Obama gets it right

Barak Obama is the first - and so far only - to set the bar for capping carbon emissions where it needs to be. We'll see if any of the other viable candidates (Clinton and Edwards) can match it. Gristmill's David Roberts blogs it here. Joe Romm blogs it here. Obama's campaign description of it is here.

Hard Choices for Local Government

If your community or region is going to prepare itself for CC impacts, it's going to need local politicians who are willing to educate themselves and advocate energetically in the face of more immediate issues. We're lucky to have a couple of staunch, environmentally informed local supervisors on our board of 5 members. Unfortunately 2 does not give them a majority vote.

The Marin Countywide Plan is being updated and one of the most contentious issues is the zoning of several hundred acres adjacent to an old but still operating rehabilitation center for boys, called the St. Vincent Home. Most of its property consists of a flat meadow between highway 101 and the San Francisco Bay - land that is vulnerable to sea level rise and that the county's Planning Commission had zoned as part of the the Bayfront Corridor where no development is to take place. That parcel of land is also one of the last remaining available areas where low-cost and senior housing could be built in the county.

If climate change looms as a serious threat in Marin's future, even more immediate is the dramatic demographic shift that will happen as we Boomers reach our senior years. Unless more senior housing is provided, many of us will be forced to relocate to other areas within the next 20 years. The over-65 demographic is by far the fastest growing one in Marin, and there has been a strong movement to reclaim the St. Vincent property from the Bayfront Corridor zoning.

Yesterday I attended the Board of Supervisors hearing where this zoning question was debated. Over 140 citizens made verbal comment, with environmentalists standing up for preserving the zoning and most of the seniors and low-cost housing advocates speaking for building out on the property. It was a wonderful demonstration of democracy in action. Too bad "our" side lost.

Yes, we do need to provide for the aging population, and yes, a levee could be built to protect the new development from a 1-meter rise in the level of the Bay. But these facilities will not help reduce Marin's huge ecological footprint by taking vehicles off the roads. The units will be isolated from any shopping areas or medical services and I'm sure more imaginative and convenient solutions could be found for locating the same facilities.

Most significant to me, though, were the fact that the County now acknowledges the threat of a 1-meter sea level rise and the quote by my local supervisor, Charles McGlashan, who told a reporter, "We are fighting, in my view, a race against potential extinction." Yes, those could very well be the stakes.

And as to the 1-meter sea level rise, I'm following up with McGlashan's aides to find out if that threat is being applied to the rest of the County's coastline. If it's recognized as a threat to a large, currently uninhabited wetland and meadow, it should certainly be considered as one in the many inhabited and developed coastal locations.

A new guidebook for preparing for climate change

Longtime environmental writer Ted Wolf turned me on to a very useful new book produced through a collaboration between a county government and a university. I immediately alerted my local supervisor in Marin County who will (according to his grateful aide) take the book with him into the upcoming meetings to update the Countywide Plan.

Preparing for Climate Change: a Guidebook for Local, Regional and State Governments was written by a collaboration the Center for Science in the Earth System (Climate Impacts Group of King County, Washington) and the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington. The Guidebook is being distributed to 250 member cities, towns and counties of the ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability. As it turns out, Marin County is a member of this organization and will be receiving a copy through that route as well.

As the Web site describes it:

Within a handful of decades, climate in many parts of the United States is expected to be significantly warmer than even the warmest years of the 20th century, increasing the risk of drought, flooding, forest fires, disease, and other impacts across many regions.

Public decision makers have a critical opportunity – and a need – to start preparing today for the impacts of climate change. Preparing for climate change is not a “one size fits all” process, however. Just as the impacts of climate change will vary from place to place, the combination of institutions and legal and political tools available to public decision-makers are unique from region to region. Preparedness actions will need to be tailored to the circumstances of different communities.

The Guidebook is full of recommendations for motivating and mobilizing the local community, for conducting risk assessment, for preparing for identified risks, and for building resilience into local planning. This is a wonderful addition to the local planning toolkit. It remains to be seen how many of its recommendations will be put into action here, but I'll certainly be involved in promoting it.

Why the grassroots matter

You Should Know
It's well worth your while to have some idea of what may be in store for you and your hometown in a climate changing future. Finding, gathering and acting on that knowledge before the impacts of global warming arrive at your door may save your home, your town, your life.

Your Governments are Failing You
Your federal government is not helping you accumulate that knowledge. In fact, the current Administration has actively stifled the distribution of scientific findings on global warming. State governments are not much better at educating us, preparing us, protecting us and keeping us informed about this critical situation. [I'd like to hear from you about any exceptions to that.] And as we all know, the Feds seem to have their hands full with a war.

This is Not Necessarily Long Range Planning
I hate to write this, but if current trends continue a lot of people are going to end up leaving the homes they live in today, for reasons of climate change. It may be the threat of destruction or the destruction itself, but just as flooding and drought are forcing people to reassess their situations this summer in England and Australia and the American Midwest, many more people will have to do so in the not-so-distant future.

I realize that such a statement is going to set off an emotional reaction in those of you currently invested in your homes, neighborhoods and regions. I don't blame you; it's an outrageous scenario. But if you live where a 2-foot rise in sea level will put your front yard under water at high tide; or if you live in a desert only made habitable by importing water from a long distance, then you should really know and understand the scientific assessments of your risks.

Of course, that's oversimplifying things. If you live anywhere in a region where those conditions are present, you'll be affected to a greater or lesser degree by the disruptions.

The Climate, It Are A-Changin'
We're no longer living in a benign climatic condition, where extreme weather visited us rarely enough that we didn't have to worry. We're currently seeing records broken for heat, rainfall, drought and storm intensity all over the planet. We're losing the overall stability that characterized weather for as long as we've been keeping records. You can no longer take for granted that the weather patterns you've lived with in your location for 50 years will be your weather patterns for the future.

The Grassroots Matter
For democracy to work, the citizens need to be involved. It's the informed citizenry that does the best job of choosing its representatives. Sometimes it takes an especially strong motivation to get citizens to that level of involvement.

I believe we last saw that when America entered World War II. Global warming has the potential to be much more destructive than the Axis Powers. We, the people, need to mobilize not only to change our energy habits, but to prepare for the global warming effects that are already heading down the tracks toward us.

If we inform ourselves about the risks we face, we make ourselves less dependent on dysfunctional government. We also get to understand just how dysfunctional our representative bodies have become, and how important it is that we choose representatives with brains, courage and integrity.

California's big climate change conference

Next week I'll be attending the Fourth Annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento. Sponsored by the California Energy Commission & California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), this four-day event brings together scientists and policy makers to share the most up-to-date findings and challenges regarding global warming and its impacts on the varied ecosystems and population centers in the state.


This will be an opportunity for me to meet other individuals and organizational representatives with interests in this area, and it will provide me with a good baseline for where government agencies are currently positioned with regard to climate change risk assessment.

As my next post explains, I'm narrowing my focus and adding another wrinkle to the mission of Climate Frog.

Europe - fires, flood planning and policy making

Never underestimate how fast a fire can move through vegetation in a state of drought. In Greece, following weeks of extreme heat, wildfires have roared through rugged terrain, killing at least 49 people.

Hot, dry seasonal winds drove the flames across a landscape parched by successive heat waves. Reduced winds and a slight dip in temperatures were forecast for Sunday.

The fires were so severe that authorities said they could not yet provide an estimate of how much damage they had caused, nor what expanse of land had been burned.

Meanwhile, in England, where towns are still reeling from this summer's flooding, a report by the Hull City Council called for a national program to improve defenses against more extreme flooding that will come with climate change. The defenses suggested would mainly be improved drainage systems, able to handle a once-every-30-years flood.

Over 7,200 homes and 1,300 businesses were damaged in Hull during its wettest June since 1882.

The low-lying city relies on a system of pumps to keep flooding at bay, and the report questioned whether the existing capacity was capable of handling a 1 in 30 year storm.

Finally, from Germany comes word that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is currently enjoying her highest popularity since taking office, pledged to fight climate change in the second half of her term. Yes, it may just be policitics, but let's hope not.

The centrepiece of the cabinet's plans is a list of energy saving measures to fight climate change which will help reduce CO2 emissions by 36 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.

"For the first time in the history of modern Germany, we have moved beyond defining goals towards agreeing on concrete steps on climate change," Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told German television.

Although it will take up to a year to pass the new laws, Germany wants to set the tone for the global climate debate ahead of a U.N. meeting in Bali in December which will try to launch new talks for the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.