Climate Change

Floodwater chronically blocks Marin City residents (63% People of Color; 13% below the poverty line) from accessing Highway 101 ramps to enter or leave the city safely.  After years of organizing and getting much needed political support, the Marin City community has secured commitment from the US Army Corps of Engineers to pay the costs of a handful of public works projects to correct the local drainage issues.

While economic indicators suggest that inflation is in decline, climate change is becoming the real driver of higher costs of living, food, travel, and energy.

The U.S. Navy has acknowledged that in just over a decade, potentially toxic groundwater could surface at a Superfund site at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. The report comes as the city plans to build thousands of homes, retail, and over 340 acres of parks and open space at a highly complex and ongoing cleanup effort.

In this opinion piece from POLITICO, the writer suggests that rather than leading with data and science to promote climate action and public support, climate resilience advocates should lead with issues people care most about like the economy and housing with climate co-benefits embedded in the solutions. Framing energy efficiency and decarbonized housing as means for household savings and job creation will accelerate climate policies, public support, and action.

A new study published in Nature Medicine looks directly at the human health impacts from severe weather like hurricanes, floods, and intense storms. Using Medicare records before and after weather disasters that incurred more than $1 billion of damages from 2011 to 2016, researchers found that six weeks after a storm, the death rate in counties with the greatest destruction was 2 to 4 times higher than in less impacted areas.

According to a new survey of nearly 130,000 people in 125 countries, nearly 70% of the global population would give up 1% of their household income to stop climate change, which is roughly congruent with the estimated cost of effective climate action. However, people also think just 43% of their fellow citizens would be willing to do the same – a 26-percentage-point gap. In every country the willingness of fellow citizens to fight climate change is systematically underestimated.

A recent University of Michigan study reveals that close to 15% of Americans deny that climate change is a reality. The study, found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-50591-6, uses social media data analyses and artificial intelligence to measure climate change denial in the digital space. The study maps belief and denial rates across states and counties. Both climate change belief and skepticism track along factors such as geography and socioeconomics.

Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world, forming narrow channels of intense moisture transport in the sky. They start over warm water, typically tropical oceans, and are guided toward the coast by low-level jet streams ahead of cold fronts of extratropical cyclones. Along California, the Pacific Ocean serves as the reservoir of moisture for the storm, and the mountain ranges act as barriers, producing rain and snow on the western sides of the coastal ranges and Sierra Nevada.

Cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is critical to mitigating the effects of global climate change. The fundamental challenge for the world’s nations is setting and achieving GHG emission reduction targets. This not only requires governmental policy and economic paradigm shifts, but also behavioral changes particularly for wealthy individuals and entities. According to Oxfam, globally, the richest 1% emit as much CO₂ as the poorest 66% combined.