California Burning

Saturday night update: It cleared a bit Saturday, but prospects for the coming week in the region don't look too good. "On Saturday, President Bush issued an emergency declaration for California and ordered federal agencies to assist in firefighting efforts in many areas. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had made the request on Friday."

Saturday update: Smoke has reached us, mixed in with the high fog at the moment. We're under an air quality alert. But every place inland, both north and south, is in the National Weather Service's "Red Flag Warning" zone. Dangerous smoke in many areas, and the weather is primed for more dry lightning storms. Big fires in the central coast areas are still raging.

Friday night--
Wildfires moved closer to our North Coast enclave. Highway 299 is closed 60 miles east because of fire and smoke. There are fires to the south of us, too, maybe closer than that. But elsewhere in California, it's much worse. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: As of Thursday afternoon, officials had identified 1,088 fires in Northern California that covered 159,000 acres and destroyed at least 18 homes. More than 12,500 state and federal firefighters were on the job, with 68 helicopters and 14 airplanes dropping water and retardant liquid. Closures were in place on Highways 32, 36, 70, 89 and 96 and 299." There are numerous fires as well in the Los Angeles area and in the rest of southern California.

But much more of the state is affected by smoke, and even the pollution that we can't necessarily see or smell. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District said it expects pollution levels to remain unhealthy today in portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. People who are very young or old, or suffer from lung or heart disease, are most at risk. Of particular concern, said agency spokesman Aaron Richardson, are smoke particles smaller than 1/20th of the diameter of a human hair that are not filtered out of the body by the nose or throat, and may pass into the bloodstream." Smoke and pollution are apt to affect us most directly here this summer, which is just getting started.

But this weekend, much of Northern CA area faces the same weather pattern--including dry lightning--that sparked 800 fires in one day. The Midwest is facing the same curse--the same pattern of more rain and storms in already flooded areas. Plus storms that moved farther west Friday into Nebraska, cutting power, and up into Michigan, dumping an inch and a half of rain on Detroit during rush hour.

More frequent and intense wildfires were predicted by climate scientists as effects of global heating. But as Dan Shapely points out at the Daily Green, it is the size of the fires that is most telling. Not only persistent patterns of intense weather as predicted by global heating models, but bigger fires--as we have now in California--as evidence of heating: dry and dead wood, dry brush so early in the summer in places that normally would not burn so readily and so fiercely.

This is no longer much disputed. Shapely points out: "Even the Bush Administration's science advisers recently endorsed these conclusions in a sweeping report that predicts more bouts of extreme weather in the United States and across North America."

Resources to fight fires, to deal with drought, to repair from floods and other disasters--and several of these at once, like now, happening more frequently-- must be recognized as national needs. At the very least, we've got to get our National Guard and their equipment back from Iraq.

But long term, we have to deal with the Climate Crisis. The state of California has taken another step in its process this week, when it "outlined for the first time the broadest U.S. attempt to regulate greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, calling for the creation of a new emissions-trading program and increased renewable-energy production."

The plan also outlines a cap-and-trade emissions program like those used in Europe that could generate an estimated $3.6 billion market, tougher energy-efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, incentives to grow trees that act as sponges for carbon and encouragement for local governments to develop cities in ways that provide shorter commutes."

"By 2050, the state plans to reduce emissions by 80 percent, the amount many scientists say is needed to avoid the most severe effects of climate change."

As the SF Chronicle said in an editorial, Now comes the hard part...[T]he first serious look at these challenges was presented this week by state policy makers. The answers are encouraging. ..The state Air Resources Board, charged with carrying out the climate-change mandates, believes it's found a balance that spreads the pain, injects incentives in the right spots and puts California on track to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent in 12 years.
Mary Nichols, who heads the board, is mindful of another critical factor: Getting it right in a way that convinces the region, nation and even the planet to follow. Global warming can't be solved by California alone, and mistakes here could set back efforts immeasurably.

The plan gets costed out in the next year, but preliminary figures show that the effect will be to slightly grow the California economy by 2020. And there are those who are much more optimistic. Who believe that dealing with the Climate Crisis is the key to economic growth, and although it will mean change in how we live, it may well mean we will live better. Less wasteful, more mindful, but in the end, better, healthier lives, engaged in our communities and taking more control of our lives, working with others in the adventure of creating a better present and a greater future.