Rob Schmitz heads KQED’s Los Angeles Bureau and is a frequent contributor to Climate Watch.
A Chevy that gets 230 miles to the gallon. A Hummer that gets 100.
Plug-in 2009, the 2nd annual industry conference in Long Beach, was wall-to-wall with such apparent oxymora. Just roving around the exhibition floor on Tuesday, I got the sense that our electric vehicle future is closer than I had originally suspected. I spoke to conference-goers who are already investing millions in what is assured to be an enormous infrastructure that’ll be built around these new cars.
Electric vehicle charging stations from Campbell-based Coulomb Technologies. Photo: Rob Schmitz
I met Tom Tormey, Vice President of Technology at the Silicon Valley-based Coulomb Technologies. He raised a lot of important questions about where we’d charge these vehicles when we’re not at home. Of course, the answer came in the form of something he could sell you: car-charging stations. His company manufactures automated posts where you can use a credit card to charge up your car when you’re away from home or at work. He’s already sold dozens of these to cities across Europe. The stations will even help calculate taxes for the government through a network that hooks up to Coulomb’s servers here in California: a potentially big business for an electric future.
Speaking of big, check out the electric Hummer. If you thought this beast was nearing extinction (with the sale of Hummer to the Chinese and all), think again. With a new electric version that allegedly gets a 100 miles to the gallon, you may continue to see this American icon on our freeways.
Jim Spellman of Raser Technologies, standing in front of the 100-mpg electric Hummer. Photo: Rob Schmitz
Jim Spellman of Raser Technologies showed off the Hummer to me, complete with his company’s power train and electric generation system. He says they took it out for a test drive a few weeks ago and it ran 50 miles on electric power with 30% of the battery left to go.
With momentum building among the plug-in players, it’s not surprising that Mike Howard of the Electric Power Research Institute predicts there will be 16 million electric vehicles on the nation’s roads by 2030.
Scientists and policy wonks seem to be in general agreement on this: that it’s time to close out the current management epoch on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and begin anew. There’s less accord on how to proceed.
Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Policy makers have assembled “blue ribbon” panels to study the options and make recommendations. Volumes of studies and proposals line the shelves in Sacramento and elsewhere.
Last week a new idea surfaced for moving water through the Delta: Instead of channeling around it, tunnel under it.
This week the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released its recommendations for a mechanism to fund the enormous fixes that will be required: Those who benefit pay (ecologists use the term “ecosystem services” for all those bennies we get from natural resources and tend to take for granted).
Whatever the outcome, one thing seems inevitable, with or without human intervention. Driven by warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels will continue to push saltwater farther upstream, changing the Delta’s character and the “services” it provides.
Recently a team of students at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism produced a Flash presentation on some of the issues raised by advancing salt in the Delta. The multimedia report: Delicate Balance was produced for Climate Watch by Amanda Dyer, Martin Ricard and Jeremy Whitaker. We’re grateful to them for their time and creativity.
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper. –T.S. Eliot
With the President headed for Mexico for a two-day summit, I was struck last week by the juxtaposition of two headlines that jumped out of a daily environmental news digest.
“With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill,” Lisa Lerer wrote for Politico, “Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year.”
Granted, Mexico’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is reportedly about 2%, or a tenth of the U.S. contribution, so one might argue that there’s a lesser job to do there. But with less than four months remaining before the next major U.N. climate conference, it raises the grim prospect that while other nations press on, the U.S. could arrive in Copenhagen empty-handed, which is to say without meaningful carbon legislation to show.
At the same time last week, the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum called for a 50/50 commitment from developed nations; a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Many of those island nations are on the hot seat as rising seas levels could make them among the first to lose substantial real estate before the end of this century.
At his first climate summit for governors last fall, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced a video from then President-elect Obama, in which he promised that his presidency would “mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change.”
Praising the governors in attendance for their own climate initiatives, the newly elected President declared that “Too often Washington has failed to show the same kind of leadership. That will change when I take office.”
Of course “Washington” includes Congress, which is still dithering over the major carbon emissions bill championed by the new President. It squeaked through the House by nine votes and now looms as a 1,400-page pig that the Senate python will attempt to digest or regurgitate. Either way, what comes out is unlikely to closely resemble what went in.
Meanwhile the whole cap-and-trade concept has been coming under increasing scrutiny and skepticism. Last month, when the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California polled Californians on the subject, more respondents favored an out-and-out carbon tax than cap-and-trade (56% to 49%). The Western Climate Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade pact that is a keystone of California’s climate strategy, AB 32, remains in limbo while western legislatures wait on Congress.
So when the Governor convenes his second climate summit in L.A. next month, billed optimistically as “The Road to Copenhagen,” he and his fellow “subnational leaders” (Wisconsin, Michigan & Connecticut governors are currently signed up) may find that the ball is still in their court. According to a news release from the Governor’s office, “climate leaders from around the world will come together and collaborate on efforts to further the global fight against climate change.”
They’ll do it with the same question on the table as last year: Can they count on Washington to take up the reins?
A one-fifth reduction in per capita water use by 2020 is among the goals outlined in a new state report on adapting to climate change.
Released by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) as a “discussion draft,” the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy is being billed as the nation’s first comprehensive game plan for adaptation to climate change.
Photo: Reed Galin
Most of the state’s high-profile climate initiatives (and battles) have been about mitigation; how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow down warming. This report swings the spotlight over to adaptation; what needs to be done to accommodate the climate change effects that are already “in the pipeline.”
While the California’s centerpiece climate law was passed three years ago, this week’s CNRA report concedes that “adaptation is a relatively new concept in California policy.” The 161-page white paper comes in response to an executive order from the Governor last fall, calling for a statewide adaptation strategy.
The draft divides the strategy into seven “sectors:” Public health, biodiversity and habitat, ocean and coastal resources, water, agriculture, and forestry.
Tony Brunello, Deputy Secretary for Climate Change and Energy at CNRA, says “This is the first report that really looks at how climate change is going to impact the state and what we need to do about it.”
But Brunello stopped short of conceding that mitigation is a lost cause. “You only have half a deck if you’re only focused on mitigation,” he said. “You need to focus on both mitigation and adaptation to truly be prepared.”
Some strategies attack both. Brunello points to water conservation measures, which save both water and energy (20% of the energy used in the state is deployed moving water around).
The plan is designed to work in consort with the California Air Resources Board’s implementation plan for AB-32, the state’s multifaceted attack on greenhouse gas emissions. CNRA says one of its goals is to “enhance” existing efforts, rather than create new programs and offices that need funding.
CNRA also promises to use the “best available science in identifying climate change risks and adaptation strategies.” Andrew Revkin has a useful overview of the mounting challenges to climate scientists, published this week in the New York Times.
One planned product from the adaptation plan is an interactive website devoted to climate adaptation, with maps and data to assist local planners. CNRA hopes to have that in place by early next year. The draft plan now enters a 45-day period for public comment.
Figures released this week by a national wind power trade association would seem to indicate that the expansion of wind capacity proceeds apace. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reported that more than 4,000 megawatts of new capacity has been installed so far this year, a 38% increase over last year’s pace.
Even so, AWEA CEO Denise Bode seems mildly disappointed by the numbers. Citing a slowdown in manufacturing of turbine components, Bode described the industry as “swimming upstream.”
The contrary current may get even stronger if my recent visit to upstate New York is any indication. Arriving for a family visit, I found that I’d landed in the midst of an uproar over wind farms, both built and proposed. Several times a week, articles were appearing in the Watertown Daily Times, about how area residents from around the state are complaining of ill effects from the utility-scale wind farms nearby and bristling at plans for more.
Wind power has hit headwinds in the past over concerns about birds, bats and its effect on people’s views. In upstate New York, the current objection seems to be noise.
Commercial wind turbines dwarf dairy farms in northern New York. Photo: Craig Miller
At the Maple Ridge wind farm, billed as the biggest east of the Mississippi, I was rendered insignificant by 300-foot turbines, which tower over the farmland in Lewis County. Farther south, in New York’s Finger Lakes region, some turbines top 420 feet. More on this scale are being proposed to stretch out along the St. Lawrence River, which separates New York from Canada. Horizon Wind energy has already erected nearly 200 turbines on Maple Ridge, between the east end of Lake Ontario and the Adirondack Mountains.
Wind companies talk a lot about megawatts and numbers of households served and even tons of greenhouse gases avoided–but not so much about how big these things are. The Cape Vincent-based Wind Power Ethics Group has a graphic on its website that puts some of these numbers in perspective. It shows a 423′ turbine towering over a local lighthouse and the Statue of Liberty.
A truck hauling wind turbine blades negotiates a turn onto Route 11 in northern New York. Photo: Chuck Miller
When Californians think about wind farms, they may envision places like Altamont Pass and Tehachapi. California pioneered wind power in the 1970s and 80s and most of the state’s windmills would barely make an impression compared to what’s going up around the country nowadays. California comes in fifth on the AWEA’s latest list of states with the most aggressive wind expansion (Missouri added the most capacity in the last quarter–New York didn’t even make the top 10).
Later this month, in a radio story for Climate Watch, I’ll look at the implications of this scaling-up as companies propose wind farms closer to populated areas in California, such west Marin County (more about that particular situation in our second Quest/Climate Watch television special, which premieres August 25).
New polling suggests that Californians may be wavering slightly in their support of climate response policies. The survey, just released by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), also shows a growing rift along party lines, when it comes to climate policy.
Nearly nine in ten Democrats surveyed (86%) said the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions, while just 54% of Republicans agreed. Among all adults, including “independent” voters, 76% of Californians favored regulation of emissions, similar to a nationwide poll conducted in June by ABC News and the Washington Post.
PPIC chief Mark Baldassare says he thinks that the high-profile debate over national carbon legislation is “splitting Democrats and Republicans in California in a way that they weren’t a couple of years ago, when they saw a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature finding common ground on climate issues.”
Baldassare also observed that the relentless recession and state budget crisis have distracted both voters and their political leaders from environmental concerns.
There was a spike in water concerns compared to last year’s poll, with 18% naming water supply and drought as the state’s most important environmental issue, up 13 points from a year ago, virtually tying air pollution and vehicle emissions (20%) as the top concern. The poll’s margin of error is 2%. The telephone survey was conducted in mid-July.
The PPIC poll also appeared to pick up a groundswell among climate action naysayers. The percentage of respondents saying there’s no need for immediate action was up six points from a year ago, to 23%. Baldassare chalks this up partly to the complex nature of climate science. “People become skeptical when they don’t understand things,” he said.
Overall respondents showed the most concern (59%) over the likelihood of more wildfires, followed by more severe droughts (55%). People seemed less concerned about flooding and coastal erosion brought about by rising sea levels, possibly because they see that as a longer-term threat. Concern over wildfire was strongest in the Inland Empire and L.A. Basin. Interestingly, Angelinos also expressed more intense drought fears (61%) than respondents in the ag-intensive Central Valley, where just 21% described themselves as “very concerned” about the drought threat from climate change. Note that this is not an expression of drought fears in general, just those driven by climate change.
When it came down to the question of what to do about global warming, more Californians favored a “carbon tax” than a cap-and-trade system, by 56% to 49%. California and the nation are currently on a path toward cap-and-trade, at least partly (and paradoxically) because it’s considered more politically palatable than a straightforward carbon tax.
Jason Bade is a 2009 California Climate Champion from Foster City, who graduated from Aragon High School in June. In this post, Bade reports on his trip to Germany earlier this month, where he met with other young activists from across the globe, to discuss strategies for combating climate change.
World Youth Coalesce Around Climate Goals
By Jason Bade
Greetings from Stuttgart, Deutschland! I’m here attending the UNESCO World Youth Festival. Essentially the festival is a chance for youth from all over the world to exchange ideas and culture as well as to be educated on particular issues affecting the world.
For two of the days, there was a World Youth Congress, which focused on energy and climate change. I was one of fourteen International Climate Champions from six countries who came to help lead the climate change workshops, speak at the opening ceremony, and formulate the Stuttgart Declaration [PDF], the ultimate goal of the conference.
On Wednesday evening, several ICCs and I spent time with staff from the festival to formulate all the ideas born in the workshops into that single, cohesive document. In it, we detail a call to action from the youth of the world to the business community, the science community, our elected leaders, and ourselves, in which we expound on what we feel must be done by each respective group, in order to effectively combat and adapt to climate change. The Declaration was then presented on Friday to a local representative from each of those communities in Stuttgart.
While the document itself may contain no groundbreaking concepts, the fact that such a diverse crowd of youth assembled to discuss solutions to these problems–without attention to national pride, patriotism, or selfishness–is significant. Regardless of the actual substance produced on paper, the real benefits of this festival are the connections and friendships made among youth of such myriad cultures. It is when people have these experiences early in their lifetimes that they grow up to treat and respect others’ cultures with zeal unseen in those who have only been confined to their own people. It was an experience I wish others could only be so lucky to enjoy!
So last year, when a study out of Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that there’s a 50 percent chance that the Colorado River’s largest reservoir (and the largest reservoir in the United States), Lake Mead, will be dry by 2021, the news generated a lot of buzz.
But a new study out from the University of Colorado Boulder finds that despite a 10-year drought in the Colorado River system, the odds of draining the river’s delivery system before 2026 are pretty slim — below 10% in any given year. Researchers say this is primarily due to the massive reservoir storage capacity along the Colorado — more than 60 million acre feet, which includes Lake Mead. The reservoir system of the Colorado is currently at 59 percent of capacity, according to the study.
But the scientists predict that by mid-century, the Colorado could become less reliable unless water-management strategies change.
The researchers found that if climate change causes a 10 percent reduction in the Colorado River’s average stream flow as some recent studies predict ([PDF]), the chances of fully depleting the system’s reservoirs will exceed 25 percent by 2057. If there is a 20 percent reduction in stream flow, the chances of deleption rise to 50 percent.
“On average, drying caused by climate change would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage by nearly ten times more than the risk we expect from population pressures alone,” said lead study author Balaji Rajagopalan in a press release about the study.
The authors of the study conclude that the magnitude of the risk will depend not just on the amount of drying the region experiences, but also the types of water management and conservation strategies that are implemented in the near future.
For the last decade, California’s annual use of Colorado River water has varied from 4.5 to 5.2 million acre feet.
Increasingly warmer temperatures in the Central Valley could pose a serious threat to California’s fruit and nut crops in the not-too-distant future, according to a new study out of UC Davis. The study finds that winter chill, which is an important factor in the productivity of tree crops, is likely to decrease by more than 50% by 2100, making the region less hospitable for crops like walnuts, peaches, plums, and cherries, unless changes in growing techniques are adopted.
Almond trees in winter, Photo by Sahsa KhokhaTree crops go dormant in the winter when temperatures drop to a certain level for a certain period of time. Each crop then needs a certain number of ‘chilling hours’ – between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit – in order to break dormancy and resume growth.
If crops don’t recieve their specific chilling requirement during the winter, problems arise. Flowering time is disturbed, which could be devastating for crops such as walnuts and pistachios that depend on simultaneous male and female flowering for pollination. And if crops don’t recieve enough winter chill to go dormant in the first place, they will continue producing buds and sprouting branches, but they may not yield fruit, having dire consquences for California’s $7.8 billion fruit and nut industry, explained study author Minghua Zhang.
“We hope that people will take this study as a wake up call,” said Zhang. “Crops are going to be seriously impacted.”
Zhang and her fellow reaserchers found that in certain parts of the Central Valley, winter chill declined by nearly 30% between 1950 and 2000. They expect that the decline will be 60% by 2050 and 80% by the end of the century.
“There is a problem coming up that we need to prepare for,” said Eike Luedeling, another of the study’s authors. “So far low chilling requirement haven’t even been a breeding goal, but we are going to need a long-term strategy to cope with this.”
The researchers found that by 2000, winter chill had declined to the point that only 4% of the Central Valley was suitable for growing apples, cherries, and pears, down from 50% earlier in the 20th century. They predict that by the end of the century, the region might no longer be suitable for growing these crops as well as walnuts, pistachios, peaches, plums, and apricots. Crops like almonds and pomegranates will most likely be affected the least, as they have low winter chill requirements.
Devin Finzer is a 2008 California Climate Champion from Orinda who graduated from Miramonte High School in June. In this guest post for the Climate Watch blog, he describes how he and fellow Champion Patrick Ouziel were able to start a carpooling program at his school.
Walking to my high school each morning, I trekked past long lines of backed-up traffic. Driver after driver waited anxiously for his or her chance to round the corner into the Miramonte High School lot and hunt for a coveted parking spot. For the most part, each car contained just one person. The passenger seats of large SUVs and mini-vans were often left completely empty. The early-morning situation involved stress, traffic congestion, and unnecessary pollution. Fellow student Patrick Ouziel and I decided we could do something about it.
As California Climate Champions sponsored by the California Air Resources Board and the British Council, Patrick and I are engaged in local and international efforts to take action and spread awareness about climate change. One of the main environmental issues we noticed at our high school was the way students get around. With after-school sports and club activities, juniors and seniors take advantage of their newly earned driver’s license, but by driving only themselves, they often missed out on easy, cost-beneficial, and eco-friendly ways to group together with other students traveling their same route.
Patrick and I are proud to have lobbied for the expansion of our school’s carpool system, which provides carpoolers with designated parking spots each morning. During the school year, we produced several videos promoting eco-friendly transportation and climate awareness, and linked these videos to a web site where students could demonstrate their support for increasing the percentage of carpool spots at our school. We also provided an option where students could sign up as “potential carpoolers” in order to find other ride-sharers who lived close by.
The result? With the support of students and the administration, we transformed our parking lot reserved for high school seniors into a lot exclusively for carpoolers. Now 80 spots, about 30% of our entire lot, are reserved exclusively for carpoolers.
What are the environmental benefits for the new program? While differing gas mileages and travel distances make exact calculations difficult, we do know that carpooling with just one other person already cuts per-person emissions, as well as gas costs, in half, and we can estimate that our carpool system inspired about 40 additional carpool groups.
While deciding to carpool almost seems almost like a no-brainer, Patrick and I did face significant barriers when we emphasized the importance of ridesharing. From the get-go, one of the main obstacles we had to address was the relationship between driving and teenage independence. Every sixteen-year-old remembers the day he earns his license: the fresh feeling of the driver’s seat and the thrill of taking the wheel, free from parental supervision. Americans clearly love to drive, and apparently, many of us love to do it by ourselves — a 2005 U.S. Census Bureau survey says 77 percent of American workers drive to and from work alone.
In our awareness videos, Patrick and I emphasized that carpooling doesn’t have to be a sacrifice of this independence. Rather, it can be an effective symbol of collaboration: sharing a ride is an opportunity to spend time with friends, or to get to know new people. Teenagers are social beings who feel most content when they are connected with their peers. That’s why we emphasized the importance of a collective carpool movement built on the strong sense of community at our school.
Advocating carpooling can be a great way to start a green movement at your own school or workplace. There are a number of web sites that match potential carpoolers and make ridesharing easy. I’ve reviewed a few of the better-known ride-matching sites on my blog.
Patrick and I will both be going to school on the East Coast next year, Patrick at Yale and myself at Brown. We plan to continue our climate change activism. In particular, I’d like to encourage the installation of solar panels on the roofs of high schools and universities. Our continued environmental efforts will be documented on my blog.
Special thanks to Climate Watch intern Kristine Wong for help with this post.
