In the upcoming week, the State Assembly will have a clear choice: pass much needed legislation that will clean our polluted air, increase kid-safe, climate-safe energy and showcase the possibility of Americans having a thriving clean energy economy to the rest of the world.
The first bill, the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 (SB 350), will ensure that California continues to lead the way toward a healthy future for our kids by increasing the percentage of power that comes from clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind, to 50 percent. It also requires a doubling of energy efficiency in buildings, and the halving of petroleum use in transportation.
Some have expressed concern that gas rationing and higher prices will result from SB 350, but only after receiving a mailed political flyer from Big Oil under the phony name, the CA Drivers Alliance. The concern is very valid, if it were true. Truth is always the first casualty when oil profits are threatened. (“Fracking doesn’t cause earthquakes or pollute groundwater.” Remember these lies? Oil and gas companies still tell them).
The second bill, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2015 (SB 32), requires a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2030 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
In addition to demonstrating to the rest of the country and the world that ambitious clean energy improvements are achievable, SB 350 and SB 32 will cut carbon pollution to levels necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change, something we are really feeling in Napa and Lake Counties. Fueled by the worst drought in 1,200 years, wildfires have burned 100,000 acres of Napa and Lake County lands, triggering a state of emergency from Governor Brown. This isn’t just bad for our environment; it’s bad for our health. A warmer, drier climate will mean more giant wildfires and firestorms, and millions of tons of airborne small particulates.
A warming planet also means tropical diseases and their arthropod vectors will move north. Yellow fever and malaria will once again be endemic in America. Terrible, chronic diseases like leishmaniasis and Chagas disease will become household words. Infectious diseases obey no political boundaries and are equal opportunity killers when the climate is right for the vectors that carry them.
After I began my Internal Medicine practice in the Napa area I watched asthma rates nearly double as air quality worsened. A young, healthy non-smoking colleague developed lung cancer, stunning the whole department. Fine particulate matter like diesel exhaust can raise lung cancer risk even at very low levels. We need to reduce permissible fine particulate levels to lower levels than currently allowed. It’s sad, but true: “Cancer is in the air.”
Small particulates don’t just trigger severe attacks in people with asthma and COPD. During Spare the Air days, even healthy people were making appointments for shortness of breath and wheezing. It was hard for them to accept that air pollution was causing reactive airway disease, and resented the “asthma” label so much as to not use their inhalers. An 89 year old friend told me her doctor was wrong, saying “I know my body. I have bronchitis, and I need an antibiotic.” People living in polluted Asian cities get it, and wear breathing masks daily.
As a father with adult children, my future grandchildren have the most to lose if action is not taken to address climate pollution. Children are more susceptible because they breathe faster than adults and are more likely to be outdoors often. Eighteen percent of Napa County residents have been diagnosed with asthma. That’s nearly 25,500 children and adult asthmatics who, along with COPD, result in thousands of emergency room visits every year. Poor air quality, as a result of climate pollution, is primarily to be blamed and needs to be addressed. I believe my grandchildren and our state deserve a brighter, cleaner future. It is imperative that California acts now to prevent the worst to come, and I’m counting on Assemblymembers to vote to pass SB 32 and SB 350.
Milton Bosch is a physician in Napa
