The wildfires in California have state residents choking on smoke, while our neighbors in Butte County are experiencing the deadliest and worst wildfire on record. Climate change is sure to blame: record droughts and heat, coupled with a lack of autumn rain, created the ingredients for this late-season inferno.
But poor forest management also plays a role. In this all-too-relevant Calmatters piece from back in March, reporter Julie Cart noted that a 19th-century California forest would have held fewer than 50 trees an acre. But due to extreme logging followed by fire suppression, today’s forests now contain an unsustainable 300 to 500 trees an acre. Meanwhile, Cal Fire (the state’s fire-fighting agency) removes trees on fewer than 40,000 acres a year, far short of the stated goal of clearing 500,000 acres per year.
Thinning trees isn’t cheap. Estimates are as much as $1,400 an acre, with the controlled burns to follow costing about $150 an acre. By comparison, fighting a wildfire costs over $800 an acre, not to mention the cost to property, public health and human lives.
But we need to find a way to thin and treat these forested lands, as well as to encourage property owners to reduce their fire risk on site by clearing vegetation. We also need to encourage improved local land use decisions that avoid building in the most fire-prone areas. All tasks for our Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom to handle, once in office.
Meanwhile, I’ll be off blogging for two weeks due to various travel and work commitments. See you after Thanksgiving, when hopefully these wildfires will be gone for the season.
It may not be the snazziest-looking electric vehicle ever made, but the now-discontinued Chevy Spark EV could pack a punch. As E&E News related in their recent piece on Palo Alto EVs [pay-walled]:
[Ben Kaupp, sales manager of Boardwalk Chevrolet in Palo Alto] owns a dozen cars and loves speed. One of the fastest he’s ever had is the Chevy Spark, a wedge-shaped little electric hatchback that, “before they figured out that they really shouldn’t give them that much power,” could out-accelerate the 600-horsepower Corvette Z06, one of the fastest production cars GM has ever made.
Pretty impressive for a car that looks like the stunted child of a Fiat and a shopping cart. But like other unfortunate-looking early EVs (the Nissan LEAF being another), the electric drive performance is superb.
Of all the EV automakers, only Tesla figured out early that the vehicles needed to be sold based on performance and technology. With just a bit more styling, a car like the Chevy Spark EV could have been a contender.
Tonight I’ll be moderating a candidate town hall on environmental issues with Assembly District 15 (Berkeley) candidate Buffy Wicks and Emeryville City Councilmembers Scott Donahue and Dianne Martinez.
It will run from 6-7:30pm at the Emeryville Senior Center, Room A100, at 1100 47th Street.
You can register to attend for this free discussion on the event Facebook page. Hope to see you there tonight!
It takes a special artist to go from arranging showtunes for Frank Sinatra to shepherding Michael Jackson to record the best-selling album of all time to producing a hit television show for rapper Will Smith. But that’s Quincy Jones in an amazing nutshell, as the new Netflix documentary on his life by his daughter Rashida shows.
Jones is over 80 now and showing the effects of a lifetime of hard living. But the documentary skillfully transitions between shots of Jones today — still irascible, engaging, funny, and enthusiastic — with clips recorded of Jones from the 1960s and 1970s, enabling the viewer to capture the essence of the man even with the passage of time.
It also highlights his incredible and often-behind-the-scenes career. He started life in Chicago’s dangerous South Side, with a mother later committed to a mental institution and a life of hardscrabble poverty. But he found music through the trumpet and became a skilled jazz musician, playing with the bebop greats of his day.
He learned music arrangement and was subsequently recruited by Frank Sinatra to produce his songs with a full orchestra. From there he recorded his own jazz albums (including penning what would later become the featured tune for the Austin Powers movies) and numerous film and television scores. He molded Michael Jackson into stardom in the 1980s, producing the best-selling album Thriller with his handpicked band and composers. Oh and by the way, he also discovered Oprah Winfrey for the movie Color Purple, which he helped produce and conceptualize.
Through it all, the documentary shows him surrounded by family but also the failures of his numerous marriages. And it shows in painful intimacy his more recent health challenges.
The documentary is enjoyable viewing for any music fan and those interested in twentieth century popular culture. Jones has lived an amazing life, and his influence and work still shape our culture today. The documentary is a fitting tribute to his enduring — and ongoing — legacy.
It may soon get harder and more expensive to recycle your solid waste. As the Associated Press reported, stockpiled recyclables are going nowhere these days:
It all stems from a policy shift by China, long the world’s leading recyclables buyer. At the beginning of the year it enacted an anti-pollution program that closed its doors to loads of waste paper, metals or plastic unless they’re 99.5 percent pure. That’s an unattainable standard at U.S. single-stream recycling processing plants designed to churn out bales of paper or plastic that are, at best, 97 percent free of contaminants such as foam cups and food waste.
The resulting glut of recyclables has caused prices to plummet from levels already depressed by other economic forces, including lower prices for oil, a key ingredient in plastics.
As one recycler commented, a bale of mixed paper was worth about $100 per ton a year ago, but now requires payment of $15 to dispose of it.
There may not be much we can do to get China to change its policy, particularly with Trump’s trade war raging. And it may not be a bad thing, from an environmental perspective, as anecdotal reports indicated that American companies had very little insight into what happened to recyclables once they were shipped off to China on empty freight vessels.
So Americans are likely to see higher prices for waste disposal rates soon, as companies renegotiate contracts with municipal governments. And we’re also likely going to have to be more methodical about how we recycle, such as by cleaning out bottles and cans better and separating recyclables into distinct bins by product type.
Governor Brown witnesses subnational leaders from around the globe signing the “Under 2 MOU” in New York in 2015.
Climate change is a tough political nut to crack, given entrenched ideological and financial resistance to transitioning to a clean economy. But what if strategic climate policies, sequenced carefully over time, can help divide and minimize this opposition?
My Berkeley Law colleague Eric Biber, along with co-authors of German and American economists, political scientists and legal scholars, just published an article in Nature Climate Change describing such strategic sequencing, using Germany and California’s stories as examples and evidence of success.
The researchers describe four key barriers to climate policy:
- Concern over high costs
- Lack of supporting coalitions for climate action
- Weak governing institutions to implement policy
- Concern about “free-riding” jurisdictions that won’t take action if others are already moving forward (and bearing the costs)
To address these barriers through smart policy, they recommend:
- Focusing on incentives and support for clean technology to lower costs, while phasing in mandates slowly to minimize price shocks at the outset
- Exempting politically powerful groups from some mandates to lessen opposition, linking climate benefits with other “co-benefit” outcomes (like green jobs and reduction in toxic air pollution), and concentrating benefits among powerful interests who will lobby to keep the policies in place
- Carefully phasing in implementation work with competent agencies first and then rewarding those agencies that respond well to the challenge
- Forming multi-jurisdiction coalitions of climate actors that can coerce and encourage free-riding jurisdictions to join
As more jurisdictions adopt policies to combat climate change, we’ll have more case studies and examples to draw from for research like this, which will hopefully inform efforts around the world. Because while effective policies are needed, climate leaders also need to be strategic about which ones they pursue to overcome opposition both in the short and long term.
In June, I camped in Nevada’s pristine Lamoille Canyon, halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City, considered the “Swiss Alps” of Nevada. As you can see from the picture above, we enjoyed a peak late spring bloom in this incredible canyon on U.S. Forest Service land.
In August, I then wrote on this blog about how the canyon and the surrounding Ruby Mountains are at risk from Trump Administration-approved oil-and-gas drilling activities.
Now I learn the sad news that the canyon was largely gutted by a fire that started on Sunday outside a nearby shooting range, just beyond the canyon mouth. The video below was taken by the U.S. Forest Service from a helicopter tour on Tuesday. The area I camped in appears around 2 minutes in, near a historic lodge that burned.
While fires are a natural part of the cycle, we know climate change is worsening their severity, while suppression activities may have made this fire worse (though it looks like the more alpine part of the canyon at higher elevations may have been spared the devastation).
It’s sad to think that no one will enjoy a Lamoille Canyon spring like I saw I back in June for many years to come. But on the bright side, this coming spring could see a nice flower show, as the fire-enriched solo nourishes new plant growth.
The cycle will continue, though in new directions in this era of rapid climate change.
California’s legislature may have whiffed this year on SB 827, a comprehensive measure to boost housing near major transit stops this year. But state leaders ended up passing a significant and pioneering bill (now law, with Governor Brown’s signature on Sunday) that forces development on land owned by BART around its rail stations. It could be a precursor to future state efforts to limit local restrictions on development near transit.
AB 2923 (Chiu) requires the BART board to adopt new development standards for height, density, parking, and floor area ratios on land the agency owns within one-half mile of each of its stations. Local governments then have two years to conform their zoning with these standards — or else the standards become de facto land use policy.
The agency standards are limited to some extent, as height can only go as high as a certain percentage of surrounding buildings, and any net loss of parking for commuters has to be addressed through improved access. Furthermore, the parcels have to be owned by BART as of July 1, 2018, so BART can’t go on a buying spree to develop more land down the road.
So why was this law successful where the statewide SB 827 approach failed? Three reasons:
- AB 2923 covers a relatively tiny geographical area, just within the San Francisco Bay Area, thus minimizing potential opposition with a smaller scope (although suburban BART communities certainly freaked out to no avail); see map above;
- It includes mandatory affordable housing requirements for any new housing built under these standards, plus union workforce requirements, bringing two crucial constituencies on board to support it; and
- It only affects BART-owned land of primarily non-residential parking lots, which means there is no risk of displacing existing residents and raising the ire of groups dedicated to protecting low-income renters.
So what’s next? First, opponents are likely to sue to overturn the law, although I don’t think they’ll have a strong legal case given that other state-charted agencies have similar land use authority.
But more importantly, this legislation could encourage other California transit agencies in cities like Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego to request similar land use authority, broadening the scope of its application significantly. Furthermore, it could encourage the state to get more involved in limiting local regulation of land use near transit in general.
So while the legislature did not manage a comprehensive housing fix this term, it may have laid the conceptual foundation with AB 2923 for a new statewide approach to boosting housing near transit.
The critics are out for California’s groundbreaking climate and energy goals. Cal Matters (and former Sacramento Bee) columnist Dan Walters criticizes the state’s new 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality goals by 2045:
It’s theoretically possible to build enough solar and windmill farms to [achieve a 100% greenhouse gas-free grid], albeit at immense cost, but there’s a corollary problem. They mostly generate during daylight hours, so having their power available 24 hours a day would require huge amounts of storage, presumably in massive battery banks.
Battery technology hasn’t advanced to that stage yet, at least at a viable cost. After Brown signed the 2045 legislation, Moody’s, the big credit rating organization, called it a “credit negative” for the state’s electrical utilities, citing battery storage capacity.
Walters fails to acknowledge here that “energy storage” to capture surplus renewables includes a diverse array of technologies beyond just batteries. Furthermore, with the carbon-free target date of 2045 still a generation away, industry has plenty of time to innovate in response to this challenge. We’ve already seen battery prices decline about 80% in 10 years. So why use today’s numbers to criticize a critical long-term mandate?
Walters then attacks California’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) goals:
There are only about 200,000 ZEVs on the road now, so replacing all gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars at $30,000 each by 2045 would cost California motorists (and/or taxpayers) about a trillion dollars, or an average of $37 billion a year.
Again, Walters refuses to assume any cost decreases in the price of ZEVs by 2045, or the availability of inexpensive used vehicles in the meantime. This flies in the face of price trends to date. Walters also neglects to mention the fuel and maintenance savings from these vehicles.
Finally, he criticizes the push for electrification of transportation based on how much more power the state will need to deliver:
Driving 100 miles in a ZEV consumes 30 kilowatt-hours of electric power, according to the federal government. Therefore, assuming they were still traveling 330 billion miles each year, recharging 30 million ZEVs would expand annual electric power consumption from 300 terawatt-hours to at least 400, and that extra juice also would have to come from solar, wind and other renewable resources.
Moreover, since the ZEVs would be mostly recharged at night, the carbon-free electrical grid would need even more battery storage to keep them running.
Fun numbers, indeed.
Walters omits some key details. First, the state also has a goal of increasing energy efficiency, including a doubling of efficiency in existing buildings by 2030, which would reduce energy demand overall. Second, state leaders are trying to reduce driving miles per capita by investing in more transit, walking and biking infrastructure, while attempting to build more homes close to jobs and transit. If successful by 2045, driving miles would decrease, along with projected energy demand. Finally, state regulators are pushing for electricity rates that will encourage more daytime charging, to avoid the problem Walters cites.
Overall, Walters’ entire analysis fails to factor in the cost of inaction. What about the public health impacts of more pollution? What about the cost of addressing climate impacts, such as more fires, sea level rise, and droughts?
Walters raises some legitimate questions, but his analysis in response is selective and incomplete.
As our political divide worsens into tribal camps, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue in a New York Times op-ed that our isolated and over-supervised upbringing is to blame:
But during the 1980s and 1990s, children became ever more supervised, and lost opportunities to learn to deal with risk and with one another. You can see the transformation by walking through almost any residential neighborhood. Gone is the “intricate sidewalk ballet” that the urbanist Jane Jacobs described in 1961 as she navigated around children playing in her Greenwich Village neighborhood. One of us lives in that same neighborhood today. His son, at the age of 9, was reluctant to go across the street to the supermarket on his own. “People look at me funny,” he said. “There are no other kids out there without a parent.”
The result of this isolation is in inability to get along with and respect others of different viewpoints. And it’s no accident that this time period in this research coincides with the rise of suburban sprawl — and the tremendous isolation it brings to children raised in that environment.
A suburban home with an enclosed backyard maximizes convenience for parents. They can supervise their kids outside without fear of strangers intruding or the kids running off, as they’re all safely penned in the backyard. A nice single-family home also provides a quiet respite for the working adult who commutes by car and can therefore the home leave whenever he or she wants for errands, socializing, and the like.
But for children, these backyards stifle the kind of random social interactions and independence that Haidt and Lukianoff cite as necessary for emotional development. And the car-dependent environment means the children lack self-sufficiency and mobility until they get their license and access to an automobile. They’re otherwise completely dependent on caregivers to ferry them around.
It’s yet another argument against the suburban sprawl model — beyond its unsustainable environmental impacts.
