San Diego Aims for Resilience To Face Climate Crisis

February 16, 2021 at 11:21 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:33 Speaker 1: 00:35 Speaker 2: 00:41 Speaker 1: 01:04 Speaker 2: 01:16 Speaker 1: 01:38 Speaker 2: 01:46 Speaker 1: 01:53 Speaker 2: 01:56 Speaker 1: 02:16 Speaker 2: 02:20 Speaker 1: 02:37 Speaker 2: 02:41 Speaker 1: 03:22 Speaker 2: 03:34 Speaker 1: 04:25 Speaker 2: 04:35 Speaker 1: 05:11 Speaker 2: 05:19 Speaker 1: 05:59 Speaker 2: 06:12 Speaker 1: 06:36 Speaker 2: 06:44 Speaker 1: 07:07 Speaker 2: 07:23 San Diego is ambitious. Climate action campaign is aimed at reducing and slowing down the causes of climate change. Now, the city is launching an effort to adapt to the present and future effects of a warming planet. Using information from recent studies on the local impacts of climate change. City officials have targeted four main areas of concern, sea level rise, flooding and drought, extreme heat and wildfires. Joining me is San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick and David. Welcome. Thanks for having me now, this Campaign is called climate resilient SD Wotsits overall That's overall goal is to have the city be in a position to adapt well to climate change so that it doesn't impact people's lives and the economy is as badly as it might, uh, without such an effort. So the main climate action plan was to reduce the effects of climate change. This is sort of a component of that, but it's separate it's. How can we adapt to climate change in a way that the city isn't as adversely affected as it could be? What about some of the projections that climate scientists are making about the impact in San Diego of those four main concerns of this project? For instance, what about C-level? Yeah. And sea level rise. Uh, the projections that the, that the city is using a show that I guess the level of the sea could increase 3.6 feet to 10.2 feet in the next century, which compared to the 19 hundreds last century, it was 0.71 feet. So it's really a huge, huge impact. And as a coastal city, a place like mission Bay will just be completely water at some point. They also project, uh, either big bouts of rain or longer periods of drought. Is that right? Exactly. Right. There'll be more intense rainstorms and then there'll be longer droughts and more extreme droughts. That's definitely a big issue. What about The projections on extreme heat? Yeah, there's supposed to be more periods of extreme heat and they're supposed to be more severe. And if you're looking for numbers, they say by the 2040s, the average daily high temperature could be five degrees Fahrenheit higher than it is now, which would turn San Diego. And, you know, it has the, one of the most mild appealing climates around and it would become, you know, not quite as mild and appealing, I guess some of those factors will affect our wildlife. Oh, for sure. Yeah. The, the, the drought will make the, uh, the ground that lights on fire dryer. Um, and then the greater heat will increase the likelihood of a wildfire. So it's all one giant unfortunate, uh, cycle where it all builds on itself. The city already taken some steps to prepare for the effects of climate change. They, they definitely have, um, they they've been doing other studies and they've, uh, they've made a lot, a lot of plans and obviously their fight wildfires have been a priority in the city since the seventies. So it's not like anything here is completely new, but the idea of putting it all together in one plan called climate resilient SD, and coming up with a full-blown comprehensive adaptation strategy is important because then the city is going to figure out how to prioritize what, what the efforts they're going to make. But the key is let's know what the challenges are and let's know which ones we face and let's prioritize them when we're looking at them all in one, you know, one big group and deciding which ones we're going to do first and which communities we're going to prioritize and what we're going to spend on what, And in fact, the city points to two, um, mitigating efforts that they've already taken, and that is developing the city's tree canopy and the pure water project. Isn't that right? Yes. Yes. The pure water project is recycling, uh, you know, treated sewage water, which makes San Diego more water independent, which as water becomes scarcer and scarcer as the climate warms is going to become steadily more important. Um, there's also a desalination plant and Carlsbad that you're familiar with. So yeah, those are, those are key issues that it be. The city has studied that they came up with different studies that show different levels of the city's tree canopy. She came to me is really important because it, uh, decreases those extreme heat events. When you're in a neighborhood with lots of trees overhanging, it doesn't get quite as warm. So that's, it makes a big difference. Uh, and one of the strategies I thought was kind of clever is that the city is going to study what neighborhoods are, maybe are low income and have less houses with air conditioning, and maybe try to focus on increasing the tree canopy in those neighborhoods. So the 20 years from now, when there's an extreme heat event, those neighborhoods won't be as adversely affected because we'll have a stronger tree canopy. And that's part of the equity factor that's in, that's being taken into consideration as San Diego moves forward on this climate resilient SD thing, right? It's great timing because equity has become a much bigger priority at city hall. And since the protest last fall, and they have a new office on race and equity that, uh, Councilwoman Monica Montgomery step is leading, uh, and it fits it dovetails well with this because different neighborhoods are going to be affected differently by climate change and the different neighborhoods don't have the resources to adapt well, the climate change you're in a wealthy home and you have a lot of money. You put in an air conditioning. If it gets too hot, some neighborhoods, the folks don't make enough money to really put in an air conditioning system or put in a pool and they don't have the easy access to get to the beach. So it does impact people differently. The equity element will take that into account In an unrelated effort toward equity among San Diego neighborhoods. Didn't the city council just announced an effort to pave dirt roads in low-income neighborhoods. That is correct. Yeah. They found that there's about 60 miles of dirt roads in alleys that are mostly South state, route 94, not all, but, but mostly it's certainly a district council district four and eight, uh, and the city had a law for liability reasons saying that they couldn't be held responsible for those dirt roads. A lot of them date back to the farming era and, uh, basically the, what the city council voted on last week was to say, no, we can be responsible for those. We do have the power to fix them. And we're going to put them in our big pile of capital improvement projects. We consider every year, like new libraries and new fire stations and paving roads all over. Whereas in the past they were separated and they weren't part of that because city wasn't allowed to deal with them Climate resilient SD program with adaptation to climate change as its goal signal, that the city is less optimistic about its climate action plan, being able to mitigate the effects of climate change. You know, that's an interesting perspective. I don't think they would say that. I think what they would say was that we are hopeful that our plan is going to make a difference, but we understand that, you know, this climate change has been a problem that's been brewing since the industrial revolution began. And since carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions began. And the idea that the city's climate action plan is going to solve it a hundred percent would be overly optimistic. Let's prepare and try to mitigate the impacts. Public is being asked to get involved in the climate resilient effort to create adaptation strategies. How can they get involved? Yeah, there's a survey. If they go to the city's website, uh, the city planning department website, they can go, uh, and, and fill out a survey. And the idea is the city wants to go into people's neighborhoods and get a feel for what's unique about your neighborhood that we as city officials maybe don't know that will help us come up with an adaptation strategy that we haven't thought of just because we're not familiar with the nooks and crannies of each individual neighborhood. Okay. Then I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick, David. Thanks. Thanks very much, Maureen. You can find a link to climate resilient SD on the KPBS website@kpbs.org. Mm.

By KPBS Public Media

Heat, flooding, drought, wildfires. San Diego, facing the four horsemen of the climate apocalypse, has realized its own climate action plan won't be enough, so the city is looking for ways to be resilient, to mitigate the most dire effects of climate change in our future.