citymaus

lake oroville, california. 

via “california hydropower could be cut in half this summer.” grist, 31.05.2022. 

“In September of 2019, roughly a dozen workers in Oslo, Norway, broke ground on the world’s first zero-emission construction site. They were widening a busy street into a pedestrian zone, using powerful machinery to break and lift slabs of asphalt. But the equipment was so quiet that nearby cafés and restaurants kept their front doors open. Passersby stopped to pose for photos, ask questions, and praise the project. Despite long hours in cold temperatures, the crew found the work energizing; the absence of deafening noise and noxious fumes was refreshing.

By using only electric excavators and machinery, the project avoided nearly a hundred thousand kilograms of CO2 emissions. But its larger goal was to help drive the market for electrical heavy-construction equipment. When work began, so few electric excavators existed that engineers had to retrofit a diesel excavator with an electric engine and battery. But since the project’s completion Oslo has committed to making all municipal construction projects zero-emission by 2025. Private companies bidding to win contracts now receive extra points if they use zero-emission equipment, and more of these machines are entering the Norwegian market every year. 

The project was just one of many ambitious and wide-ranging initiatives that the city of Oslo has undertaken in the last six years to decrease its greenhouse-gas emissions. Through an annual process known as climate budgeting, every department in the city identifies specific policies and actions to reduce its emissions. All of these separate interventions, with their impacts regularly quantified and monitored, are aimed at reducing the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions 95% from their 2009 levels by 2030. 

oslo. flickr/aguycalledjohn

“It’s one of the world’s most audacious climate targets; at the same time, in its speed and scale, it accurately reflects the level of emissions reduction we need if we’re to prevent the most dire consequences of climate change. Look at Oslo, and you can begin to see what life will look like in a city that’s serious about its obligations to the future. The shifts are subtle but pervasive, affecting everything from cemeteries, parking, and waste management to zoning, public transportation, and school lunch. Rather than waiting for a single miraculous solution, Oslo’s approach encourages a dispersed, positive shift.

oslo. flickr/steveboland

“Many of Oslo’s climate-focussed policies are incentives-based. The city has created more and cheaper parking for electric vehicles, for example. But measures have also escalated, over time, from nudges to prohibitions. Non-electric vehicles already have to pay more to enter and park in the city; the newest climate budget will go further, creating an “emission-free zone” with entrance and parking for zero-emission vehicles only. 

Despite considerable grumbling over parking policies, many people also seem to enjoy how the city now has fewer cars. “Just a few years ago, some streets were packed with cars,” Vice-Mayor Stav said. “Change is always a bit scary, you know, so it’s understandable, but then people see the result, and they’re OK. It’s actually nice.”

read more: newyorker, 04.05.2022. 

protest against building more freeways in san francisco, 1972. 

what sea level rise could look like: king tides in mill valley, north of san francisco. 

“The astronomical tides, or king tides, usually occur in December and January, when the sun and moon reach their closest points to Earth, aligning the celestial bodies like a perfect cue shot to create maximum gravitation pull. King tides are 1 to 2 feet higher than the average tide throughout the year, and this is the amount of sea level rise the California Ocean Protection Council’s sea level rise guidance says the state will see by 2050 based on current fossil fuel emissions.”

read more: sfgate, 08.01.2022. photos: josh edelson

ODOT plans to widen freeway next to a middle school in portland. 

read more: bikeportland, 19.08.21 & 28.04.21.

“A proposed California law that would have eliminated most oil extraction in the state died Tuesday after failing to clear its first legislative hurdle.

SB467 would have banned the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking, along with some other more common ways of removing fossil fuels from the ground. The bill fell one vote short of passing the state Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee.

Had it become law, SB467 would have been one of California’s most aggressive measures yet to combat climate change, and it won support from a wide range of environmental organizations and climate advocates.

But the bill also faced huge resistance from organized labor and multiple lawmakers who expressed deep concerns about the bill’s impact on thousands of jobs and economic activity in the state’s petroleum industry. California is the nation’s seventh-largest producer of crude oil.

Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and and Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara, who carried the bill, said in a joint statement that they were “extremely disappointed” by the committee vote. They also said they were inspired by those who supported their efforts by standing up “for the basic but important notions that California should lead on climate action and that permitting massive, destructive oil drilling isn’t consistent with being a climate leader.

“While we saw this effort defeated today, this issue isn’t going away,” Wiener and Limon said in their statement. “We’ll continue to fight for aggressive climate action, against harmful drilling and for the health of our communities.” 

“While skeptical of the industry’s data, Wiener tried to address some of the concerns by agreeing to extend the timeline of SB467, preserving his desire to halt fracking permits next year while allowing some other extraction methods to be employed as late as 2035.

The changes were not enough to persuade critical or hesitant lawmakers. SB467 needed five votes to pass but secured only four. Republican Sens. Brian Jones of Santee and Shannon Grove of Bakersfield voted against the bill, as did Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton. Democratic Sens. Ben Hueso of San Diego and Bob Hertzberg of Van Nuys abstained.”

read more: sfchronicle, 14.04.2021.

“Climate researchers at UC Berkeley created a local government climate policy tool to measure policies based upon how well they reduce carbon footprints. In their analysis of 700 cities, these researchers determined that infill housing has the biggest impact.”

related: “we can design our way out of berkeley’s housing crisis with ‘missing middle’ buildings.” berkeleyside, 19.12.17. 

“Contra Costa County officials temporarily issued a public health advisory for portions of Richmond, North Richmond and San Pablo after an oil spill sent roughly “600 gallons of a petroleum and water mixture” into San Francisco Bay at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond on Tuesday, authorities said.

a duck swims through oil slick as a five gallon per-minute petroleum leak washes in near the chevron long wharf in richmond, calif., on tuesday, 09.02.2021.

“Chevron officials told The Chronicle that refinery employees “observed a sheen on the water” near the facility’s wharf at about 3 pm and launched their “response protocol.”

Oil was no longer spilling, officials said in a statement at about 5 pm, and the clean-up was underway. Contra Costa Health Services issued an “All Clear” and lifted the health advisory for the area before 9 p.m. Tuesday, but urged residents in Richmond, North Richmond and San Pablo to open their doors and windows “to air out buildings and homes.”

“Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia said that Chevron and fire-agency crews were setting up a boom around a five-gallon-per-minute leak of a petroleum product at the wharf, and that county hazardous-materials staff were responding.

In statements Tuesday night, Gioia said that he had spoken with state Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who indicated her interest in moving forward with legislation to strengthen fines and penalties for releases from refineries and industrial facilities.

“It is unacceptable to have this happen in our community,” Gioia said. “It causes harm to people’s health. It causes harm to bird life, wildlife and marine life. I’ve seen it personally in prior spills. We expect industry to operate at the highest level with no room for error, because error causes harm to life. We coexist with industry in the area, which is why we have high regulatory standards. When you operate industry in an urban environment, there needs to be precautions to protect life.””

read more: sfchronicle, 09.02.2021. and eastbaytimes, 09.02.2021. 

“A natural ocean soundscape is fundamental to healthy marine life but is being drowned out by an increasingly loud cacophony of noise from human activities, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the issue.

The damage caused by noise is as harmful as overfishing, pollution and the climate crisis, the scientists said, but is being dangerously overlooked. The good news, they said, is that noise can be stopped instantly and does not have lingering effects, as the other problems do.

Marine animals can hear over much greater distances than they can see or smell, making sound crucial to many aspects of life. From whales to shellfish, sealife uses sound to catch prey, navigate, defend territory and attract mates, as well as find homes and warn of attack. Noise pollution increases the risk of death and in extreme cases, such as explosions, kills directly.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning are also making the oceans more acidic, meaning the water carries sound further, leading to an even noisier ocean, the researchers said. But the movement of marine mammals and sharks into previously noisy areas when the Covid-19 pandemic slashed ocean traffic showed that marine life could recover rapidly from noise pollution, they said.

flickr/navonco

“Marine animals can only see across tens of metres at most, and can smell across hundreds of metres, but they can hear across entire ocean basins,” said Prof Carlos Duarte at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, who led the review. Duarte said major assessments of the health of the ocean were ignoring noise: “Yet the scientific literature, when read carefully, provides compelling evidence of human-caused noise being a major source of disruption to the marine ecosystem.” 

The review, published in the journal Science, analysed more than 500 studies that assessed the effects of noise on sea life. About 90% of the studies found significant harm to marine mammals, such as whales, seals and dolphins, and 80% found impacts on fish and invertebrates. “Sound is a fundamental component of ecosystems, [and noise] impacts are pervasive, affecting animals at all levels,” the analysis concluded. 

Baleen whales produce calls to help group cohesion and reproduction that can travel across ocean basins, and humpback whales sing complex mating songs that have regional dialects. Sperm whales and various dolphins and porpoises use sonar to echolocate prey. Other animals use sound to feed: some shrimps produce a “snap” sound to stun prey.

However, over the past 50 years, increased shipping has raised low-frequency noise on major routes by 32 times, the review said. Fishing vessels use sonar to find shoals of fish and bottom trawlers create rumbling noise. The construction and operation of oil rigs and offshore windfarms also cause noise pollution, as does the detonation of second world war bombs in the North Sea. 

flickr/elisch

“There are solutions, the review found, with a retrofit of five large container ships by shipping giant Maersk in 2015 showing that new propeller designs reduce noise and also increase fuel efficiency. Quieter propellers are the top priority, said Duarte; half of shipping noise comes from just 15% of vessels.

Electric motors are another possible solution, as are small reductions in speed. For example, cutting the speeds of noisy vessels in the Mediterranean from 15.6 to 13.8 knots cut noise by 50% between 2007 and 2013. Seismic surveys can also be carried out using seabed vibrators, rather than sending noise waves through the whole water column.”

read more: guardian, 04.02.2021.

“It’s very, very, very clear that people who live closer to other people drive less. But how much of this is due to the fact that people who were already predisposed to driving less—those of us who don’t particularly enjoy driving, for example—are deliberately living where parking is scarce and buses are frequent?

A forthcoming academic paper finally begins to answer this crucial question. Its “breakthrough” conclusion: Bigger parking lots make us drive more.

In “What Do Residential Lotteries Show Us About Transportation Choices?” [PDF], the researchers Adam Millard-Ball, Jeremy West, Nazanin Rezaei, and Garima Desai found a randomized sample of human behavior: the free, site-specific lotteries that San Francisco uses to select who gets to live in the price-regulated homes of new apartment and condo buildings. 

(Because this is San Francisco, a two-person household “generally can qualify while earning up to $118,200, equivalent to 120 percent of city median income.” So these findings don’t apply only to people who would struggle to afford a car.)

“Buildings with at least one parking space per unit (as required by zoning codes in most US cities, and in San Francisco until circa 2010) have more than twice the car ownership rate of buildings that have no parking,” the authors write.

Do buildings with less parking and car ownership limit the job prospects of their occupants? Apparently not. The team found no correlation between parking supply and employment status at the time of their 2019 survey.

They also found that more parking led to more driving, less transit use, and less walking. And they checked the locations of the 197 housing buildings and found that non-automotive transportation choices seem to be induced by higher AllTransit scores (a measure of nearby mass transit quality by street address), higher WalkScores, and higher BikeScores (a measure of the quality of nearby bike networks).

It’s not just that people who enjoy walking to the store will choose to live near stores. It’s that living near stores makes us more inclined to walk, and less inclined to drive.

“We shape our buildings,” Winston Churchill said. “And afterward, our buildings shape us.””

read more: sightlineinstitute, 28.01.2021. 

a section of highway 1 collapsed after a heavy rainstorm south of big sur on 29.01.2021.

photo by kodiak greenwood. read more: sfchronicle, 29.01.2021.

stop funding tar sands: day of solidarity with frontline communities.  san francisco, 02.10.2020.

“The effects of climate change evident today are the results of choices that countries made decades ago to keep pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates despite warnings from scientists about the price to be paid.

That price—more vicious heat waves, longer wildfire seasons, rising sea levels—is now irretrievably baked in. Nations, including the United States, have dithered so long in cutting emissions that progressively more global warming is assured for decades to come, even if efforts to shift away from fossil fuels were accelerated tomorrow. 

Managing climate change, experts said, will require rethinking virtually every aspect of daily life: how and where homes are built, how power grids are designed, how people plan for the future with the collective good in mind. It will require an epochal shift in politics in a country that has, on the whole, ignored climate change. 

a fire whirl near susanville, california, 2020.07. photo: josh edelson

“For a long time, “there was so much focus on how climate change would affect the most vulnerable, like low-lying island nations or coral reefs—things that don’t dramatically affect the economic powerhouses of the world,” said Katharine Mach, an associate professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “There’s often been this arrogant assumption that wealth provides protection.” 

Recent events, she said, are a vivid reminder that “we’re all in this together.”

That notion raises a counterintuitive bit of hope: The more people who are affected, particularly the affluent and influential, the more seriously the issue gets addressed. 

But experts also made a point they say is often underappreciated: Even if we start radically slashing emissions today, it could be decades before those changes start to appreciably slow the rate at which Earth is warming. In the meantime, we’ll have to deal with effects that continue to worsen. 

Again and again, climate scientists have shown that our choices now range from merely awful to incomprehensibly horrible.

a crack on the amery ice shelf in antarctica last year. if warming destabilizes the continent’s ice irreversibly, ocean levels could continue to rise for centuries. photo: richard coleman

“If we cut emissions rapidly, about one-seventh of the world’s population will suffer severe heat waves every few years. Failure to do so doubles or triples that number. If we act now, sea levels could rise another 1 to 2 feet this century. If we don’t, Antarctica’s ice sheets could destabilize irreversibly and ocean levels could keep rising at an inexorable pace for centuries, making coastal civilization all but unmanageable.

The best hope is to slow the pace of warming enough to maintain some control for humanity.

“In our research, we’ve found that most systems can cope with a 1.5-degree or two-degree world, although it will be very costly and extremely difficult to adapt,” said Dr. Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. “But in a four-degree world, in many cases, the system just doesn’t work anymore.”

So, even as nations cut emissions, they will need to accelerate efforts to adapt to the climate change they can no longer avoid.”

read more: nytimes, 22.09.2020. 

“In a move aimed at reducing huge amounts of plastic litter in the ocean and on land, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a first-in-the-nation law requiring plastic beverage containers to contain an increasing amount of recycled material.

Under it, companies that produce everything from sports drinks to soda to bottled water must use 15% recycled plastic in their bottles by 2022, 25% recycled plastic by 2025, and 50% recycled plastic by 2030.

Supporters of the new law say it will help increase demand for recycled plastic, curb litter in waterways and along roads, and reduce consumption of oil and gas, which are used to manufacture new plastics.

“This is the most ambitious, aggressive recycled plastics content law in the world,” said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento-based environmental group. 

In California, roughly 12 billion plastic bottles are sold every year. Although about 70% are recycled, often into other types of plastic packaging, more than 3 billion bottles are not recycled at all, according to state statistics. Most of those are dumped in landfills or discarded as litter in the outdoors.

After China stopped accepting many waste plastics two years ago, there has been a glut.

“We are doing a really good job of collecting things for recycling,” Murray said. “The difficult part has been finding an end-use market for it. This new law is about closing the loop. Now companies that manufacture the plastic bottles have to buy them back. They’ll have the responsibility.”

flickr/jennifercowley

“California already requires 35% of glass bottles sold in the state to be made of recycled content, and 50% of newsprint to be made from recycled content.”

read more: mercurynews, 25.09.2020. 

groundswell: preparing for internal climate migration. 

read the full report [PDF]. related: “how climate migration will reshape america.” nytimes, 15.09.2020. & part 1: 23.07.2020. 

“Last year, the International Energy Agency made a finding that stunned even its own researchers. SUVs were the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry and even trucks, usually the only vehicles to loom larger than them on the road.

Each year, SUVs belch out 700 megatonnes of CO2, about the entire output of the UK and Netherlands combined. If all SUV drivers banded together to form their own country, it would rank as the seventh largest emitter in the world.

“Combining the weight of an adult rhinoceros and the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, SUVs require more energy to move around than smaller cars and therefore emit more CO2, overshadowing the car industry’s climate gains from fuel efficiency improvements and the nascent electric vehicle market. 

“Car companies looked at things that people value, such as macho-ness, ruggedness and protection of the family, and leveraged that,” said Harvey Miller, professor and director of the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Ohio State University. “These SUVs are named after mountains and other places you’ll never go to. They created a market that pushes our buttons.”

“To avert the worst of the climate catastrophe, the transport sector needs to be completely decarbonized,” said Sebastian Castellanos, a researcher at the New Urban Mobility Alliance who calculated the emissions. “With the explosion in SUV sales, we are moving even farther away from our goal of decarbonizing the sector.”

“You are taking a 200lb package, a human, and wrapping it in a 6,000lb shipping container,” Harvey Miller, professor and director of the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Ohio State University, said. “For some reason we think that is a good way to move through a city. If Amazon used that rationale it would be out of business in a week.” 

Alarm has also been raised over the danger of SUVs, given that during collisions their elevated stature tends to strike pedestrians and cyclists on the upper torso and then crushes them under the wheels. “They are killing machines,” said Miller. “They cause a lot of damage to the global climate, to air quality and to the people they hit. SUVs are terrible for cities and neighborhoods, they serve no purpose there. You don’t need them to run to the store to buy a gallon of milk.””

read more: guardian, 01.09.2020. related: “report urges banning SUV adverts to meet UK climate goals.” guardian, 03.08.2020.  related: “driving kills. health warnings.” copenhagenize, 27.07.09. 

wildfires are a natural part of california’s environment, but they have grown increasingly ferocious in recent years amid intensifying drought and heat. 

an aircraft drops fire retardant on a ridge during the walbridge fire, part of the larger LNU lightning complex fire. photo: josh edelson

read more: guardian, 21.08.2020.