Category: Climate Change/Energy

We monitor the state’s leadership in climate change and energy policy through analysis of public opinion, local government actions, and industry trends.

Climate Change and Partisanship

Ten years ago, California led the nation in climate change policy when it passed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, landmark legislation that required the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. While passed largely along partisan lines, Assembly Bill (AB) 32 was signed into law by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Notably, the law enjoyed the support of a strong majority of Californians—including two in three adults across parties—in our July 2006 Statewide Survey.

Today, the state is prepared to meet the reduction targets set forth in AB 32. As policymakers debate how to further reduce emissions, a strong majority of Californians continue to favor these targets. But now there is a wide partisan divide. An overwhelming majority of Democrats (80%) are in favor, compared to a majority of independents (56%) and fewer than half of Republicans (44%).

The evolving partisanship can also been seen in Californians’ views about the state’s role as a leader in global warming policy. In 2006, solid majorities of Californians across parties were in favor of California making its own global warming policies separate from the federal government. Today, a solid majority of adults are still in favor, but the partisan divide has widened. Democratic support has held steady (73% in 2006, 70% today), but support among Republicans (62% in 2006, 49% today) and independents (70% in 2006, 55% today) has declined by double digits.

What’s changed since 2006? In California, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been replaced by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who has been a vocal leader on climate change and made the issue a major component of his agenda. At the national level, there is a contentious debate about global warming, as well as a growing partisan and ideological divide.

Democrats and Republicans in our surveys have also become more ideologically divided. Democrats describing themselves as “very liberal” made up 14% of Democrats in our July 2006 survey, while that group encompasses 30% of Democrats today. Similarly, Republicans describing themselves as “very conservative” made up 21% of Republicans in July 2006. The “very conservative” constitute 31% of Republicans today.

Despite a widening partisan divide, Californians’ support for state policies to address global warming has been consistent in the 10 years since passing AB 32. Indeed, a strong majority of Californians (68%) favor a proposal to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. An overwhelming majority of Democrats (78%) support the proposed goals, compared to fewer than half of Republicans (39%). Independents are in the middle, with 59% in favor of the expanded goals.

Does the partisan divide on global warming policy mean that there is intraparty cohesiveness? Not necessarily. Among Democrats, there is strong majority support regardless of ideology and other demographics. But Republicans as a group are less cohesive. In fact, support for further reducing greenhouse gases exceeds 50 percent among nonwhite Republicans. Among independents, support for global warming policy mirrors that of the party that these nonpartisans lean toward.

Further reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be a real test for California as it seeks to address climate change. The ongoing political debate over global warming may well continue, and once more, the nation will be watching to see what California does next.

Video: Assessing California’s Global Warming Law

Ten years ago, California enacted a law to combat global warming that set an ambitious goal: reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Today, the state is poised to reach this target, and policymakers are discussing aiming for a new one.

Each year since the law—AB 32—took effect, the PPIC Statewide Survey has examined Californians’ views on climate change and the state’s actions to address it. The survey has consistently found that most Californians believe that the effects of global warming have begun and that majorities support the state taking action to address it.

But a partisan split has emerged since the law took effect. AB 32’s goals no longer have the bipartisan support they did in 2006. Today, Democrats and independents are much more likely than Republicans to support the goals of AB 32. This divide is reflected in a number of findings in the 2016 Californians and the Environment Survey.

Research associate David Kordus presented the survey at a briefing in Sacramento last week.

How Green Is My Water?

Harmful plumes of algae in waterways have been much in the news lately, in California and nationally. We talked to James Cloern, a senior scientist at the US Geological Survey and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s research network, about this pressing water quality issue.

PPIC: What are algal blooms, and how big a problem are they for California?

James Cloern: Our waterways are home to many thousands of species of microscopic algae, but only a few dozen can develop into harmful blooms. They become harmful when they either produce toxic chemicals, which can make people and animals sick, or disrupt biological processes like animal feeding or bird flight—some species excrete goo that can gum up birds’ wings.

There’s growing evidence that harmful blooms are increasing because we are over-fertilizing our lakes, rivers, and estuaries such as the Bay-Delta. This over-fertilization comes largely from the discharge of treated sewage or runoff of nutrient-rich water from farms, cities, gardens, and animal lots. Two nutrients are causing these problems: nitrogen and phosphorus.

Algal blooms can grow very rapidly when they have the right conditions: warm water, high sunlight, and high concentrations of nutrients. California’s latest drought coincided with record-high temperatures, which warmed waterways and was a contributing factor to a number of algal blooms around the state.

One really nasty algae—Microcystis—seems to be increasing globally. It has an advantage as the climate and waters warm. Microcystis has become a challenge in California. In recent years we’ve seen it bloom in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Pinto Lake, Pyramid Lake, Shasta Lake, and reservoirs of the Bay Area’s East Bay Regional Parks.

PPIC: Could climate change worsen this problem?

JC: There is still much to learn about the ecology of these blooms, but we know these events are strongly tied to climate and especially to extremes such as heat waves and drought as well as El Niño/La Niña cycles. One grand challenge is to understand the interactions between climate variability, including climate change, and over-fertilization. Developing that knowledge is critical for establishing the quantities of nutrients that cause more frequent or intense harmful blooms.

PPIC: How well prepared are we to manage these water quality challenges?

JC: Water managers today are asking three essential questions of the scientific community. First, at what point do we have to take action? Second, which nutrient do we tackle first? And third, what level of action is required?

These are challenging questions, and they have global implications. They’re important in densely populated urban areas, where we dispose of treated sewage in water bodies, and in areas where water bodies drain large agricultural areas.

California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards are tackling these issues. They have two new programs on nutrient management—one for San Francisco Bay, one for the Delta. The technical solutions are very different for dealing with land runoff and sewage. The sewage issue can be solved technically, but the fix is expensive. The San Francisco water board is now trying to determine what level of impairment should trigger mandated water treatment to reduce nutrients coming into the Bay. Since the problem could cost on the order of $5–$10 billion to solve, board members don’t want to mandate unnecessarily strict changes.

The land-runoff challenge is much harder to address, because the source of pollution is the application of fertilizers on land, feedlots, and septic systems. Solving the problem will require substantial behavioral changes such as new farming practices. But it has been done elsewhere—for example, Denmark mandated national-scale action to reduce both nitrogen and phosphorus.

We have a clear understanding of how nutrient pollution can make our waters unswimmable, unfishable and undrinkable. Solutions to the nutrient pollution problem exist, but they have costs. Californians must decide if the benefits justify the expense.

Learn more

Read “California’s Water Quality Challenges” (PPIC Water Policy Center fact sheet, October 2015)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center water quality resource page

A Weatherman Explains California’s Volatile Climate

What does the future hold for California’s weather and climate? Is drought the new normal? And what about La Niña? We talked to Daniel Swain—founder of the popular California Weather Blog and a Stanford University climate scientist—about our volatile climate.

PPIC: La Niña is looming, bringing the possibility of another dry winter. What issues does it raise for the state?

Daniel Swain: It’s ingrained in California folklore that El Niño means rain and La Niña means no rain. Climate scientists often emphasize that the effects of both can be highly variable in California. El Niño and La Niña do give us much more predictability than we would have in a typical year, but that’s not always enough to help us predict exactly what’s going to happen. Last year we had a bit of a predictive failure when a very strong El Niño didn’t translate to extremely wet conditions for California as a whole. Northern California got a break this winter, with near-average precipitation. It didn’t actually earn back its accumulated water deficit, but at least it didn’t get larger. The La Niña situation is even more uncertain, bringing a wider range of possible outcomes than with El Niño. But it’s reasonable to say there is an increased risk of dry conditions this coming winter. So La Niña is certainly not good news. Another dry and warm winter would be bad news for the environment and groundwater, because these systems haven’t recovered from previous dry winters.

PPIC: Talk about the role of climate change in the California drought.

DS: There are two things to think about: what’s going on with precipitation and with temperature. We’ve seen record warmth by a really wide margin for most of the latest drought. It’s been a much more severe drought than it would have been with cooler temperatures and the same amount of rain. These extremely warm temperatures are clearly linked to global warming. The question of precipitation is much harder to answer. There hasn’t been much of a trend in California’s average precipitation. But that doesn’t mean the character of precipitation isn’t changing—in fact, we’re seeing an increase in atmospheric patterns associated with both very dry and very wet conditions. The central cause of our really dry conditions during the present drought is the “ridiculously resilient ridge” anchored over the Pacific, which has been keeping big storms away. The question of whether or not global warming affects the risk of very low precipitation years is essentially equivalent to asking whether climate change has increased the chance of big ridges like this—and recent research suggests that it does. Between our high confidence in the role of rising temperatures and the less-certain linkage to these ridge patterns, we can say there is a substantial climate change fingerprint on this drought.

PPIC: Climate scientists have made it clear that we can’t attribute a single event to climate change, but at what point do we start talking about “a new normal” in California?

DS: It’s quite clear that global warming is rarely if ever the singular cause of an extreme climate event—there is always some degree of weather or randomness involved. A more important question is: does global warming influence the likelihood of a specific event? We have high confidence that global warming has increased the likelihood of drought in California. It’s clearly not the only factor, but asking the question in this way provides a useful frame for evaluating risk. As for “a new normal,” it’s pretty unlikely that California’s future will be characterized by a permanent shift to low rainfall. The state’s climate is already characterized by extremes—we see a lot of year-to-year variation, particularly in precipitation. A more useful way to think about our certainly warmer future is to ask whether the driest or wettest years are occurring more frequently or more intensely. Having wider swings between drought and flood—that might actually be the new normal.

One bit of good news is that we’re getting a lot better at predicting atmospheric rivers, which bring our biggest rain storms. We may be able to use these much improved forecasts to allow more leeway in managing water storage in reservoirs. Our increasing ability to forecast weather is going to give us new ways to address our water challenges—to better manage increased risk.

Learn more

Read California’s Water: Climate Change and Water (from California’s Water briefing kit, April 2015) Read Daniel’s California Weather blog

A California Drought Report Card

A year ago, Governor Jerry Brown issued California’s first-ever statewide water conservation mandate. Today, conditions are better: Northern California reservoirs have been filling, and the snow survey found a much-improved snowpack compared to last year. But one near-average year is not enough to recover from the driest, warmest four-year stretch on record. El Niño was not a drought-buster. In the southern half of the state, reservoirs remain low and groundwater basins even lower.

The end of the rainy season is a good time to evaluate our drought response. So, how did we do last year, and what changes could help us better manage one or more additional dry years? We graded California’s drought response for urban areas, the farming sector, rural water supply, and the environment, and found great disparities in the results.

This drought gave us a glimpse into a challenging future. Our commentary also outlines policy changes that will help us weather a few more years of drought—and more importantly, improve our ability to adapt to a hotter, drier future.

Read our commentary detailing this drought report card in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Video: Reforming Federal Drought Management

The federal government is a key partner in just about every aspect of western water management. It’s the West’s largest landowner, chief environmental regulator, major supplier of irrigation water and hydropower, key provider of water information, and an important source of water-related funding. The vast scale of its involvement has brought big challenges to how it manages the drought that has affected the entire 11-state region in recent years.

The fed’s role in managing droughts in the West was the topic of a seminar in Washington, DC, last week, a joint effort of Resources for the Future and the PPIC Water Policy Center. Along with a panel of prominent national experts, we discussed how to improve policies and practices to build drought resilience at the federal level, with a focus on pragmatic changes that are doable in the near term. I introduced recommendations from our new report, Improving the Federal Response to Drought: Five Areas for Reform, to help structure the conversation.

A panel discussion followed, with my colleague Jeffrey Mount moderating. He asked panelist Ann Mills, deputy under secretary for natural resources and environment at the US Department of Agriculture, about how USDA’s vast array of programs could be better coordinated for drought.

Noting that there are 15 agencies just within the department that have some influence on water management, Mills said, “We’ve started to create USDA water teams at the senior policy level … to make sure we’re coordinating our work as effectively as possible. There are real challenges in breaking down silos in the USDA and the federal family.” Mills noted that USDA is also seeking to improve its data and make it actionable and more available to customers. “And we’re building on the really great work that’s already happening on the ground,” she said.

Panelist Mark Kramer of The Nature Conservancy was asked about the lack of a “drought plan” for the environment during the latest drought, which might have reduced the crisis now facing some species.

“The pressure to squeeze more water out of the system is enormous,” Kramer said. Water has been framed as an “either-or” proposition—either it goes to the environment or to human uses. But, he noted, it can be managed in ways that address environmental needs without harming other users. The Nature Conservancy has been working on pilot projects that help farmers put water “when and where it’s needed”—for example, to create temporary wetlands for birds during drought. To scale up these efforts, some agencies may need more funding and other tools.

These are tough, multidimensional problems, and solving them will require a heavy lift. But increasingly, people in the West realize we can’t continue with “business-as-usual” water management. Tom Iseman, deputy assistant secretary for water and science at the US Bureau of Reclamation, noted that westerners are already experiencing the impacts of hotter, longer droughts, and realizing some things will need to change. “We’re trying to get ahead of these problems, to promote long-term drought resilience.”

Learn more

Read a summary of policy recommendations from Improving the Federal Response to Western Drought (February 2016)
Read “There’s Always Drought Somewhere in the West” (PPIC blog, February 4, 2016)

State’s Ecosystems Face a Flood of Changes

With El Niño making an impressive new year’s debut, talk of drought has turned to worries about floods. How will the state’s drought-starved ecosystems adapt to the taps being turned on again? We talked with Joshua Viers, an ecological engineer at UC Merced and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network, about California ecosystems’ response to flooding.

PPIC: Are floods “natural disasters” for nature?

Josh Viers: Disturbances like floods, droughts, and fire are regular features in California, and our ecosystems are fairly well adapted to these extreme events. There has been a lot of evolutionary adaptation to these disturbances over time, and this is one reason California has such high biodiversity. What compromises our ecosystems’ ability to be resilient to extreme events is that many habitats and species populations have been degraded by human activities. That makes it harder to gauge an ecosystem’s ability to snap back after extreme drought or floods.

Flooding can be quite good for aquatic ecosystems, especially after years of drought, because it reorganizes the physical habitat by moving rocks, logs, and sediments. If water overflows into the floodplain, it can recharge shallow groundwater, replenish soil nutrients, distribute seeds from native plants, and create new habitat for animals and plants.

PPIC: How does California’s flood-control infrastructure affect the ability to manage water for the environment?

JV: California has one of the most elaborate water infrastructure systems in the world. Over the decades, it has had both positive and negative effects on our ecosystems. Our system of dams and canals has degraded habitat, and severely altered the natural variability of river flows, which can disrupt ecosystem functioning and species’ life cycles. But we’re increasingly able to manage the system to mimic rivers’ natural flows and improve long-term ecosystem functioning. As the climate warms, however, we will need to manage water flows to ensure downstream water temperatures don’t get too high for many of our native fish species.

PPIC: What changes to our flood management system could improve environmental conditions?

JV: We need better forecasting on the amount of water coming into reservoirs, so we can minimize the impacts of sudden high releases from dams, which can damage ecosystems downstream. Being able to “pre-wet” ecosystems dried from the drought can help reduce the effects of a sharp change. For example, in fall the Cosumnes River had many native fish waiting to swim upstream to spawn, but its dry channel forced them to wait longer than normal. The first rains just saturate the streambed. Pre-wetting it allows these rains to become streamflow and help get those fish moving upstream on time.

A longer term fix would be to set back more levees, which would give rivers room to flood. This can have ecosystem benefits and reduce property damage from floods. We’ve identified a number of aquatic ecosystem benefits from this approach. The wider channel slows floodwaters and supports growth of phytoplankton, which are the base of the food chain for a whole host of creatures. Juvenile salmon grow much bigger and more quickly in this environment. That means they can survive their ocean migration much better and are more likely to come back to spawn. Additional benefits include forest regeneration, nutrient and sediment deposition (which creates new habitat for riparian plants), and local groundwater recharge. These whole-ecosystem responses have human benefits as well.

Learn more

 

Read our policy brief California’s Water: Preparing for Floods (from California’s Water briefing kit, April 2015)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center ecosystems resource page

California Depends on Rivers—in the Air

Climate change could bring both bigger rains and longer droughts to California. What do the bigger rains mean for the state’s water management? We talked to Mike Dettinger—a research hydrologist with the US Geological Survey and a PPIC Water Policy Center research partner—about the weather phenomenon known as “atmospheric rivers.”

PPIC: What are atmospheric rivers?

Mike Dettinger: They are long pathways that transport water across the atmosphere. Typically they’re at least 1,200 miles long; the biggest can be five times that. They tend to evolve as they cross the Pacific. Those that manage to reach the West Coast meet a more-or-less abrupt end when they hit the mountains, dumping rain and snow in the process. These storms carry a lot of water—a big one can move up to 20 times the amount of water that comes down the Mississippi River. They can provide a third to half of our annual precipitation in just a few storms.

Because they’re usually warmer than other types of storms, larger areas of our river basins get rain rather than snow, which increases flood risk. In the past 60 years nearly all of our largest storms and most damaging floods were caused by atmospheric rivers. The largest ones have brought 12–16 inches of rain in a few days. On the plus side, they also bring ecologically beneficial flooding for wetlands and are a major factor in ending our droughts.

PPIC: Can we predict when these storms are coming?

MD: We’ve got about a decade of understanding atmospheric rivers in practical and useful ways. The California Department of Water Resources and others have responded by investing in an enhanced water monitoring network. These efforts and a lot of basic research have revolutionized forecasting of California’s largest storms, which is critical for reducing flood risks and managing water supply. A decade ago the weather service wouldn’t forecast storms beyond three days. Now we routinely receive forecasts of major storms a week or more in advance. We’re working to improve forecasting even more, especially in terms of the details of where and how intensely the storms will land. The hope is that better forecasting can allow dam operators to keep more water in reservoirs at the end of the rainy season while better managing flood risks.

PPIC: How might climate change affect these storms?

MD: As the world warms, the atmosphere will be able to hold more water. Climate models agree that we’ll see more atmospheric rivers—likely a doubling by the end of 21st century. How much water they’ll bring is less clear—some models show a 10–15% increase. But most of the increased rainfall will come from a larger number of these storms than from how much water they hold.

About half of climate projections show California getting wetter, while half show it getting dryer. If you dig a little bit, nearly all projections show an increase in the number of atmospheric rivers, and virtually all show a decline in other types of storms. That decline will bring more dry days, punctuated by these major storms. So if we indeed do get the wetter future, it’s because of more potentially dangerous atmospheric rivers. It’s a Faustian bargain.

We’ve spent a century building up a flood control system that tries to take the peaks off the worst floods. This has put our ecosystems at a disadvantage, as they evolved with regular floods. I think we’ll find it harder to control floodwaters as climate change builds, and that might tend to bring us back to something more like what California’s natural systems evolved under—allowing bigger areas to absorb floodwaters in winter. It will be interesting to see how we achieve balance and who will be the winners and losers. We have a lot to learn.

Learn More

TABLE SOURCE: Chart excerpted from The Meterorology of Extreme Orographic Precipitation in California—A Synthesis of 2014 (Ralph and Dettinger).

Video: PPIC Survey Examines Election Landscape

As California heads into an election year, the PPIC Statewide Survey looks at residents’ views on a broad range of issues that are already flashpoints in the presidential primary races and will likely surface in statewide campaigns next year.

PPIC research associate Lunna Lopes presented the survey’s key findings at a Sacramento briefing last week. She was joined by Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, for a question and answer session afterward. He noted a link between Californians’ “modestly optimistic view of the economy,” their belief that there is income inequality in the state, and their attitudes about which ballot issues are important. Twice as many residents say that increasing the state minimum wage is very important than say legalizing marijuana is very important.

“In California, the belief that this state is divided into the haves and have-nots—and the feeling among many Californians that they are among the have-nots—are going to be driving forces in the election,” he said. The survey briefing was held just after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, and the briefing touched on Californians’ views about gun laws. PPIC research associate David Kordus provided findings from the September survey on this issue: Compared to adults nationwide, Californians are more likely to favor stricter laws than we have now. Most also say that controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting the right of Americans to own guns.

Video: Governing in a Time of Change

At a time when economic, environmental, and demographic forces are changing California, Governor Jerry Brown’s chief aide, Nancy McFadden, was asked to describe three administration priorities requiring bold leadership.

The first priority is keeping the state on a fiscally stable road, she told PPIC president and CEO Mark Baldassare before a Sacramento audience last week. This requires tough choices, she said, as the governor demonstrated when he vetoed bills that were worthy ideas but had budget implications for the state General Fund.

“Sometimes bold leadership means saying no,” she said.

Second, the administration will continue to implement the far-reaching changes adopted in past years, such as corrections realignment and the Local Control Funding Formula for schools, which targets money to the state’s neediest students and shifts funding control to the local level.

McFadden said the third priority is the “whole panoply of climate change and environment issues facing not only our state but our world.” Extreme weather events—drought, wildfires, and flooding—pose immediate challenges that have to be managed.

McFadden’s conversation with Baldassare was followed by a panel discussion about leadership—what it takes and when elected officials have demonstrated it. The panelists were Jim Brulte, chair of the California Republican Party and former state senate Republican leader; state senators Loni Hancock and Carol Liu; and Darrell Steinberg, chair of the California Government Law and Policy Practice at Greenberg Traurig and former senate president pro tem. The moderator was John Myers, Sacramento bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times.