Daily Quick Read - October 9, 2019

Turning Off the Lights

In October, California’s fire season turns a dangerous corner.  Vegetation is tinder dry and weather conditions result in hot, dry winds (Santa Ana) blowing from east to west across almost the entire state.  A single spark in the wrong place and whole communities can become infernos.  Of course, California has always been golden in the fall and the Santa Ana winds have always blown.  Now these factors intersect with climate change and a chronic lack of utility infrastructure funding to create situations where public utilities are turning off electrical power to vast swaths of the state to avoid liability for their power lines starting wildfires.

With windy, dry weather in the forecast and warnings of extreme fire danger, Pacific Gas & Electric utility said it will start turning off power to 34 counties in northern and central California after midnight Wednesday.

The Southern California Edison utility website said more than 106,000 of its customers in parts of eight counties could face power cuts.

It may take “several days to fully restore power after the weather passes and safety inspections are completed,” said Michael Lewis, senior vice president of PG&E’s electric operations, in statement.

In San Diego, where the Santa Ana winds are expected to be more moderate, it is anticipated that 30,000 customers face having the power shutoff over the next few days.  The local utility (SDG&E)  lays some of the blame on climate change.  Of course, when you sitting in the dark that’s not a great comfort.

"As California's climate conditions have changed, the traditional idea of a fire "season" has evolved into a year-long battle against stronger, faster wildfires. One of our preventative measures to help protect against wildfires is Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events. These events may be called during extreme and potentially dangerous weather conditions."

PG&E has been found liable for last year’s Camp Fire, that destroyed the town of Paradise and resulted in 86 deaths.  In the five years prior to that fire, PG&E paid $4.5 billion in stock dividends to its share holders.  That would have paid for a lot of infrastructure improvements.

Dog Are Good For You — How Is That News?

Everyone knows that dogs are good for you.  Why does it take so long for science to catch up?  Just like everyone knows that cats are Satan’s tool, set to persecute humans.  OK, I have no scientific evidence for cats, but I’m on solid grounds regarding dogs.

Dog ownership may be associated with longer life and better cardiovascular outcomes, especially for heart attack and stroke survivors who live alone, according to a new study and a separate meta-analysis published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a journal of the American Heart Association.

"Our findings suggest that having a dog is associated with longer life. Our analyses did not account for confounders such as better fitness or an overall healthier lifestyle that could be associated with dog ownership. The results, however, were very positive," said Dr. Kramer.

"The next step on this topic would be an interventional study to evaluate cardiovascular outcomes after adopting a dog and the social and psychological benefits of dog ownership. As a dog owner myself, I can say that adopting Romeo (the author's miniature Schnauzer) has increased my steps and physical activity each day, and he has filled my daily routine with joy and unconditional love."

Microplastic Contamination — San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay water is brimming with microplastics.  Recent analysis of water samples for the bay have higher concentrations than samples form other similar watershed studies.  In part, the geography of the San Francisco Bay may impact the results, but the fact is we are filling our oceans with massive quantities of plastic waste and large amounts of it are unseen microparticles.

What surprised Sutton was the fact that her study of the Bay Area watershed turned up higher concentrations of microparticles than similar studies done in Europe, Japan and China.

The fragments and fibers they analyzed included the remnants of plastic packaging and bottles, microscopic shreds of cigarette butts and fibers from clothing. Nearly half the particles found in stormwater were “these squishy black particles that we think might be from tires”, Sutton said. “But it’s really hard to get a definitive sense of where exactly it’s all coming from because there are so many sources of plastic pollution.”

The study is “extremely comprehensive”, said Stefan Krause, a microplastics researcher at the University of Birmingham. Even as scientists and engineers strive to clean up the hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of the plastic debris floating on the ocean’s surface, it is becoming increasingly clear that “we have thousands and thousands and thousands of times more plastics that we can’t see”, Krause said.

Goodness List

It's always good to be skeptical about lists (either of goodness or badness), so I would take this list with a grain or two of salt.  Ten California cities make it into the top 20 on this list of greenest cities. So, the criteria obviously doesn’t include items like traffic and homeless population, housing costs, etc. It does include “greenhouse-gas emissions per capita to number of smart-energy policies and initiatives to green job opportunities.”

…thankfully, individual cities are stepping up where the federal government is failing us. And it makes sense; greener cities are nicer to live in. They are healthier and offer a better quality of life, among other attributes, not the least of which is that they strive to address the climate crisis.

So with all of this in mind, a shout-out to the greenest cities is in order. Which leads us to personal finance site WalletHub, which compared the 100 largest American cities across 28 key indicators of sustainability, across four areas: Environment, transportation, energy sources, and lifestyle and policy. The metrics include everything from air quality index and walking/biking scores to water quality, greenspace, and plastic bag bans. Here is how our fair metropolises fared.

The greenest cities in the U.S.

1. San Francisco, California
2. San Diego, California
3. Irvine, California
4. Washington, DC
5. San Jose, California
6. Seattle, Washington
7. Fremont, California
8. Sacramento, California
9. Portland, Oregon
10. Oakland, California
11. Minneapolis, Minnesota
12. Honolulu, Hawaii
13. Buffalo, New York
14. Chula Vista, California
15. Boston, Massachusetts
16. San Bernardino, California
17. St. Paul, Minnesota
18. Madison, Wisconsin
19. Los Angeles, California
20. Austin, Texas

Extinction Rebellion

What do you do when your government pats you on the head, but ignores what you are saying?  In Europe, some people are moving from polite demonstrations to civil disobedience.  That’s the direction that the Extinction Rebellion movement is taking.  In the US, civil disobedience as a means of climate protest is being hyper-criminalized.

"We're showing that it's not just about schoolchildren [taking to the streets]," Jojo, 29, a climate activist who ditched work to attend today's rally in Berlin, told DW. "Policymakers have to take note: They're radicalizing people by doing the opposite of what we're demanding."

Enter Extinction Rebellion, an environmental movement that began in the United Kingdom last year and has since spread across the world. It demands that governments elevate climate change to the status of a national emergency and table all other legislation that won't help fix the problem. Above all else, they demand that global emissions sink to zero by 2025.

And unlike Fridays for Future and its teenage figurehead, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion has attracted an older demographic willing to take more legal risks to get their message across.

"We rely on the means of civil disobedience, so no violence, but roadblocks and camping out on government property are legitimate means of protest for us," Dr. Claire Wordley, a professor at Cambridge University and one of Extinction Rebellion's leading activists, told DW.

"We want to show how drastic the situation is," she added. "We're currently in an ecological crisis."