Like most large states with populations to match their expanse, California in the early 2000s faces multiple environmental and energy challenges. Some of the major environmental concerns include the provision of healthful drinking water, safeguarding air quality, combating global climate change, and attending to the threatened marine ecosystem. Equally daunting is the task of supplying affordable clean energy to a state whose population is slated to reach nearly 50 million by 2025.
To better provide safe drinking water, amid the contaminants from fertilizers and other industrial-based chemical agents seeping into waterways and aquifers (see Chapter 13), the state government established the Water Quality Monitoring Council in 2007. The council works with the California Environmental Protection Agency and other designated state offices to monitor, assess, and report to the public - via a website - its water-quality findings. In the non-governmental civic sector, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a citizens’ advocacy group led by scientists and lawyers, reported in 2002 that overall the quality of drinking water in Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco was “mediocre yet acceptable.”
Air quality continues to vex the state’s largest cities, particularly those in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 25 percent of Los Angeles County’s air pollution originates in China and is carried across the ocean by transpacific air flows. The remaining bulk of unhealthful air in the Southland comes from nearby sources: diesel emissions from ships and trucks, refineries, manufacturing plants, and especially automobile emissions that raise ozone levels when interacting with nitrogen oxides and sunlight. The resulting smog is connected to respiratory ailments among Angelinos. In Los Angeles, according to the American Lung Association’s 2011 State of the Air Report, an estimated 1 million adults and 300,000 children had asthma, “outranking 23 other congested cities.” In response to a public outcry about diesel emissions at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, harbor officials adopted federal clean truck emission standards. Accordingly, beginning January 1, 2012, all trucks not meeting these standards are banned from the port. Some trucks hauling cargoes to and from that port are now using clean liquefied natural gas. Port authorities expect to see an 80 percent reduction in harmful truck emissions. “The trucks here at the port now meet the strictest clean air and safety standards of any major port in the world,” said Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa in mid-January.
Climate warming, according to the California Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, will continue taking its toll on the state’s water-dependent and climate-sensitive agricultural economy, and has other major impacts as well. For example, among other authorities, including the National Research Council, Dr. Peter Roopnarine, Curator of Geology and Paleontology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, attributes sea-rise to global warming. One result of this would be the imperiling of the low-lying airports in San Francisco and Oakland. Moreover, in 2010 the California State Lands Commission issued a report saying that most of the state’s 40 ports and shipping hubs were not prepared for the expected 16-inch rise by 2050 in sea levels that would
Prove damaging to ground-level facilities and toxic storage sites at the San Pedro Bay harbor complex while slowing the handling of cargoes. Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times (December 10, 2009) as warning: “We need to start planning for these things now, so that we’re not caught having to do a lot of remedial repair work 15 years to 20 years in the future.” In response to this and other scientific reports, many of the state’s coastal cities are preparing for an anticipated sea rise. Newport Beach, a conservative enclave in Orange County that recently had a city council member professing disbelief in global warming, commissioned a study in 2008 that warned of impending sea-rise damage to the city’s high-end real estate. That city is reportedly taking steps to make sure that existing sea walls are sufficiently high. Global warming has U. S. Geological Survey scientists and others concerned about how the state’s majestic redwood groves will hold up under climate change. Because passenger vehicles and light duty trucks produce nearly a third of the emissions that cause climate change, the state legislature passed the Clean Cars Law in 2002 requiring that all new automobiles sold in California had to cut greenhouse gas vapors by 30 percent by 2016. This was the first statute of its kind in the nation; more than a dozen other states have since passed similar laws.
California’s marine ecology and resources, which are vitally important to the state’s citizenry, are closely linked to climate change and a number of other factors as well. Since oceans absorb most of the greenhouse gases generated on land, California’s coastal waters register the impacts of the resulting warming. According to the California Academy of Sciences, 70 percent of the world’s reefs may disappear by 2020 due to global warming, which causes acidification of the corals and ocean pollution. As elsewhere, California’s reefs furnish nutrient-rich marine life habitats unless they are ravaged by acidification and the chemical and bacterial contaminants resulting from urban runoff emptying into the Pacific. Mercury, a toxic element in urban runoff, continues to be found in large fish, such as tuna, caught along the state’s coast. Runoff, especially in storm water, often includes plastics as well. In 2009 researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego found that 9.2 percent of the fish caught in the middle depths of the northern Pacific Ocean are ingesting plastic, at the rate of 24,000 tons of the substance each year. Scientists caught a sample of these fish in the so-called Pacific Garbage Patch, a slow-moving gyre of debris roughly the size of Texas located 1,000 miles off California’s coast. Overfishing, in addition to these other perils, compounds the problem of rescuing California’s Pacific waters before the ecological damage becomes irreversible.
Government agencies, universities, citizen groups, and some business leaders are working to nurse the state’s marine environment back to health. Since 1985 Santa Monica’s Heal the Bay citizen’s organization has succeeded in gaining enforcement of the 1972 federal Clean Water Act in order to upgrade the treatment of effluent at the Hyperion Sewage Wastewater Treatment Plant. In the early 2000s surfers in the vicinity of the Bay have reported fewer infections, and marine habitats near the Hyperion outfall have become healthier. The California Coastal Commission (see Chapter 13), the Department of Fish and Game, commercial and recreational anglers, and civic-sector ocean advocate groups have worked together since passage of the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999 to map and establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in California’s coastal waters. An MPA is an ocean
Area where human activity, such as fishing, is more restricted than in surrounding waters. The Act was passed to protect the state’s marine life and ecosystems and replenish diminishing fish stocks, all through the use of scientific management practices. In Laguna Beach the Bluebelt Coalition, a civic-sector advocate group, worked successfully to secure the city council’s approval of MPA safeguards for the municipality’s entire coastline. After lobbying the state’s Department of Fish and Game for MPA recognition, the coalition and city council had to settle for a slightly smaller stretch of coastline protection, which nevertheless marked a major step toward replenishing depleted fish stocks.
To better inform the public on these and related ocean matters, the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at the University of California, Irvine held a major conference on “Enhancing the Future of the California Coast,” in early March 2011. In addition to presentations by marine biologists and leaders of citizens’ groups, Greg MacGillivray, president of MacGillivray Freeman Films in Laguna Beach, spoke about the urgency of rescuing the Earth’s ocean environment. He informed attendees about a “One World One Ocean” nonprofit, global initiative that he and his family had recently launched with their money and that of other donors. The goals of the initiative are, first and foremost, to educate people about the declining health of the oceans, and second, to inspire action on three goals: to extend marine protected areas or sanctuaries to 10 percent of the area covered by the world’s oceans by 2020; to change the way people eat sea-life so that consumption habits foster sustainable fishing practices; and to encourage people to reduce their usage of singleuse disposable plastic. The MacGillivrays plan to make four to six 3D IMAX films, an eight-part television series, a 3D theatrical documentary, and a robust social media platform to show viewers the beauty and importance of the oceans and to inspire public support for their marine recovery campaign.
Energy challenges in the early 2000s will continue to drive research in new technologies for harnessing the power of the sun, wind, and sea algae, as already mentioned. Additionally, some entrepreneurs, like Mark Holmes and David New who partner in heading Green Wave Energy Corporation of Newport Beach, are looking into utilizing the power of Pacific breakers. The March 11, 2011, meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant raised public fears in California and around the world about the safety of this energy source. In addition to the search for power sources other than those based on fossil fuels and atoms, utility companies are employing technologies to help ratepayers conserve on energy use. For example, in 2011 San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG and E) installed smart meters, which relay energy-usage figures to customers via the Internet, in homes and businesses throughout the region it serves. A pilot study that SDG and E ran earlier showed that when ratepayers could privately and conveniently track their energy usage during times of high demand, electricity use and bills declined 14 percent.
World History
