dubbed it the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/mavericks-day-days/106147#:~:text=Dec%209th%2C%202020.\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">day of days\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.” Grant Washburn, who’s kept a daily journal of conditions at the spot for nearly three decades, told the surf-forecasting and news website it was the “best dawn-to-dusk paddle day ever at Mav’s, ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Valenti says the waves have been huge and perfect and the conditions drew dozens of surfers and a gallery of photographers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Whenever you would kick out of a wave, the whole group erupted,” she said. “The closest thing to a contest or a party since the pandemic began. Everyone was thrilled, it felt so good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">On Jan. 8, the swell was even larger, the waves faster, cresting higher than 50 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time a wave broke, it was like hearing a nuclear weapon explode,” Valenti said. At other times, a monster wave would roll in and “the whole horizon would just go black — you start paddling as fast as you can towards the boats and pray you don’t get caught.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CIpPSzgHKlE/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said a lot of people stayed off the waves that day “out of respect for the power. It being a local spot and knowing the reef paid off for me, and I actually caught five waves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Big wave surfer Kai Lenny, affixed a camera to his surfboard, and the footage is wild.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSBv6f-7Oo&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Cruz local Peter Mel has been lighting up surf websites with highlight videos from Mavericks all winter; at 51, his performance on waves this big is all the more amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A longtime big-wave charger and owner of the Freeline Surf Shop in Capitola, Mel surfed a wave just about perfectly on the day-of-days. A month later, he fell after being towed into a wave on a jet ski and took a pounding from several 25-foot waves. He described his pummeling to Surfline as “the most intense rag-dolling you could ever imagine … it’s pretty much the ocean just trying to rip you to pieces.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few days later, on Jan. 8, Mel paddled into another bomb, a wave he described as his best of all time, and which some dubbed the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/pete-mel-just-catch-wave-decade-mavericks/109178\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">wave of the decade\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SzNlJCHBU0&feature=youtu.be\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been seeing those types of waves my whole life, but I was never brave enough to do it,” he \u003cspan class=\"s1\">explained\u003c/span> to Surfline afterwards. “I’m actually depressed right now. … It’s like, ‘Oh my God. I’m 50 years old, did I just do that?’ But it’s like, ‘Now what? What do I look forward to now?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An employee at Mel’s shop said he wasn’t available for an interview. The reason?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“He’s back out at Mav’s again,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>La Niña Brings the Swell\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan class=\"s4\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Surfers can in part thank La Niña, cold water on the surface of the Equatorial Pacific that affects weather across the globe, for the big waves, according to Garcia, the meteorologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s La Niña has held a ridge of high pressure over California that has deflected storms that might normally have soaked the Bay Area to the north,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelting the Pacific Northwest with rain and snow instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Wind from the storms is driving swells south, like the wake behind a boat expanding outward and aiming the waves directly at the Northern California coast, Garcia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>La Niña can worsen dry conditions and drought in the West, and that also seems to be the case in California this year. The Bay Area has received about a third of its average annual precipitation to date, while rain is dumped across places like Portland, Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/nwsportland/status/1349368160013545472?s=21\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the surf is great, Garcia warns that the conditions can be dangerous for hikers and people who are walking along the beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four people died, including a father and his two children, after being swept out to sea along the Sonoma Coast earlier this month, the Press Democrat \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/new-year-tragedies-strike-two-families-during-weekend-outings-on-the-north/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Since October, the weather service has issued numerous beach hazard statements, high surf advisories and warnings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is so much energy in the water right now,” he said. “It is moving. It is ripping. There are rips everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Coast Guard officials say the increase in the frequency of big swells and sneaker waves has caught people off guard. Lieutenant Commander Matt Kroll says people should plan ahead and keep an eye on the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With these swells, the water is very cold and very, very powerful,” he said. “Hypothermia is an added danger to the sheer force of getting swept off your feet, getting pulled into rocks or just getting pulled out into sea.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Northern California surf spots are firing like crazy this winter.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\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/MpOpoLAZUL0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/MpOpoLAZUL0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Every fall, Brian Garcia briefs officials across the Bay Area counties on the winter weather outlook, what he calls “my traveling road show.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Mateo County, people always ask Garcia, a National Weather Service meteorologist, if the thundering, big-wave surf spot near Half Moon Bay known as Mavericks will break. (The famous Mavericks surf competition has been cancelled \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/sports/californias-mavericks-surf-contest-canceled-indefinitely/?sba=AAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">indefinitely.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most years, he can only guess. This year, his answer was unequivocal: Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">And then some.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Break to the degree that it has?” he said. “God, I never would have been able to predict this at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Northern California surf spots are firing like crazy this winter, with beaches and reefs serving up a seemingly endless supply of pristine waves, from Big Sur to Santa Cruz, and along the Sonoma Coast and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Anyone in Northern California who has been near the Pacific Ocean in the last month knows that the surf is pumping from swell-after-swell-after-swell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen glassy, perfect big swells like this with no wind,” said Shawn Rhodes, a longtime Northern California surfer and owner of Nor Cal Surf Shop in Pacifica. “You never get it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At Mavericks, the waves rise as tall as apartment buildings and break so violently they can snap a surfboard like a toothpick. The break is only surfable under the right conditions; some years the right combination of swell, wind, and weather never materialize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year it did. Bianca Valenti, a San Francisco-based big wave surfer, says she paddled out to Mavericks nearly a dozen times in December and almost every single day of 2021 to date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been an epic run,” she said. “Mind-blowing. This is the best winter that I can remember, ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conditions were so good at Mavericks on Dec. 8 — big waves, sunshine, no wind — that Surfline dubbed it the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/mavericks-day-days/106147#:~:text=Dec%209th%2C%202020.\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">day of days\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.” Grant Washburn, who’s kept a daily journal of conditions at the spot for nearly three decades, told the surf-forecasting and news website it was the “best dawn-to-dusk paddle day ever at Mav’s, ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Valenti says the waves have been huge and perfect and the conditions drew dozens of surfers and a gallery of photographers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“Whenever you would kick out of a wave, the whole group erupted,” she said. “The closest thing to a contest or a party since the pandemic began. Everyone was thrilled, it felt so good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">On Jan. 8, the swell was even larger, the waves faster, cresting higher than 50 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time a wave broke, it was like hearing a nuclear weapon explode,” Valenti said. At other times, a monster wave would roll in and “the whole horizon would just go black — you start paddling as fast as you can towards the boats and pray you don’t get caught.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>She said a lot of people stayed off the waves that day “out of respect for the power. It being a local spot and knowing the reef paid off for me, and I actually caught five waves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Big wave surfer Kai Lenny, affixed a camera to his surfboard, and the footage is wild.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\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/NgSBv6f-7Oo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/NgSBv6f-7Oo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Santa Cruz local Peter Mel has been lighting up surf websites with highlight videos from Mavericks all winter; at 51, his performance on waves this big is all the more amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">A longtime big-wave charger and owner of the Freeline Surf Shop in Capitola, Mel surfed a wave just about perfectly on the day-of-days. A month later, he fell after being towed into a wave on a jet ski and took a pounding from several 25-foot waves. He described his pummeling to Surfline as “the most intense rag-dolling you could ever imagine … it’s pretty much the ocean just trying to rip you to pieces.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few days later, on Jan. 8, Mel paddled into another bomb, a wave he described as his best of all time, and which some dubbed the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/pete-mel-just-catch-wave-decade-mavericks/109178\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">wave of the decade\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\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/4SzNlJCHBU0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4SzNlJCHBU0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“I’ve been seeing those types of waves my whole life, but I was never brave enough to do it,” he \u003cspan class=\"s1\">explained\u003c/span> to Surfline afterwards. “I’m actually depressed right now. … It’s like, ‘Oh my God. I’m 50 years old, did I just do that?’ But it’s like, ‘Now what? What do I look forward to now?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An employee at Mel’s shop said he wasn’t available for an interview. The reason?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“He’s back out at Mav’s again,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>La Niña Brings the Swell\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan class=\"s4\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Surfers can in part thank La Niña, cold water on the surface of the Equatorial Pacific that affects weather across the globe, for the big waves, according to Garcia, the meteorologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s La Niña has held a ridge of high pressure over California that has deflected storms that might normally have soaked the Bay Area to the north,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelting the Pacific Northwest with rain and snow instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Wind from the storms is driving swells south, like the wake behind a boat expanding outward and aiming the waves directly at the Northern California coast, Garcia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>La Niña can worsen dry conditions and drought in the West, and that also seems to be the case in California this year. The Bay Area has received about a third of its average annual precipitation to date, while rain is dumped across places like Portland, Oregon.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>While the surf is great, Garcia warns that the conditions can be dangerous for hikers and people who are walking along the beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four people died, including a father and his two children, after being swept out to sea along the Sonoma Coast earlier this month, the Press Democrat \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/new-year-tragedies-strike-two-families-during-weekend-outings-on-the-north/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Since October, the weather service has issued numerous beach hazard statements, high surf advisories and warnings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is so much energy in the water right now,” he said. “It is moving. It is ripping. There are rips everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Coast Guard officials say the increase in the frequency of big swells and sneaker waves has caught people off guard. Lieutenant Commander Matt Kroll says people should plan ahead and keep an eye on the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With these swells, the water is very cold and very, very powerful,” he said. “Hypothermia is an added danger to the sheer force of getting swept off your feet, getting pulled into rocks or just getting pulled out into sea.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Drought Conditions Could Stretch to Spring, Set Stage for Another Rough Fire Season",
"headTitle": "Drought Conditions Could Stretch to Spring, Set Stage for Another Rough Fire Season | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that California’s persistent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11849426/did-someone-say-drought\">drought-like conditions\u003c/a> could last through the winter and into spring, possibly fueling another grueling fire season in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, three-quarters of California is experiencing at least moderate \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">drought conditions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Keep in mind, we’re coming off the driest May-through-October period, statewide at least, across California, Arizona and New Mexico,” said Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forecasting three to four months out is a dodgy proposition for scientists, but NOAA’s modeling shows the likelihood of relatively dry weather through February. The current La Niña conditions — colder-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean — have been a seeming harbinger of scant precipitation in California in the past, though the connection is not reliable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought is very difficult to predict,” Svoboda said. “When you get down to real specifics, it really comes down to the weather and the interface between the atmosphere and the ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1971506\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 997px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1971506 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg\" alt=\"Map: US Drought Outlook\" width=\"997\" height=\"701\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg 997w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-800x562.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-160x112.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-768x540.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 997px) 100vw, 997px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Forecasters expect dry conditions to persist in California and spread eastward. Click on image to enlarge. \u003ccite>(NOAA)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Svoboda says he sees increasing evidence that the warming climate is changing the behavior of droughts, just as it’s changing the behavior of hurricanes and wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re living it right now,” Svoboda told reporters at the online Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, “and we’re probably right on the precipice of being able to say, ‘Yeah, now we can look back 20 years and say this has really changed the behavior of droughts.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says rising temperatures play a key role in drought development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me, it’s becoming more and more apparent, readily apparent,” he said. “I think there’s enough research and literature out there now that shows we should expect an increase.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same news conference, NOAA offered a preview of it’s new \u003ca href=\"drought.portal@noaa.gov\">web portal\u003c/a> for drought information.\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelsey Satalino, of NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, says that for the first time, the site will allow users to drill down for drought information at the level of individual ZIP codes, a much more granular view than the state-level data currently offered. Interactive tools will also show information on current wildfires, as well as historical data for localities, some of it dating back as far as 1895.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.drought.gov\">new interactive site\u003c/a> is set for an early January launch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we like to say, ‘All droughts are local,’” says Svoboda. “But we know this increasing temperature has a big role in drought, and the feedback between a dry soil and a dry atmosphere. That’s not a good combination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AGU’s Fall Meeting, normally a huge conference that draws more than 20,000 people in the scientific community to San Francisco’s Moscone Center, is being conducted entirely online this year as a COVID-19 precaution.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that California's persistent drought-like conditions could last through the winter and into spring, possibly fueling another grueling fire season in 2021.",
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"title": "Drought Conditions Could Stretch to Spring, Set Stage for Another Rough Fire Season | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that California’s persistent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11849426/did-someone-say-drought\">drought-like conditions\u003c/a> could last through the winter and into spring, possibly fueling another grueling fire season in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, three-quarters of California is experiencing at least moderate \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">drought conditions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Keep in mind, we’re coming off the driest May-through-October period, statewide at least, across California, Arizona and New Mexico,” said Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forecasting three to four months out is a dodgy proposition for scientists, but NOAA’s modeling shows the likelihood of relatively dry weather through February. The current La Niña conditions — colder-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean — have been a seeming harbinger of scant precipitation in California in the past, though the connection is not reliable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought is very difficult to predict,” Svoboda said. “When you get down to real specifics, it really comes down to the weather and the interface between the atmosphere and the ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1971506\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 997px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1971506 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg\" alt=\"Map: US Drought Outlook\" width=\"997\" height=\"701\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021.jpeg 997w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-800x562.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-160x112.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/12/DroughtOutlook_Dec-Feb2021-768x540.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 997px) 100vw, 997px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Forecasters expect dry conditions to persist in California and spread eastward. Click on image to enlarge. \u003ccite>(NOAA)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Svoboda says he sees increasing evidence that the warming climate is changing the behavior of droughts, just as it’s changing the behavior of hurricanes and wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re living it right now,” Svoboda told reporters at the online Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, “and we’re probably right on the precipice of being able to say, ‘Yeah, now we can look back 20 years and say this has really changed the behavior of droughts.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says rising temperatures play a key role in drought development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me, it’s becoming more and more apparent, readily apparent,” he said. “I think there’s enough research and literature out there now that shows we should expect an increase.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same news conference, NOAA offered a preview of it’s new \u003ca href=\"drought.portal@noaa.gov\">web portal\u003c/a> for drought information.\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelsey Satalino, of NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, says that for the first time, the site will allow users to drill down for drought information at the level of individual ZIP codes, a much more granular view than the state-level data currently offered. Interactive tools will also show information on current wildfires, as well as historical data for localities, some of it dating back as far as 1895.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.drought.gov\">new interactive site\u003c/a> is set for an early January launch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we like to say, ‘All droughts are local,’” says Svoboda. “But we know this increasing temperature has a big role in drought, and the feedback between a dry soil and a dry atmosphere. That’s not a good combination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AGU’s Fall Meeting, normally a huge conference that draws more than 20,000 people in the scientific community to San Francisco’s Moscone Center, is being conducted entirely online this year as a COVID-19 precaution.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "New Whale Entanglement Rules Delay Crab Season, and the Industry Isn't Happy",
"headTitle": "New Whale Entanglement Rules Delay Crab Season, and the Industry Isn’t Happy | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>California has issued \u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=184189&inline\">new regulations\u003c/a> designed to protect endangered humpback whales against potentially fatal entanglements in commercial fishing lines, and the Dungeness crab industry is not happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife on Nov. 1 released rules that allow officials to shut down crabbing in areas where whales are spotted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the new regulations, whale activity has already triggered the\u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=184556&inline\"> delay of the 2020 crab season\u003c/a> on the Central Coast after aerial and boat surveys spotted an estimated 400 whales. The season was set to open Nov. 15, in time to put crab on Thanksgiving tables. The crab boats will not get the go-ahead until the department makes its next assessment, which is expected to occur before Dec. 1. The area subject to the delay runs from the Sonoma-Mendocino County line to the Mexico border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dungeness crab fishery brings in on average about \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/project_pages/Rapid%20Assessments/Dungeness%20Crab.pdf\">$30 million \u003c/a>each year for California fishermen. But the vertical ropes that connect crab traps on the ocean floor to buoys at the surface can ensnare humpback and blue whales, as well as leatherback sea turtles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a major increase in the number of entanglements just in the last five years,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist for the environmental nonprofit Oceana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016 alone, more than 50 confirmed humpback whale entanglements occurred off the West Coast. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/webdam/download/97733256\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">report\u003c/a> from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listed California’s Dungeness crab fishery as the largest contributor. Data from the agency projects that roughly three-quarters of whales that get tangled in the lines may eventually die as a result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What these regulations do is they create a new system for determining when certain areas might be closed to crab fishing if there’s a lot of whales or turtles around,” Shester said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the new rules, crabbing can be halted in regions where 20 or more whales are spotted. Toward the end of the season, in the spring, 10 or more whales can trigger a shutdown, and confirmed entanglements have the potential to end the season altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Thresholds Too Low, Says Industry\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ben Platt, president of the \u003ca href=\"https://cacoastcrabassociation.org/\">California Coast Crab Association\u003c/a> and owner of a fishing boat based out of Crescent City, says the number of whales that can trigger a closure is too small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottom line is that the thresholds are so low that it’s unrealistic to expect that this fishery could continue in any meaningful way,” Platt said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crabbing community has worked with the state in recent years to reduce the number of entanglements by putting less gear in the water and supporting closures when necessary, Platt says. In his view, the typical seven-month Dungeness crab season is now in danger of being reduced to three or four months and potentially even fewer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>“\u003c/i>Nowadays, the crab fishery is really the most widely shared and economically important fishery to the coastal communities in California,” Platt said. “We’re potentially looking at the devastation of a whole commercial fishing industry, because if we lose Dungeness crab, most of us are going to have to quit, because it’s our most important and our most dependable fishery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the state Fish and Wildlife Department’s Marine Region, says commercial crab fishermen, along with environmental groups and state and federal agencies, were part of the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/whale-entanglement-working-group/\">Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group\u003c/a>, which helped craft the new rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to balance the need to protect an endangered species and allow for the crabbing fishery to continue and be viable for the state of California and all the fishing communities that depend on it,” Bartling said. “It’s a dual-goal regulation\u003ci>.\u003c/i>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bartling adds that closing down fishing regions isn’t the only way the new rules allow his agency to respond to whale activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be a depth restriction, can be a gear reduction, or another management action based on the best available science,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The regulations also provide a potential avenue for crab fisherman to avoid the closures by using \u003ca href=\"https://usa.oceana.org/sites/default/files/2020/10/26/oceana_whale_safe_oceans_report.pdf\">alternative gear\u003c/a> that won’t pose a threat to whales and sea turtles. One option, which doesn’t rely on leaving lines in the water for long periods, utilizes crab traps that deploy buoys to the surface when triggered by a timer or signal. This “pop-up” gear, Bartling and many crab fishermen agree, is still a work in progress — expensive and possible to lose on the ocean floor, with more testing needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given the state of technology, I think we can figure this out,” Bartling said of the different gear, “I just don’t know the time frame\u003ci>.\u003c/i>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "California's new regulations designed to protect endangered humpback whales against potentially fatal entanglements in crab fishing lines have put the season on hold.",
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"description": "California's new regulations designed to protect endangered humpback whales against potentially fatal entanglements in crab fishing lines have put the season on hold.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California has issued \u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=184189&inline\">new regulations\u003c/a> designed to protect endangered humpback whales against potentially fatal entanglements in commercial fishing lines, and the Dungeness crab industry is not happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife on Nov. 1 released rules that allow officials to shut down crabbing in areas where whales are spotted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the new regulations, whale activity has already triggered the\u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=184556&inline\"> delay of the 2020 crab season\u003c/a> on the Central Coast after aerial and boat surveys spotted an estimated 400 whales. The season was set to open Nov. 15, in time to put crab on Thanksgiving tables. The crab boats will not get the go-ahead until the department makes its next assessment, which is expected to occur before Dec. 1. The area subject to the delay runs from the Sonoma-Mendocino County line to the Mexico border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dungeness crab fishery brings in on average about \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/project_pages/Rapid%20Assessments/Dungeness%20Crab.pdf\">$30 million \u003c/a>each year for California fishermen. But the vertical ropes that connect crab traps on the ocean floor to buoys at the surface can ensnare humpback and blue whales, as well as leatherback sea turtles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a major increase in the number of entanglements just in the last five years,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist for the environmental nonprofit Oceana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016 alone, more than 50 confirmed humpback whale entanglements occurred off the West Coast. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/webdam/download/97733256\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">report\u003c/a> from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listed California’s Dungeness crab fishery as the largest contributor. Data from the agency projects that roughly three-quarters of whales that get tangled in the lines may eventually die as a result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What these regulations do is they create a new system for determining when certain areas might be closed to crab fishing if there’s a lot of whales or turtles around,” Shester said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the new rules, crabbing can be halted in regions where 20 or more whales are spotted. Toward the end of the season, in the spring, 10 or more whales can trigger a shutdown, and confirmed entanglements have the potential to end the season altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Thresholds Too Low, Says Industry\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ben Platt, president of the \u003ca href=\"https://cacoastcrabassociation.org/\">California Coast Crab Association\u003c/a> and owner of a fishing boat based out of Crescent City, says the number of whales that can trigger a closure is too small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottom line is that the thresholds are so low that it’s unrealistic to expect that this fishery could continue in any meaningful way,” Platt said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crabbing community has worked with the state in recent years to reduce the number of entanglements by putting less gear in the water and supporting closures when necessary, Platt says. In his view, the typical seven-month Dungeness crab season is now in danger of being reduced to three or four months and potentially even fewer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>“\u003c/i>Nowadays, the crab fishery is really the most widely shared and economically important fishery to the coastal communities in California,” Platt said. “We’re potentially looking at the devastation of a whole commercial fishing industry, because if we lose Dungeness crab, most of us are going to have to quit, because it’s our most important and our most dependable fishery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the state Fish and Wildlife Department’s Marine Region, says commercial crab fishermen, along with environmental groups and state and federal agencies, were part of the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://opc.ca.gov/whale-entanglement-working-group/\">Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group\u003c/a>, which helped craft the new rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to balance the need to protect an endangered species and allow for the crabbing fishery to continue and be viable for the state of California and all the fishing communities that depend on it,” Bartling said. “It’s a dual-goal regulation\u003ci>.\u003c/i>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bartling adds that closing down fishing regions isn’t the only way the new rules allow his agency to respond to whale activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be a depth restriction, can be a gear reduction, or another management action based on the best available science,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The regulations also provide a potential avenue for crab fisherman to avoid the closures by using \u003ca href=\"https://usa.oceana.org/sites/default/files/2020/10/26/oceana_whale_safe_oceans_report.pdf\">alternative gear\u003c/a> that won’t pose a threat to whales and sea turtles. One option, which doesn’t rely on leaving lines in the water for long periods, utilizes crab traps that deploy buoys to the surface when triggered by a timer or signal. This “pop-up” gear, Bartling and many crab fishermen agree, is still a work in progress — expensive and possible to lose on the ocean floor, with more testing needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given the state of technology, I think we can figure this out,” Bartling said of the different gear, “I just don’t know the time frame\u003ci>.\u003c/i>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "How the Oil Industry Misled the Public Into Thinking Plastic Would be Recycled",
"headTitle": "How the Oil Industry Misled the Public Into Thinking Plastic Would be Recycled | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Note: An audio version of this story aired on NPR’s Planet Money. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Listen to the episode here. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,” she said. “I had been lying to people … unwittingly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn’t want to hear it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” she says, “and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You’re lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It’s gold. This is valuable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not valuable, and it never has been. And what’s more, the makers of plastic — the nation’s largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR and \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/\">PBS\u003cem> Frontline\u003c/em>\u003c/a> spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn’t work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry’s awareness that recycling wouldn’t keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program’s earliest days, we found. “There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis,” one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn’t true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry’s most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The proof is the dramatic amount of investment that is happening right now,” Russell said. “I do understand the skepticism, because it hasn’t happened in the past, but I think the pressure, the public commitments and, most important, the availability of technology is going to give us a different outcome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It’s made from oil and gas, and it’s almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data\">10% of plastic\u003c/a> has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be because that’s not what they were told.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottle may look empty, yet it’s anything but trash,” says \u003ca href=\"https://digital.hagley.org/VID_1995300_B01_ID02?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=0578c06f357879ed7125&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0\">one ad from 1990\u003c/a> showing a plastic bottle bouncing out of a garbage truck. “It’s full of potential. … We’ve pioneered the country’s largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help plastic fill valuable uses and roles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These commercials carried a distinct message: Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may have sounded like an environmentalist’s message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the industry’s old documents are housed in libraries, such as the one on the grounds of the first DuPont family home in Delaware. Others are with universities, where former industry leaders sent their records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Syracuse University, there are boxes of files from a former industry consultant. And inside one of them is a report written in April 1973 by scientists tasked with forecasting possible issues for top industry executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recycling plastic, it told the executives, was unlikely to happen on a broad scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no recovery from obsolete products,” it says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It says pointedly: Plastic degrades with each turnover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A degradation of resin properties and performance occurs during the initial fabrication, through aging, and in any reclamation process,” the report told executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recycling plastic is “costly,” it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is “infeasible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are more documents, echoing decades of this knowledge, including one analysis from a top official at the industry’s most powerful trade group. “The costs of separating plastics … are high,” he tells colleagues, before noting that the cost of using oil to make plastic is so low that recycling plastic waste “can’t yet be justified economically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas, the former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, worked side by side with top oil and plastics executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s retired now, on the coast of Florida where he likes to bike, and feels conflicted about the time he worked with the plastics industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I did what the industry wanted me to do, that’s for sure,” he says. “But my personal views didn’t always jibe with the views I had to take as part of my job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas took over back in the late 1980s, and back then, plastic was in a crisis. There was too much plastic trash. The public was getting upset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969576\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1969576 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1920x1439.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon, where paper and metals still have markets but most plastic is thrown away. All plastic must first go through a recycling facility like this one, but only a fraction of the plastic produced actually winds up getting recycled. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In one document from 1989, Thomas calls executives at Exxon, Chevron, Amoco, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble and others to a private meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The image of plastics is deteriorating at an alarming rate,” he wrote. “We are approaching a point of no return.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told the executives they needed to act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “viability of the industry and the profitability of your company” are at stake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas remembers now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire — we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this time, Thomas had a co-worker named Lew Freeman. He was a vice president of the lobbying group. He remembers many of the meetings like the one in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The basic question on the table was, You guys as our trade association in the plastics industry aren’t doing enough — we need to do more,” Freeman says. “I remember this is one of those exchanges that sticks with me 35 years later or however long it’s been … and it was what we need to do is … advertise our way out of it. That was the idea thrown out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So began the plastics industry’s $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Presenting the possibilities of plastic!” one iconic ad blared, showing kids in bike helmets and plastic bags floating in the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This advertising was motivated first and foremost by legislation and other initiatives that were being introduced in state legislatures and sometimes in Congress,” Freeman says, “to ban or curb the use of plastics because of its performance in the waste stream.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, the industry launched a number of feel-good projects, telling the public to recycle plastic. It funded sorting machines, recycling centers, nonprofits, even expensive benches outside grocery stores made out of plastic bags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Few of these projects actually turned much plastic into new things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR tracked down almost a dozen projects the industry publicized starting in 1989. All of them shuttered or failed by the mid-1990s. Mobil’s Massachusetts recycling facility lasted three years, for example. Amoco’s project to recycle plastic in New York schools lasted two. Dow and Huntsman’s highly publicized plan to recycle plastic in national parks made it to seven out of 419 parks before the companies cut funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of them was able to get past the economics: Making new plastic out of oil is cheaper and easier than making it out of plastic trash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Freeman and Thomas, the head of the lobbying group, say the executives all knew that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of discussion about how difficult it was to recycle,” Thomas remembers. “They knew that the infrastructure wasn’t there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as the ads played and the projects got underway, Thomas and Freeman say industry officials wanted to get recycling plastic into people’s homes and outside on their curbs with blue bins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry created a special group called the Council for Solid Waste Solutions and brought a man from DuPont, Ron Liesemer, over to run it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer’s job was to at least try to make recycling work — because there was some hope, he said, however unlikely, that maybe if they could get recycling started, somehow the economics of it all would work itself out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had no staff, but I had money,” Liesemer says. “Millions of dollars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer took those millions out to Minnesota and other places to start local plastic recycling programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then he ran into the same problem all the industry documents found. Recycling plastic wasn’t making economic sense: There were too many different kinds of plastic, hundreds of them, and they can’t be melted down together. They have to be sorted out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, it can be done,” Liesemer says, “but who’s going to pay for it? Because it goes into too many applications, it goes into too many structures that just would not be practical to recycle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer says he started as many programs as he could and hoped for the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were trying to keep their products on the shelves,” Liesemer says. “That’s what they were focused on. They weren’t thinking what lesson should we learn for the next 20 years. No. Solve today’s problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Thomas, who led the trade group, says all of these efforts started to have an effect: The message that plastic could be recycled was sinking in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can only say that after a while, the atmosphere seemed to change,” he says. “I don’t know whether it was because people thought recycling had solved the problem or whether they were so in love with plastic products that they were willing to overlook the environmental concerns that were mounting up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the industry pushed those public strategies to get past the crisis, officials were also quietly launching a broader plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1990s, at a small recycling facility near San Diego, a man named Coy Smith was one of the first to see the industry’s new initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, Smith ran a recycling business. His customers were watching the ads and wanted to recycle plastic. So Smith allowed people to put two plastic items in their bins: soda bottles and milk jugs. He lost money on them, he says, but the aluminum, paper and steel from his regular business helped offset the costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, one day, almost overnight, his customers started putting all kinds of plastic in their bins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The symbols start showing up on the containers,” he explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith went out to the piles of plastic and started flipping over the containers. All of them were now stamped with the triangle of arrows — known as the international recycling symbol — with a number in the middle. He knew right away what was happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of a sudden, the consumer is looking at what’s on their soda bottle and they’re looking at what’s on their yogurt tub, and they say, ‘Oh well, they both have a symbol. Oh well, I guess they both go in,'” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969577\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969577\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Unwanted used plastic sits outside Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bins were now full of trash he couldn’t sell. He called colleagues at recycling facilities all across the country. They reported having the same problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry documents from this time show that just a couple of years earlier, starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic — even if there was no way to economically recycle it. Some environmentalists also supported the symbol, thinking it would help separate plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said what it did was make all plastic look recyclable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The consumers were confused,” Smith says. “It totally undermined our credibility, undermined what we knew was the truth in our community, not the truth from a lobbying group out of D.C.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the lobbying group in D.C. knew the truth in Smith’s community too. A report given to top officials at the Society of the Plastics Industry in 1993 told them about the problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The code is being misused,” it says bluntly. “Companies are using it as a ‘green’ marketing tool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The code is creating “unrealistic expectations” about how much plastic can actually be recycled, it told them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith and his colleagues launched a national protest, started a working group and fought the industry for years to get the symbol removed or changed. They lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have manpower to compete with this,” Smith says. “We just don’t. Even though we were all dedicated, it still was like, can we keep fighting a battle like this on and on and on from this massive industry that clearly has no end in sight of what they’re able to do and willing to do to keep their image the image they want.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s pure manipulation of the consumer,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, industry officials told NPR that the code was only ever meant to help recycling facilities sort plastic and was not intended to create any confusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without question, plastic has been critical to the country’s success. It’s cheap and durable, and it’s a chemical marvel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also hugely profitable. The oil industry makes more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.plasticsindustry.org/sites/default/files/SizeAndImpactReport_Summary.pdf\">$400 billion a year\u003c/a> making plastic, and as demand for oil for cars and trucks declines, the industry is telling shareholders that future profits will increasingly come from plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if there was a sign of this future, it’s a brand-new chemical plant that rises from the flat skyline outside Sweeny, Texas. It’s so new that it’s still shiny, and inside the facility, the concrete is free from stains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969578\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1536px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969578\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1152\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron Phillips Chemical’s new $6 billion plastic manufacturing plant rises from the skyline in Sweeny, Texas. Company officials say they see a bright future for their products as demand for plastic continues to rise. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This plant is Chevron Phillips Chemical’s $6 billion investment in new plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We see a very bright future for our products,” says Jim Becker, the vice president of sustainability for Chevron Phillips, inside a pristine new warehouse next to the plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are products the world needs and continues to need,” he says. “We’re very optimistic about future growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that growth, though, comes ever more plastic trash. But Becker says Chevron Phillips has a plan: It will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes by 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker seems earnest. He tells a story about vacationing with his wife and being devastated by the plastic trash they saw. When asked how Chevron Phillips will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes, he doesn’t hesitate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Recycling has to get more efficient, more economic,” he says. “We’ve got to do a better job, collecting the waste, sorting it. That’s going to be a huge effort.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fix recycling is the industry’s message too, says Steve Russell, the industry’s recent spokesman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fixing recycling is an imperative, and we’ve got to get it right,” he says. “I understand there is doubt and cynicism. That’s going to exist. But check back in. We’re there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas, Lew Freeman and Ron Liesemer, former industry executives, helped oil companies out of the first plastic crisis by getting people to believe something the industry knew then wasn’t true: That most plastic could be and would be recycled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell says this time will be different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It didn’t get recycled because the system wasn’t up to par,” he says. “We hadn’t invested in the ability to sort it and there hadn’t been market signals that companies were willing to buy it, and both of those things exist today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But plastic today is harder to sort than ever: There are more kinds of plastic, it’s cheaper to make plastic out of oil than plastic trash and there is exponentially more of it than 30 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And during those 30 years, oil and plastic companies made billions of dollars in profit as the public consumed ever more quantities of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell doesn’t dispute that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And during that time, our members have invested in developing the technologies that have brought us where we are today,” he says. “We are going to be able to make all of our new plastic out of existing municipal solid waste in plastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, an industry advocacy group funded by the nation’s largest oil and plastic companies launched its most expensive effort yet to promote recycling and cleanup of plastic waste. There’s even a \u003ca href=\"https://endplasticwaste.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-World-We-Know.mp4\">new ad\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969579\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969579\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New plastic bottles come off the line at a plastic manufacturing facility in Maryland. Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We have the people that can change the world,” it says to soaring music as people pick up plastic trash and as bottles get sorted in a recycling center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freeman, the former industry official, recently watched the ad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Déjà vu all over again,” he says as the ad finishes. “This is the same kind of thinking that ran in the ’90s. I don’t think this kind of advertising is, is helpful at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas said the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think anything has changed,” Thomas says. “Sounds exactly the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days as Thomas bikes down by the beach, he says he spends a lot of time thinking about the oceans and what will happen to them in 20 or 50 years, long after he is gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as he thinks back to those years he spent in conference rooms with top executives from oil and plastic companies, what occurs to him now is something he says maybe should have been obvious all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says what he saw was an industry that didn’t want recycling to work. Because if the job is to sell as much oil as you possibly can, any amount of recycled plastic is competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, they were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Thomas says. “Nobody that is producing a virgin product wants something to come along that is going to replace it. Produce more virgin material — that’s their business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they are. Analysts now expect plastic production to triple by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=How+Big+Oil+Misled+The+Public+Into+Believing+Plastic+Would+Be+Recycled&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "An NPR and PBS \"Frontline\" investigation reveals how the oil and gas industry used the promise of recycling to sell more plastic, even when they knew it would never work on a large scale.",
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"description": "An NPR and PBS "Frontline" investigation reveals how the oil and gas industry used the promise of recycling to sell more plastic, even when they knew it would never work on a large scale.",
"title": "How the Oil Industry Misled the Public Into Thinking Plastic Would be Recycled | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Note: An audio version of this story aired on NPR’s Planet Money. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Listen to the episode here. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,” she said. “I had been lying to people … unwittingly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn’t want to hear it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” she says, “and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You’re lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It’s gold. This is valuable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not valuable, and it never has been. And what’s more, the makers of plastic — the nation’s largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR and \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/\">PBS\u003cem> Frontline\u003c/em>\u003c/a> spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn’t work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry’s awareness that recycling wouldn’t keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program’s earliest days, we found. “There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis,” one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn’t true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry’s most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The proof is the dramatic amount of investment that is happening right now,” Russell said. “I do understand the skepticism, because it hasn’t happened in the past, but I think the pressure, the public commitments and, most important, the availability of technology is going to give us a different outcome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It’s made from oil and gas, and it’s almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data\">10% of plastic\u003c/a> has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be because that’s not what they were told.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bottle may look empty, yet it’s anything but trash,” says \u003ca href=\"https://digital.hagley.org/VID_1995300_B01_ID02?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=0578c06f357879ed7125&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0\">one ad from 1990\u003c/a> showing a plastic bottle bouncing out of a garbage truck. “It’s full of potential. … We’ve pioneered the country’s largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help plastic fill valuable uses and roles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These commercials carried a distinct message: Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may have sounded like an environmentalist’s message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the industry’s old documents are housed in libraries, such as the one on the grounds of the first DuPont family home in Delaware. Others are with universities, where former industry leaders sent their records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Syracuse University, there are boxes of files from a former industry consultant. And inside one of them is a report written in April 1973 by scientists tasked with forecasting possible issues for top industry executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recycling plastic, it told the executives, was unlikely to happen on a broad scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no recovery from obsolete products,” it says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It says pointedly: Plastic degrades with each turnover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A degradation of resin properties and performance occurs during the initial fabrication, through aging, and in any reclamation process,” the report told executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recycling plastic is “costly,” it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is “infeasible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are more documents, echoing decades of this knowledge, including one analysis from a top official at the industry’s most powerful trade group. “The costs of separating plastics … are high,” he tells colleagues, before noting that the cost of using oil to make plastic is so low that recycling plastic waste “can’t yet be justified economically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas, the former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, worked side by side with top oil and plastics executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s retired now, on the coast of Florida where he likes to bike, and feels conflicted about the time he worked with the plastics industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I did what the industry wanted me to do, that’s for sure,” he says. “But my personal views didn’t always jibe with the views I had to take as part of my job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas took over back in the late 1980s, and back then, plastic was in a crisis. There was too much plastic trash. The public was getting upset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969576\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1969576 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6962_custom-53de701bffc6e83c4273e386c22726fbf363bdcd-1920x1439.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon, where paper and metals still have markets but most plastic is thrown away. All plastic must first go through a recycling facility like this one, but only a fraction of the plastic produced actually winds up getting recycled. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In one document from 1989, Thomas calls executives at Exxon, Chevron, Amoco, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble and others to a private meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The image of plastics is deteriorating at an alarming rate,” he wrote. “We are approaching a point of no return.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told the executives they needed to act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “viability of the industry and the profitability of your company” are at stake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas remembers now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire — we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this time, Thomas had a co-worker named Lew Freeman. He was a vice president of the lobbying group. He remembers many of the meetings like the one in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The basic question on the table was, You guys as our trade association in the plastics industry aren’t doing enough — we need to do more,” Freeman says. “I remember this is one of those exchanges that sticks with me 35 years later or however long it’s been … and it was what we need to do is … advertise our way out of it. That was the idea thrown out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So began the plastics industry’s $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Presenting the possibilities of plastic!” one iconic ad blared, showing kids in bike helmets and plastic bags floating in the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This advertising was motivated first and foremost by legislation and other initiatives that were being introduced in state legislatures and sometimes in Congress,” Freeman says, “to ban or curb the use of plastics because of its performance in the waste stream.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, the industry launched a number of feel-good projects, telling the public to recycle plastic. It funded sorting machines, recycling centers, nonprofits, even expensive benches outside grocery stores made out of plastic bags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Few of these projects actually turned much plastic into new things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR tracked down almost a dozen projects the industry publicized starting in 1989. All of them shuttered or failed by the mid-1990s. Mobil’s Massachusetts recycling facility lasted three years, for example. Amoco’s project to recycle plastic in New York schools lasted two. Dow and Huntsman’s highly publicized plan to recycle plastic in national parks made it to seven out of 419 parks before the companies cut funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of them was able to get past the economics: Making new plastic out of oil is cheaper and easier than making it out of plastic trash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Freeman and Thomas, the head of the lobbying group, say the executives all knew that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of discussion about how difficult it was to recycle,” Thomas remembers. “They knew that the infrastructure wasn’t there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as the ads played and the projects got underway, Thomas and Freeman say industry officials wanted to get recycling plastic into people’s homes and outside on their curbs with blue bins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry created a special group called the Council for Solid Waste Solutions and brought a man from DuPont, Ron Liesemer, over to run it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer’s job was to at least try to make recycling work — because there was some hope, he said, however unlikely, that maybe if they could get recycling started, somehow the economics of it all would work itself out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had no staff, but I had money,” Liesemer says. “Millions of dollars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer took those millions out to Minnesota and other places to start local plastic recycling programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then he ran into the same problem all the industry documents found. Recycling plastic wasn’t making economic sense: There were too many different kinds of plastic, hundreds of them, and they can’t be melted down together. They have to be sorted out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, it can be done,” Liesemer says, “but who’s going to pay for it? Because it goes into too many applications, it goes into too many structures that just would not be practical to recycle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liesemer says he started as many programs as he could and hoped for the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were trying to keep their products on the shelves,” Liesemer says. “That’s what they were focused on. They weren’t thinking what lesson should we learn for the next 20 years. No. Solve today’s problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Thomas, who led the trade group, says all of these efforts started to have an effect: The message that plastic could be recycled was sinking in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can only say that after a while, the atmosphere seemed to change,” he says. “I don’t know whether it was because people thought recycling had solved the problem or whether they were so in love with plastic products that they were willing to overlook the environmental concerns that were mounting up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the industry pushed those public strategies to get past the crisis, officials were also quietly launching a broader plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1990s, at a small recycling facility near San Diego, a man named Coy Smith was one of the first to see the industry’s new initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, Smith ran a recycling business. His customers were watching the ads and wanted to recycle plastic. So Smith allowed people to put two plastic items in their bins: soda bottles and milk jugs. He lost money on them, he says, but the aluminum, paper and steel from his regular business helped offset the costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, one day, almost overnight, his customers started putting all kinds of plastic in their bins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The symbols start showing up on the containers,” he explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith went out to the piles of plastic and started flipping over the containers. All of them were now stamped with the triangle of arrows — known as the international recycling symbol — with a number in the middle. He knew right away what was happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of a sudden, the consumer is looking at what’s on their soda bottle and they’re looking at what’s on their yogurt tub, and they say, ‘Oh well, they both have a symbol. Oh well, I guess they both go in,'” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969577\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969577\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_6948_slide-0cfb37ad629b646bd74852187b68b6f1ac98e82f-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Unwanted used plastic sits outside Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bins were now full of trash he couldn’t sell. He called colleagues at recycling facilities all across the country. They reported having the same problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry documents from this time show that just a couple of years earlier, starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic — even if there was no way to economically recycle it. Some environmentalists also supported the symbol, thinking it would help separate plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said what it did was make all plastic look recyclable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The consumers were confused,” Smith says. “It totally undermined our credibility, undermined what we knew was the truth in our community, not the truth from a lobbying group out of D.C.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the lobbying group in D.C. knew the truth in Smith’s community too. A report given to top officials at the Society of the Plastics Industry in 1993 told them about the problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The code is being misused,” it says bluntly. “Companies are using it as a ‘green’ marketing tool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The code is creating “unrealistic expectations” about how much plastic can actually be recycled, it told them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith and his colleagues launched a national protest, started a working group and fought the industry for years to get the symbol removed or changed. They lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have manpower to compete with this,” Smith says. “We just don’t. Even though we were all dedicated, it still was like, can we keep fighting a battle like this on and on and on from this massive industry that clearly has no end in sight of what they’re able to do and willing to do to keep their image the image they want.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s pure manipulation of the consumer,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, industry officials told NPR that the code was only ever meant to help recycling facilities sort plastic and was not intended to create any confusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without question, plastic has been critical to the country’s success. It’s cheap and durable, and it’s a chemical marvel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also hugely profitable. The oil industry makes more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.plasticsindustry.org/sites/default/files/SizeAndImpactReport_Summary.pdf\">$400 billion a year\u003c/a> making plastic, and as demand for oil for cars and trucks declines, the industry is telling shareholders that future profits will increasingly come from plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if there was a sign of this future, it’s a brand-new chemical plant that rises from the flat skyline outside Sweeny, Texas. It’s so new that it’s still shiny, and inside the facility, the concrete is free from stains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969578\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1536px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969578\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1152\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_7522-0748d6ba7ae89aee8d80e3a91946b29cf2cb519a-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron Phillips Chemical’s new $6 billion plastic manufacturing plant rises from the skyline in Sweeny, Texas. Company officials say they see a bright future for their products as demand for plastic continues to rise. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This plant is Chevron Phillips Chemical’s $6 billion investment in new plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We see a very bright future for our products,” says Jim Becker, the vice president of sustainability for Chevron Phillips, inside a pristine new warehouse next to the plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are products the world needs and continues to need,” he says. “We’re very optimistic about future growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that growth, though, comes ever more plastic trash. But Becker says Chevron Phillips has a plan: It will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes by 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker seems earnest. He tells a story about vacationing with his wife and being devastated by the plastic trash they saw. When asked how Chevron Phillips will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes, he doesn’t hesitate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Recycling has to get more efficient, more economic,” he says. “We’ve got to do a better job, collecting the waste, sorting it. That’s going to be a huge effort.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fix recycling is the industry’s message too, says Steve Russell, the industry’s recent spokesman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fixing recycling is an imperative, and we’ve got to get it right,” he says. “I understand there is doubt and cynicism. That’s going to exist. But check back in. We’re there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas, Lew Freeman and Ron Liesemer, former industry executives, helped oil companies out of the first plastic crisis by getting people to believe something the industry knew then wasn’t true: That most plastic could be and would be recycled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell says this time will be different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It didn’t get recycled because the system wasn’t up to par,” he says. “We hadn’t invested in the ability to sort it and there hadn’t been market signals that companies were willing to buy it, and both of those things exist today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But plastic today is harder to sort than ever: There are more kinds of plastic, it’s cheaper to make plastic out of oil than plastic trash and there is exponentially more of it than 30 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And during those 30 years, oil and plastic companies made billions of dollars in profit as the public consumed ever more quantities of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell doesn’t dispute that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And during that time, our members have invested in developing the technologies that have brought us where we are today,” he says. “We are going to be able to make all of our new plastic out of existing municipal solid waste in plastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, an industry advocacy group funded by the nation’s largest oil and plastic companies launched its most expensive effort yet to promote recycling and cleanup of plastic waste. There’s even a \u003ca href=\"https://endplasticwaste.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-World-We-Know.mp4\">new ad\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969579\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1969579\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/img_8725_slide-6bcbd5de006f7554e5b5cdf1a752dc702159c20c-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New plastic bottles come off the line at a plastic manufacturing facility in Maryland. Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050. \u003ccite>(Laura Sullivan/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We have the people that can change the world,” it says to soaring music as people pick up plastic trash and as bottles get sorted in a recycling center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freeman, the former industry official, recently watched the ad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Déjà vu all over again,” he says as the ad finishes. “This is the same kind of thinking that ran in the ’90s. I don’t think this kind of advertising is, is helpful at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Thomas said the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think anything has changed,” Thomas says. “Sounds exactly the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days as Thomas bikes down by the beach, he says he spends a lot of time thinking about the oceans and what will happen to them in 20 or 50 years, long after he is gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as he thinks back to those years he spent in conference rooms with top executives from oil and plastic companies, what occurs to him now is something he says maybe should have been obvious all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says what he saw was an industry that didn’t want recycling to work. Because if the job is to sell as much oil as you possibly can, any amount of recycled plastic is competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, they were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Thomas says. “Nobody that is producing a virgin product wants something to come along that is going to replace it. Produce more virgin material — that’s their business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
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},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
"title": "Science Friday",
"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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