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Nine Policy Challenges for California Water

Two bills recently signed by Governor Brown—AB 91 and 92—will provide drought relief and help to enforce prescriptions for reducing water use that were outlined in the governor’s recent executive order. However most of the bills’ funds are allocated to efforts aimed at improving water management in general. Indeed, most of the funding goes to flood management.

These bills are a reminder that while drought is the crisis of the day, the state must grapple with multiple issues to put water policy on a sustainable and constructive path. These issues include improving water quality, restoring degraded ecosystems, finding new funding mechanisms, adapting to climate change, and reducing the risk of floods.

In reality, water management in California is a perpetual work-in-progress—never to be fully resolved. To help inform this process, the newly launched PPIC Water Policy Center has just published California’s Water, a collection of nine short policy briefs. The center’s research network—made up of more than 40 top experts in biology, economics, earth science, engineering, and the law—collaborated to prepare these briefs.

A common theme running through these briefs is California’s tremendous capacity to adapt to changing conditions and tackle new challenges. We hope this collection will be a useful resource for those who wish to become more familiar with California water policy and to join the conversation about solutions.

The nine topics include:

Climate Change and Water. California’s climate is changing, becoming warmer and more variable, while sea level continues to rise. The state is in the early stages of devising water policies to adapt to these changes.

Managing Droughts. The current drought is one of many in the history of the state, with more to come. Reducing harm to cities, farms, and the environment will require creative approaches to improving supply and reducing demand.

Paying for Water. Funding improvements in California’s water management systems has proven difficult, leading to funding gaps of $2-$3 billion annually. Although the recently approved state bond can help, new funding tools are needed to fill critical gaps.

Preparing for Floods. One in five California homes and more than $700 billion in structures are vulnerable to flooding. Reducing flood risk will require improving flood infrastructure while creating incentives to insure existing development against risk and keep new development out of harm’s way.

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. The Delta is the fragile hub of California’s water supply system. The state will need to make strategic decisions about the future of the Delta that consider water supply reliability, ecosystem health, and the Delta economy.

Storing Water. California’s variable climate makes the state very dependent upon storage of water in surface reservoirs and groundwater basins. The state faces big choices in how to increase and manage storage capacity to adapt to a changing climate and shrinking snowpack.

Water for Cities. California’s cities have made considerable progress in managing water resources and reducing per-capita water use. Still, new efforts to reduce demand and to diversify water sources will be needed as the population grows.

Water for the Environment. Forty years after enactment of major environmental laws, California’s freshwater biodiversity is still in decline. Efficient allocation of water for the environment will be one of the biggest water challenges of the 21st century.

Water for Farms. California’s farms are the most productive in the nation, but they are increasingly vulnerable to water shortages. Major changes in groundwater and surface water management, including expanding water markets, will be needed to create a sustainable future for agriculture.

The Importance of California’s Tax Ranking

California voters are often asked to make important tax and spending decisions at the ballot box, yet their mastery of basic fiscal facts is poor. PPIC’s surveys have consistently found a “knowledge gap” between what voters know and budget realities. In our January PPIC survey, just 8 percent of likely voters correctly named both K-12 public education and the personal income tax as the top state spending and top state revenue areas. The voters failed to grasp the state’s budget details even when the fiscal crisis took center stage and California grappled with massive deficits, spending cuts, and tax increases.

But survey respondents just passed another fiscal pop quiz with high marks. With the April 15 tax deadline approaching, seven in 10 likely voters in the March PPIC survey say that California currently ranks “near the top” (45%) or “above average” (26%) in state and local tax burden per capita compared to other states. Large majorities gave this response in earlier PPIC polls. In this area, the public’s perceptions are in line with fiscal reality.

California’s tax ranking varies depending on data and methods, but we are always on the high side in national studies of the 50 states. Recently, California ranked #4 in the Tax Foundation report and #15 in the Tax Policy Center report on state and local tax burdens. The reasons include our high cost of living and the public investments that we are making in our education system, environmental quality, and infrastructure.

What is most striking is the growing share of likely voters who say that California’s state and local tax burden is “near the top.” In the March PPIC poll nearly half (45%) express this view. The increasing number of voters who perceive the tax burden this way runs counter to other trends: the governor’s and legislature’s approval ratings are rising, more Californians say that the state is headed in the right direction, more say the economy is experiencing good times, and fewer say the state government is in a budget crisis.

Interestingly, the growing perception that California’s state and local tax burden is “near the top” is taking place in the years since the voters passed the Proposition 30 tax increases in November 2012.

Two groups known for their anti-tax sentiment—Republicans (50%) and conservatives (52%)—are predictably among the most likely to say that our state’s tax burden is near the top. Surprisingly, though, this view is widely held in more politically diverse circles—those annually earning $80,000 or more (58%), independent voters (52%), those living in households with children (51%), college graduates (49%), Latinos (48%), and homeowners (47%). About four in 10 Democrats (38%) and liberals (44%) also say that their state’s tax burden is near the top.

Importantly, the view that California is a national leader in high taxes has implications for fiscal preferences. Likely voters are closely divided on a Proposition 30 tax extension (48% favor, 45% oppose). But the majority (55%) of those who oppose a Proposition 30 tax extension say the state’s tax burden is near the top. Most likely voters say they want major (53%) or minor (31%) changes in the state and local tax system. The majority (52%) who want major changes also say that the state’s tax burden is near the top.

There are many reasons why tax proposals are a tough sell even in Blue California. They include high government distrust and little fiscal knowledge. We have identified a major force to be reckoned with as tax initiatives take shape for the 2016 ballot: a widely held perception that Californians are among the most burdened with state and local taxes in the nation. Tax proponents will have to convince voters that their plans will improve California’s ranking—as the state with the most promising future.

Five Things You Need to Know About Water

We marked the launch of the PPIC Water Policy Center by convening a panel of leading experts to discuss key issues in state water policy. Participants were Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at the UC Davis law school; Matthew Rodriquez, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency; and Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Moderating the conversation was Lois Kazakoff, deputy editorial page editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. We invite you to watch the full presentation and discussion.

Before the panel discussion, I gave a brief opening talk called “Five Things You Need to Know About Water.” Here is a summary of the five points:

Water is complicated. There are no silver bullet solutions to California’s water problems—whether it be desalination, new reservoirs, or conservation. We need to be thinking about combining a lot of different tools and strategies. This also means that there are almost always unintended consequences, even for solutions that seem like no brainers. As an example, there’s a lot of public interest—and funding—now available for increasing local drought resilience by reusing treated wastewater. However, more water reuse often means less treated wastewater gets returned to rivers and streams, where it provides important environmental benefits and supplies for downstream communities. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing these projects, but it does mean we need to be aware of the consequences and trade-offs.

We have to go after more than the low-hanging fruit. The low-hanging fruit types of solutions tend to be incremental and piecemeal in nature. This is fine for things that can change incrementally, like improving water use efficiency. But some tough problems—like meeting the co-equal goals of water supply reliability and ecosystem sustainability in the Delta—will require tough, expensive, and politically difficult solutions.

Water solutions almost always have both winners and losers. This is obvious in a case like the Delta, where it’s simply not possible to find a fix that will make everyone better off. That’s because every available option involves tradeoffs in which at least one party doesn’t fare as well, whether it’s farmers in the Delta, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, urban residents south of the Delta, or the Delta’s native fish and wildlife. It’s also true for projects that people like to think of as win-win, such as flood protection projects that move levees back to make more room for rivers. These projects also improve wildlife habitat, but they usually cost more than traditional flood control projects. As a society, we can aim for solutions that get the most benefits per dollar spent, but we also need to consider how to soften the blow if some groups are disproportionately bearing the costs.

Crises create hardship, but also opportunity. In particular, crises create openings to achieve major reforms that might not be possible in normal times. Thanks to a string of crises—and to bold action by leaders at the local, state, and federal levels—California is now experiencing a period of extraordinary change in water policy: In 2007, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, we enacted legislation that doubled the federal standard of flood protection for cities in the Central Valley. In 2009, in the third year of drought, we adopted a legislative package that required more conservation, better water use reporting, and a new governance structure for the Delta. In 2014, in the midst of a much more severe drought, we enacted historic legislation that empowers and requires local agencies to sustainably manage our threatened groundwater basins. Much work lies ahead to effectively implement all of these reforms, and more big changes will be needed in other areas, such as finding ways to fill critical funding gaps in our water system.

It’s hard work, but it’s not hopeless. We’ve been making progress in addressing some key challenges, including improving the reliability and quality of our water supplies, and preparing to weather droughts and floods. Perhaps the toughest—and most conflict-ridden—challenge we face in California water is reversing the decline of our native aquatic ecosystems, which have been failing despite several decades of well-intentioned environmental laws and investments. But even here, one can point to promising approaches. There’s the example of Putah Creek, where the reintroduction of natural, variable flow patterns—albeit with just a fraction of the water nature used to provide—has favored the return of native species. There’s also the example of the Knagg’s Ranch in the Yolo Bypass, where leaving fields flooded a little longer before planting rice is making it possible to fatten up young salmon before they make their way back to the ocean, giving them a better chance of survival. These are creative examples from the playbook of “reconciliation ecology,” a pragmatic approach to managing our ecosystems alongside continued human uses of water and land resources.

These five immutable facts about California water guide the work of our center. California needs to ground policy decisions in reliable, non-partisan, science-based diagnoses of problems and potential solutions. That’s how we—along with our research partners throughout the state—hope to contribute to a better water future.

Welcome to the PPIC Water Policy Center

California is at a crossroads in managing water. The drought has sparked significant policy activity, but much work lies ahead. With changes expected in the state’s population, economy, and climate—and pressures from aging infrastructure and a deteriorating environment—California needs to develop meaningful, lasting, forward-looking water policies.

Today, we are pleased to announce the establishment of the PPIC Water Policy Center to help meet the state’s urgent need for timely information and innovative water management solutions. The center builds on the successful model of independent, nonpartisan research and constructive engagement that defines all of PPIC’s work.

Over the last decade, PPIC laid the groundwork for the center with high-quality research on major water policy issues and productive conversations about solutions. The center represents a significant ramping up of investment in this critical area, and we thank the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation for the seed funding to launch this effort.

The PPIC Water Policy Center will focus on three critical, interrelated water management challenges facing California in the 21st century:

  • Ensuring clean and reliable water supplies. Investigating and encouraging comprehensive, integrated approaches to water quality and quantity.

  • Building healthy and resilient ecosystems. Promoting the development of healthy and sustainable ecosystems using practical approaches to watershed management.

  • Preparing for droughts and floods. Helping California adapt to an increasingly variable climate.

The PPIC Water Policy Center staff will work closely with a broad, interdisciplinary network of top researchers from around the state—and with a wide range of policymakers and stakeholders—to strengthen the bridge between research and real-world policy debates.

In conjunction with the launch of the PPIC Water Policy Center, PPIC is releasing California’s Water, a set of nine short policy briefs on the state’s most critical water management challenges and the actions needed to address them. This briefing kit is designed to inform state leaders and to raise awareness more broadly about the important water management issues facing the state.

We invite you to download California’s Water and visit our new PPIC Water Policy Center online. We also invite you to stay up to date with PPIC Water Policy Center activities:

Drought Watch: The End of the Rainy Season

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

California’s rainy season is pretty much over. Most years, 85% of the wet season’s rain and snow has already fallen by late March. While rain often falls in April and May, it is rarely enough to make a big difference in the overall water picture, and the forecast is now quite dry.

That means California’s water managers now have a good idea how much water will be available in the state’s reservoirs, snowpack, and groundwater basins.

The news is not heartening. While parts of the north coast did fairly well, the rest of California did not. The Sierras received about half of annual average precipitation. And as the record warm temperatures of last year have persisted, the snowpack is at an all-time low (now 8% of average). As California’s struggling ski area operators know all too well, most precipitation fell as rain, rather than snow.

Statewide, reservoir storage is about half of capacity. However, the almost non-existent snowpack provides no prospect for improvement in storage this spring—something water managers count on in most years.

This fourth consecutive dry year have led to some dire, even apocalyptic predictions, including that California will run out of water within a year. While managing this drought will be difficult, even painful in some regions, the state is not going to run out of water and there is no need to panic. Rather, prudent adjustments to water scarcity that began earlier in the drought will continue and intensify. These include:

  • Increased urban conservation. Californians cut their per capita water use last year, but they can do more. In particular, there is ample room to reduce outdoor watering, which makes up roughly half of urban water use. The State Water Resources Control Board has tightened restrictions on outdoor water use, and many municipalities will increase their conservation efforts.

  • Increased water trading. Robust water markets, involving willing sellers and buyers, are an effective way to manage scarcity. The Australians found this to be helpful during their crippling Millennium Drought. California’s water market helped many farmers keep their orchards alive in 2014. This year, cities with dwindling drought reserves are also looking to buy water – as illustrated by the recent deal between Sacramento Valley rice farmers and Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s large water wholesaler. As demand for trading increases, so will water prices.

  • Increased use of groundwater. Groundwater pumping has grown since the drought’s onset, but California’s reserves of groundwater remain large—particularly compared to surface storage. Groundwater will continue to make up shortfalls in surface water this year. Unfortunately, past failures to manage groundwater have lowered the water tables in many basins, making water more expensive to extract and often requiring drilling new, deeper wells. The new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will eventually address this problem, but not soon enough for this drought.

In short, California is not running out of water, just cheap water. A fourth consecutive year of drought will make both water scarcity and management possibilities increasingly apparent.

Testimony: Four Important Questions about Voting in California

PPIC research fellow Eric McGhee was invited to testify about voter turnout in California last week before a joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments and Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting. Here are his prepared remarks.

California’s voter turnout in 2014 hit record lows in both the primary and the general elections. I’d like to put that turnout in broader context, and give some thoughts on potential solutions. In doing so, I’m going to briefly answer four questions:

  1. Who votes, and who doesn’t?
  2. What does California’s turnout look like over time and compared to the rest of the country?
  3. What are some of the reforms that have been tried in the past, and how well have they worked?
  4. What are the other possible reforms out there that have yet to be tried in California?

Who votes and who doesn’t?

California’s electorate does not look like the state as a whole. Compared to non-voters, California’s voters are older, whiter, more educated, less likely to have recently moved, more likely to be homeowners, and more partisan. They are also wealthier, though most of the difference in income between voters and non-voters is a function of the more powerful effects of other factors such as age and education. And, PPIC research by Mark Baldassare has shown that non-voters have different opinions on important policy issues. In particular, they tend to be more supportive of a larger role for government.

These differences are very similar to what one would find in the rest of the country, but California’s profile on all of these dimensions is at one extreme. The state is relatively young, relatively mobile, with an especially large non-white population.

Beyond all these demographic and attitudinal issues looms citizenship. Citizenship is a much more important issue in California than in other states, given the large non-citizen population we have here. It particularly affects the Latino and Asian American communities. That said, it is becoming a less important issue over time, since virtually all the population growth in these communities is now among native-born citizens.

What does California’s turnout look like over time and compared to the rest of the country?

California’s turnout has dropped between 10 and 20 points in the last 30 years. It’s important to break this problem into two separate parts: the registration rate among those who are eligible to vote, and turnout among the registered population. Identifying which is the bigger problem will help us know which problem to target first.

Compared to other states, California’s registration rate has been slipping. By contrast, turnout among the registered has been consistently higher than in other states, and has been holding up better over time. These numbers are not yet available for 2014, and California’s turnout will likely be low relative to other states that year. But overall, California lags other states in registration, not turnout.

That’s not to say that turnout among the registered is without problems. It has been declining in absolute terms, at least outside of fall presidential elections. But if we are going to tackle one problem in particular, registration may be a good place to start. In addition to being a problem more specific to California, it may be more amenable to broad reform. It amounts to little more than an administrative hurdle, and as detailed below, it is certainly the easiest one to take permanently off the table through more sophisticated data management.

What are some of the reforms that have been tried in the past, and how well have they worked?

In a report last year, I explored the effect on turnout and registration of two reforms to the registration process that California recently adopted to make the process easier. The first was online registration, which allows voters to conduct the entire registration process online without ever needing to mail in a paper form. The second is conditional registration, which allows voters to register and vote simultaneously in a single trip to the county registrar, and to do so after the official close of registration, up to and including Election Day. Online registration was used for the first time in the middle of the 2012 campaign season, so my analysis was about evaluating a reform that had already been implemented. Conditional registration, on the other hand, will probably not be implemented until 2017, so my analysis was about examining the effect of similar reforms in other states.

Online registration was wildly popular, accounting for over half the new registrants in the last month of the 2012 fall registration period. However, the results of the analysis of online registration suggested that the vast majority of these people likely would have registered to vote anyway. They probably got excited by the new system and registered earlier than they might have, but that didn’t significantly increase the total volume of registrations.

Conditional registration (often called “same day” or “Election Day” registration in other states) has been heavily used in the other states that have adopted it. There are often huge surges of use right before Election Day. As with online registration, however, almost all of these people would have registered anyway. The conditional registration system simply allowed them to register later. In terms of getting new voters to the polls, the policy has had more mixed results, with high-end estimates of an increase in turnout of about 4 percentage points.

The challenge for California is that even if all the users of conditional registration would have registered anyway, there will still be a lot of those people. That makes for a late surge in registrations that must be processed, and on a scale that other states have not faced. Elections are administered at the county level, and California has six of the 20 most populous counties in the country. Los Angeles County by itself is 40 percent larger than the largest state that has adopted a conditional registration system up to this point (Wisconsin). Thus, California will have to handle a significant portion of its conditional registrants through a small number of very large counties. The state needs to be prepared.

What are the other reforms that have yet to be tried?

Probably the biggest reform to registration that has not yet been tried in California is automatic registration. This is a system where voters who engage with government in some other capacity (usually by getting a drivers’ license at the DMV) and provide enough information to be registered are put on the voter rolls by default. They would then be given the option to remove themselves if they wanted but would otherwise remain registered.

Though automatic registration would be a big change, it is not quite as radical as it sounds. The state already tries to give residents the option to register at the DMV and other agencies (not always with perfect success), so automatic registration would just be a more insistent and systematic form of the same policy. Moreover, the drivers’ license and voter registration lists are on the verge of being linked already, thus easing many of the potential technical hurdles.

Would automatic registration solve California’s turnout problem? No, because low registration is about more than administrative hurdles. Many of the people who do not register are expressing a deeper disengagement from politics and public life. For example, North Dakota has no voter registration at all but falls far short of 100 percent turnout. Thus, automatic registration would need to be followed up with constant engagement to truly leverage the new system. What it would do is ensure that something closer to 100 percent of California citizens would be available for engagement without any further administrative steps along the way.

Automatic registration could also help the state deal with the surges of late registrants it will likely see under the conditional registration system. With voters added to the rolls throughout the year as they acquired or updated drivers’ licenses, there would be far fewer voters who would need to use the conditional registration system at the eleventh hour, making it more manageable for county registrars.

In the end, automatic registration is only one potential solution to voter turnout problems in California. Many others can and should be considered, and after all stakeholders have weighed in, an automatic registration itself may not prove to be the best fit for California. A bill proposing an automatic registration system has been introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, so there will be a real opportunity to have a robust debate on the issue. That alone will be a healthy step forward for California.

Video: PPIC Statewide Survey Briefing

As discussions continue in Sacramento about drought relief, funding for higher education and transportation projects, and an extension of Proposition 30 tax increases, PPIC surveyed public opinion on these and many other topics. At a briefing last week in the capital, PPIC researcher Jui Shrestha provided the survey findings. Among the key points:

  • Two-thirds of Californians say the regional water supply is a big problem, and two-thirds say people in their part of the state are not doing enough to respond to the drought.
  • While most adults say that spending money on the maintenance of California roads, highways, and bridges is very important, there is little support for increasing the gasoline tax or vehicle registration fees to do so.
  • Half of Californians favor extending the Proposition 30 tax increases, and about a third favor making them permanent.

Caring About Delta Levees During a Drought

When the sun is shining and our rivers are low, we tend to forget about levees. However, you can’t ignore the 1,100 miles of levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These levees—dikes, actually—have high water against them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They protect the islands of the Delta from flooding that would occur daily because island elevations are well below sea level—more than 25 feet below in some places.

This video is a simulation of what would happen if a severe earthquake hit the western Delta, causing widespread failure of levees. The simulation is a worst-case scenario: failure occurs in the summer when freshwater inflow from rivers is low. (The most recent large flooding in the Delta took place on a clear day in June 2004.) As the water drains from the channels into the islands, it pulls saltwater into the Delta from San Francisco Bay. This renders the water too salty for use by the 25 million people more than 3 million acres of farms that rely upon it.

The management of Delta levees has been a policy challenge for many decades. Most levees are managed by local reclamation districts. They are of varying quality. Yet these levees affect the reliability of water supplies from the Delta. They protect lives, property, and important infrastructure, and they control river and estuarine habitat.

In the 2009 Delta Reform Act, the legislature assigned the Delta Stewardship Council the task of determining how to invest state funds in the levees. As highlighted in our recent report Paying for Water in California, the cost of improving Delta levees ranges from $1.6–$2.4 billion, while available state bond funds total less than $400 million. Recognizing that needs far outstrip available resources, the council has chosen to set policies for prioritizing investments. This is both necessary and fraught with controversy because it ultimately determines whose needs are to be met and whose will not.

PPIC, with our research partners at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, have published numerous assessments of this problem. Over the next few months we plan to post summaries of this work to help inform policymaking and prioritization. Come rain or shine, flood or drought, Delta levees—and the resources they protect—need the state’s attention.

Climate Change and California’s Future

Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s president and CEO, opened the PPIC conversation on climate change this week with these remarks. We invite you to watch the video of the event.

California has found its way to broad, bipartisan agreements on environmental issues for decades. The state has been a leader in efforts to improve air quality, conserve open space, and protect the coastline. The public has typically embraced these “green” policies. In a PPIC poll in 2014, majorities of Californians said that “stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost,” while fewer said they “cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.” Despite increasing evidence that climate change poses a major threat here and abroad, the federal government and international community have been slow to act. California, on the other hand, has been responding since the early 2000s with some of the most far- reaching policies in the world.

Most notably, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Democratic legislators and signed AB32 – the Global Warming Solutions Act—in 2006. It committed California to reverse the trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions and to lower those emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. It was hailed as a watershed moment in California history that would also have far-reaching consequences nationally and internationally.

In the years that followed, the governor and legislature worked to comply with the law by adopting a number of major policy changes. These include efforts to expand renewable energy, change community development, and create a market price for carbon through a cap and trade program. In 2010, a campaign led by Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican George Shultz persuaded voters to soundly reject Proposition 23, an initiative to suspend AB32. Voters then passed Proposition 39 by a wide margin. This 2012 initiative closed corporate tax loop holes to pay for clean energy projects.

The state’s response to climate change has had consistent support from a broad coalition that cuts across racial/ethnic, economic, and regional groups—while the amount of support has varied along partisan lines. In the PPIC annual environment survey last July, 68 percent of adults said they favored the emission goals identified in AB32. Strong majorities have expressed support for the law since we first asked about it in 2006. Sixty-five percent of Californians are also in favor of the state government making its own policies to address global warming—separate from the federal government. Majorities have expressed this preference since we first asked about it in 2005. And sixty-one percent say that the state government should act right away to reduce global warming rather than wait for the economy and job situation to improve.

One reason the state’s response to climate change has had such strong support is the high level of concern about the issue among Californians. In a PPIC poll last December, 76 percent of adults said that global warming is a very serious or somewhat serious threat to the economy and quality of life in California. More than seven in 10 have expressed this view since we started asking this question in 2005.

Another explanation for Californians’ support is the perceived economic benefit of the state’s policies. In the PPIC poll last December, 43 percent of adults said that California’s efforts to reduce global warming will result in more jobs for people around the state. In contrast, 29 percent said the state’s effort will not affect job numbers, and only 21 percent said it will result in fewer jobs. Californians have always been much more likely to say that taking action on global warming will result in more jobs— rather than fewer—since we began asking this question in 2010.

Today, California climate change policy has reached another pivotal moment. Last year, the state Air Resources Board declared that California is now on track to achieve its greenhouse gas emission goals by 2020, just five years from now. Earlier this year, Governor Brown and state legislators proposed that California recalibrate its climate change policies with a new set of goals reaching farther into the future. As before, the new goals are ambitious and contentious.

In January, Governor Brown proposed three new goals to be accomplished in the next 15 years: increase the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources from one-third to 50 percent; reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent, and; double the energy efficiency of buildings and make heating fuels cleaner. SB 350 by Senators Kevin de Leon and Mark Leno reflects the governor’s new goals for 2030. And SB 32 by Senator Fran Pavley would set California’s greenhouse gas emissions in the year 2050 at 80 percent below the level reported in 1990.

There is much to consider in setting these goals and we know that change of this magnitude is not easy. Governor Brown said in his inaugural address: “Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels. This is exciting, it is bold, and it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.”

California can benefit from the innovation, technologies, and new jobs generated by the state’s leadership on climate change policy. Achieving the goals, however, will also have costs and require lifestyle changes around transportation, employment and housing decisions.

The climate change policies in place today and the proposed goals will affect every Californian. To talk about some of the experiences so far and the issues raised by a new set of climate change goals, we have put together a bipartisan panel that reflects several key perspectives. The panel includes state and local government representatives, as well as business interests from different sectors of the economy.

The state’s climate change policies are among the most difficult and important issues to surface this year. We hope that a public dialogue about the challenges that we face, the goals under consideration, and the trade-offs involved in upcoming policy choices will help California to achieve its brightest future.

Delivering on the Promise of Online Education

Zócalo Public Square, which combines live events and journalism, asked PPIC senior fellow Hans Johnson and other experts to answer this question: How will technology—from massive open online courses and web-based textbooks to big data collection—change universities? Here is his response. Visit Zocalopublicsquare.org to read what others had to say.

A popular prediction is that new technology will revolutionize higher education, making traditional brick and mortar colleges obsolete. Certainly, new technology offers tremendous potential—democratizing access to college, enhancing instruction, and improving graduation rates, to name a few. But before we jump on the bandwagon of declaring a new era in higher education, we should assess the degree to which new technology can address fundamental challenges in higher education.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of all is to ensure that higher education serves as a ladder for economic and social mobility rather than simply reinforcing economic and class divides. By that standard, we can dismiss most Massive Online Open Courses offered in conjunction with the nation’s elite universities. Most of those courses are taken by people who already have a college degree, and the vast majority of students who enroll in such courses never finish them.

A different experiment in online learning, and one that serves hundreds of thousands of students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, is taking place at California’s community colleges. With over one million course enrollments, California’s community colleges are the largest public provider of online education in the country. They are the gateways to higher education for low-income and nontraditional students—those with jobs and family obligations.

At the Public Policy Institute of California, we examined student success in online courses in the state’s community colleges. In our study, we found that course completion and passage rates are substantially lower in online courses than in traditional ones, even though students in online courses tend to be more advantaged and academically prepared. Moreover, gaps in academic performance that we see among demographic groups in real-life classrooms are exacerbated in the online setting.

What these early findings demonstrate is not failure, but the need to improve both technology and the way it is used in instruction. If we can get it right at the community colleges, we can deliver on the promise of online education.