by Peter Mertz
LOS ANGELES, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A nonpartisan report submitted by the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) to the California legislature has politicians from both parties buzzing and looking at policy solutions to counter climate change disasters and enormous costs to the most populous state in the country related to global warming.
Calmatters, a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization focusing on policies in the Golden State, called the latest report as "a disaster drumbeat that Californians have heard many times before."
Experts said this report is unprecedented in its scope, and ironically comes the same week a United Nations climate report painted an equally "ominous picture" of climate change, according to USA Today on Monday.
"We have the knowledge and the technology to get this done," said Inger Anderson, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. "But politics gets in the way."
A Gallup poll on Monday showed a majority of Americans are in favor of recent climate change proposals from the U.S. Joe Biden administration.
But the poll highlights the stark differences between conservative and liberal approaches to climate change, with 68 percent of Republicans prioritizing the economy over the environment while 75 percent of Democrats said they would prioritize the environment, reported The Hill.
California, dominated by Democratic political leadership, has been plagued in the past decade by unprecedented floods and fires triggered by climate change. Last summer was the third-driest year on record in California as the state's second-largest wildfire causing billions in damage in Northern California.
"The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) has released report after report assessing the state's climate policies and spending. It has warned that sea level rise will submerge billions of dollars in homes, roads and businesses by 2050, and that the state must accelerate planning to protect state assets including college campuses, prisons and even state workers from soaring heat, flooding, fire and extreme weather," Calmatters said.
LAO's comprehensive, six-part report titled "Climate Change Impacts Across California" has drawn praise and calls for action from both sides of the political aisle, covering transportation, health, housing, education, and crosscutting issues.
"It's impressive," State Senator Bob Wieckowski, a Democrat and chair of the budget subcommittee on resources, environmental protection and energy, said of the in-depth study, which says that "climate change could alter everything, and spare no one in California, so legislators should consider preparing for sweeping impacts."
The focus of the report detailed the economic toll, "as the changing climate alters where and how Californians build, grow food and protect the most vulnerable residents."
"Wildfires, heat and floods will force more frequent school closures, disrupting education, child care and availability of free school lunches. More than 1,600 schools temporarily closed because of wildfires each year between 2017 and 2020, affecting nearly a million students a year," the report read.
Workers in outdoor industries like agriculture, construction, forestry and recreation, totaling 10 percent of California's workforce and mostly made up of Latinos, will continue to bear the brunt of extreme heat and smoke, it noted.
In 2020, wildfire smoke from the U.S. West drifted some 4,000 km from California to Europe, gaining international notoriety and recognition of the enormity of America's climate change problem.
"Wildfire smoke may have killed about 20 people among every 100,000 older Californians in 2020, and is projected to become more deadly. A 50 percent increase in smoke could kill nine to 20 more people among every 100,000 each year," the LAO study said.
Last week's dire UN climate report warned that "if humanity doesn't act now to stop greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth could warm as much as 3 degrees Celsius," and that "major cities will be underwater, unprecedented heatwaves will define summers, terrifying storms will become more frequent and millions of plant and animal species will go extinct."
In California, that means "housing, rail lines, bridges, ports, power plants, freeways and other structures are vulnerable to rising seas and tides."
"Between 8 and 10 billion USD of existing property in California is likely to be underwater by 2050, with an additional 6 billion to 10 billion at risk during high tide," the LAO study added.
Extreme heat is projected to cause nine deaths per 100,000 people each year, "roughly equivalent to the 2019 annual mortality rate from automobile accidents in California," the report noted.
Both the UN and LAO studies point to the disproportionate toll climate change takes on minorities and lower-income populations.
"Lower-income Californians, who live in communities at greater risk for heat and floods because of discriminatory housing practices, will be hit especially hard by climate change and have fewer resources to adapt," Calmatters said.
In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, 13,000 existing housing units and 104,000 job spaces "will no longer be usable" because of sea rise over the next 40 to 100 years, according to the report.
"We can limit global warming if we don't waste time," Monday's headline in The New York Times read.
"Fixing climate change is no longer a technological or scientific problem," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, told USA Today on Saturday - it's a political one.
"We can solve this problem, we're just choosing not to," he said, comparing the situation to a train speeding down a hill with dangerous curves ahead. "The engineer has perfectly functional brakes that work fine - he's just not choosing to apply them," USA Today reported. ■