Why does my county want to ask me what to do about sea level rise?
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I hope you get to take some sort of breather this long holiday weekend.
It’s primary season in California, so most of my mailbox is direct mail fliers from various political candidates. But earlier this week I got this fairly alarming item.
I’m actually very familiar with this image: It’s a NOAA projection of the Bay Area’s local sea level rise by 2100, under one of the worse case emissions scenarios.
My colleagues and I at the San Francisco Chronicle used the underlying data to answer reader questions and design a more interactive map where you could see if your home (or school, or hell, your pizza place) could be impacted by sea level rise flooding in 2050 or 2100. It’s a not a guaranteed future, but a very educated guess about what not cutting emissions will do to our communities.
This mailer, pointed as it is, is not the work of some aggressive climate activists or shady political group. It’s from the San Mateo County government. They want to know what I think they should do about it.
It’s also not the only way the county is trying to get my attention: I’ve seen ads on YouTube, my streaming internet TV app and even on top of the google search results when I went to look for NOAA link. But the county is not trying to encourage me to cut my own emissions or highlighting some policy to do so: they’re asking me how they should prepare if this scenario comes to pass.
“San Mateo County has been exploring local solutions and strategies to better prepare for sea level rise and flooding, including a potential ballot measure, which would include citizens’ oversight, annual audits and legal guarantees that all funding stay local,” the back of the mailer says. (My emphasis added)
They list a few strategies the county is considering — and then point me to an online survey to “let us know your priorities”.
I don’t tend to talk about climate adaption here, in part to keep focus on efforts to slow climate change, but the an essential other half of this equation. It’s also dependent on emissions reductions: less warming means less heat, less sea level rise, fewer intense storms and drought.
The maps on this mailer use modeling to help planners understand what will be most at threat in different scenarios. But the key factor — how much greenhouse gas we pump into the air — is unknown. Planning now for some sea level rise later is exceptionally wise, but it’s unclear how much.
Adaptation is also locally implemented. San Mateo County has lots of bay shoreline at risk, but elsewhere in the region, key highway junctions are at risk without ever getting close to homes. Meanwhile, as residents of Alameda worry about losing “paradise” from new housing today, in the worse case scenario, no part of the city will be spared by the end of the century. The decisions will be different, even a few miles apart.
But I’m confused by all this effort to get public input on something many of us may not have the knowledge to effectively choose. The survey itself asks me to rank seven items from high, medium, low and no priority.
The options are both specific (“Reducing highly flammable vegetation to minimize excessive fuel loads that can contribute to catastrophic wildfires so residents can evacuate during an emergency and first responders can adequately respond to emergencies”) and not specific enough (“Improving shoreline levees throughout San Mateo County”). Also the survey allows me to rank everything as a high priority. That’s generally not how priorities work.
I think public engagement on these issues by local government is really important — it’s kind of the whole point of this newsletter — but there’s a framing here that’s confounding to me. If you’re asking residents to hazard a guess at the highest priority to be better prepared for the future that’s still uncertain, why not also ask them for their priorities for reducing emissions now?
Are residents clamoring for more energy retrofits in their homes? City permitting rules hurting their solar dreams? Would they ride the bus or train more often if you changed or improved the routes? Some of these choices may turn out not to be popular, or would be outside of the county government’s hands. But they’d at least have a better idea about what they’re working with — and to remind residents that their future doesn’t have to be all the way under water.
Resource of the Month
This month’s bonus resource email for paying supporters of The Planet You Save will be delayed a day because of the holiday weekend. Look for May’s email in your inboxes on Tuesday. Thanks to the readers who help keep this newsletter a part of my work week!
More local climate news
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The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission has given the thumbs down to a tree-burning power plant on the Big Island.
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Activists push against LNG plants, want renewable energy in southwest Louisiana
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ExxonMobil must go to trial in Massachusetts over alleged deceptive business practices over charges it lied about global warming
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A National Renewable Energy Laboratory-designed app is helping streamline the solar permitting process, though only 16 cities use it so far.
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I used Aclima’s block-by-block data to show pandemic-induced pollution drops — now this air quality data is showing the toll of how most polluted places in the San Francisco Bay are the same places where mostly Black, Latino, Asian and low-income residents live.
Local climate reporter of the week:
Miguel Otárola, Colorado Public Radio:
Here’s the story he got out of it