SACRAMENTO— State Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) who represents the counties of Trinity, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma, brought together some of the nation’s top climate experts, an all-star panel of scientists, who discussed the crisis Wednesday in the senator’s latest virtual Town Hall.
Experts at the forum noted that In the Golden State and throughout America’s west, experts believe climate change has made our lands warmer and drier over the last 20 to 30 years. Extreme heat is now the top weather-related killer in the country, and western states are more susceptible to extreme drought and larger, more destructive and more frequent wildfires. They also noted that coastal communities are already experiencing significant issues with sea level rise.
California’s climate has always been variable, but those last couple of decades have been some of the hottest on record in the Golden State. This crisis is evolving faster than anticipated, and communities, big and small, up and down the coast, are starting to witness climate change damaging impacts. “If we don’t act, our kids’ and grandkids’ lives will be worse off than what we’re seeing here today. I firmly believe that there are solutions, but it’s going to take all of us working together, advancing with bold solutions to the most pressing challenge, and that’s our climate crisis,” said McGuire.
“We approved the single largest investment and climate action in the history of the Golden State – over $15 billion in funding to tackle the growing wildfire crisis in the state. We’ll be investing in drought response and resiliency, helping communities to be prepared for extreme heat and sea level rise. We’re advancing funding for more sustainable agricultural practices,” he added.
“The human emission of greenhouse gases is by far the dominant reason why that is happening. In California, the signs and symptoms are a little bit different than in other parts of the world. One of the most obvious ones is that here is a much warmer place than it used to be, not just because we’re seeing more extreme heat waves, but, equally importantly, we’re seeing warming at cold times of year and in cold places,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of Environment & Sustainability at UCLA. “This is a very big global problem that we are not taking seriously enough yet. When it comes to wildfire, most ecologists and fire scientists agree that one of the most promising avenues for reducing risk is to literally fight fire with fire and reintroduce or expand policies of prescribed or managed wildfire at a much lower intensity to avoid the catastrophic fires later on.”
The senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kristina Dahl added, “While we are already feeling the early effects of climate change today, there are much more severe impacts headed our way if we don’t reduce our heat trapping emissions now. To minimize impacts of global warming, we have to quickly and fully wean ourselves off of burning fossil fuels, transitioning every car and every home to run on clean electricity, because that can’t happen in a day or even a year or five years. We also have to be preparing ourselves in our communities for more frequent extreme heat, larger wildfires, more intense storms, greater uncertainty about when and where and how much water is going to fall.” Dahl said that it is imperative that everybody begin to act now.
Peter Miller, director of climate and clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in the Western Region, said that “We live in the most populous and prosperous state in the country. We have a responsibility to take action in order to protect the lives and the welfare of California citizens and our environment. We can’t just reduce our emissions and expect to solve the problem of climate change. We need to have global action to address the problem, to create a model here that other states and countries can and will emulate and adopt. We need to develop and implement policies that are effective, affordable and help to build a more prosperous future.”
Nearly half a million Californians are employed in the clean energy economy, representing 28% of the state’s construction workers, six times more workers than in the entire fossil fuel sector, according to Miller. “We need to clean up electricity, and then run our homes, vehicles, and businesses of that clean electricity. We can do this. It’s challenging but the technology already exists and costs are coming down. The obstacles are political. They’re not technological or economic,” he concluded.
