[rad-green] Unbreathable air and power outages are driving a Californian exodus

*https://www.salon.com/2019/11/03/unbreathable-air-and-power-outages-are-driving-a-californian-exodus/
<https://www.salon.com/2019/11/03/unbreathable-air-and-power-outages-are-driving-a-californian-exodus/>*

*SALON          NOVEMBER 4, 2019*

[image: image.png]
*A California Street cable car operator and passenger wear breathing masks
to protect against smoke from wildfires Monday, Oct. 28, 2019, in San
Francisco. A wildfire that has been burning in Northern California's wine
country since last week grew overnight as nearly 200,000 people remain
under evacuation orders. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)*Unbreathable air and power
outages are driving a Californian exodusOnce renowned for its high quality
of life, compounding miseries have changed the calculus of Cali living*By
Nicole Karlis*

It used to be that the month of October was one of the most pleasant times
to live in California. While much of the country descends into frosty
temperatures, California enjoys an extended summer that extends well into
October. Yes, there have always been wildfires in the autumn in California,
but they were less frequent, less intense.

Until the last few years, that is. In 2017
<https://www.salon.com/2017/10/18/californias-wildfires-officially-worst-in-state-history_partner/>
 and 2018
<https://www.salon.com/2019/07/19/californias-fires-are-getting-worse_partner/>
alike,
front-page photos of San Franciscans donning respirators as they walked
through a bleak, ash-choked Victorian city dotted the pages of
international and national outlets.

This October was a breaking point for many Californians, as the quality of
life disasters compounded: Mandated power outages. Intense wildfires
burning homes and businesses. Smoke waves that followed, making the air
unbreathable. For many, the California Dream has turned into a nightmare.

There have been plenty of think pieces this week asking if California is
unlivable
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/can-california-save-itself/601135/>
now.
Many writers and journalists who live in California (myself included) are
wondering if these disasters — coupled with the housing crisis and cost of
living — constitute a tipping point.

“California, as it’s currently designed, will not survive the coming
climate,” former Salon writer Farhad Manjoo wrote for The New York Times.
“Either we alter how we live here, or many of us won’t live here anymore.”

Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org <https://t.co/PvZxwxYAYF?amp=1>,
noted in The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/29/has-the-climate-crisis-made-california-too-dangerous-to-live-in>
that
“in the last decade, [California] has endured the deepest droughts ever
measured, dry spells so intense that more than a hundred million trees
died.”

The commentary is far from hyperbole. In the Bay Area, it is the third
October in a row in which people had to pull their masks to leave the
house; symbolically a couple who got married
<https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/>
in
Wine Country were photographed with their masks on, a photo that went
viral. Smoke in October is the new normal. Researchers believe these smoke
waves
<https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/smoke-waves-will-affect-millions/>
“are
likely to be longer, more intense, and more frequent under climate change,
which raises health, ecological, and economic concerns.” The same
prediction goes for wildfires. Research
<https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094005> shows
wildfires have intensified over the last 50 years, and in the past decade
the state has seen some of the largest and most destructive fires to date.
Warmer days have increased
<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001210> by
2.5 degrees since the early 1970s, too. "The clearest link between
California wildfire and anthropogenic climate change thus far has been via
warming-driven increases in atmospheric aridity, which works to dry fuels
and promote summer forest fire," a report published in Earth Future stated
<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001210>.

So, yes, these past three falls might be the new normal. And that is why
many people are considering leaving the state.

Stacey Hagen, a consultant living in Novato, California, was one of the
over half a million PG&E customers who had her power shut off this month,
the result of years of neglect from a supposedly regulated power monopoly
that consistently chose enriching itself over investing in maintenance.
Even though Hagen was without electricity for 48 hours, she considers
herself “lucky.” "Some in this area had it out for five days,” she told
Salon.

“We thought we prepared — we got nonperishable food, bottled water,
flashlights, but we weren’t prepared for it to be out for the full 48
hours,” she said. “We are not looking into buying a generator.”

Hagen moved to California for college in 1996, and has lived here ever
since. She has lived in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Marin. While
California hasn’t been perfect, she said she has tolerated parts that many
do — like the higher cost of living — because of California's notorious
quality of life. “There is a lot to do in the Bay Area, and in San
Francisco, you can go to Tahoe, you’re never bored, you’re close to
culture, art, and music which is great,” she said. “I’ve loved California
ever since I came here and I never wanted to leave.”

Yet the power outages and the reality that this might be the new normal has
made her think twice about a future in California.

Gwyneth Stokes Riebl left the Bay Area last winter before Christmas partly
because of intensifying climate events, too. She grew up in Boston, but
went to college in Los Angeles. After college, she got a job in Zurich. In
2017, her husband got a job in the Bay Area. Riebl and her family moved to
Danville, and were affected by the smoke during intense North Bay Fires.

“I had a real fear that if there was a fire that we were just right on the
edge," Riebl told Salon. "We could be the first ones to evacuate, and when
it is so smoky there is no way of knowing there is a fire.”

Riebl said after living in Switzerland, she was struck by the cultural
differences when it comes to adapting to climate change. California’s green
efforts are progressive by American standards, but Switzerland's are far
more aggressive.
<https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/home/topics/climate/info-specialists/climate-policy.html>There
were other reasons why Riebl and her family moved back to Switzerland. With
two kids, school safety was an issue, too.

Climate change, the cost of living, and the price of land is affecting more
rural Californians, too. Rose Marie Burroughs of California Cloverleaf
Farms told Salon her family expanded their dairy farm and decided to run
their beef cattle farm in Oregon partly due to California’s warming
climate, but also because of rising land prices, and the cost to maintain
their farms.

“California is becoming more difficult for farmers and the future doesn’t
look very bright for the farming industry," Burroughs told Salon. "I would
say that the discussion around water is going to make it more difficult to
actually stay in California,” she said, adding that the wildfires and smoke
waves don’t help either. “If you have a bad fire, and have ash that is
carried by the wind you can pretty much wipe out a civilization because you
can ruin the crops, and the ability for animals to breathe and ruin the
plants ability to grow if the air is grey."

Some might argue that it is impossible to escape climate change as long as
you live on Earth. As we previously reported,
<https://www.salon.com/2019/10/30/these-are-the-cities-that-will-drown-first-as-the-seas-rise/>
estimates
on cities threatened around the world by flooding due to sea levels rising
are worse than previously thought — and the consequence might be
irreversible.

"The level rise commitment is considerably greater than the surface warming
component because ocean thermal explanation continues for centuries as
surface heating continues to penetrate deeper into the ocean, and ice sheet
collapse is a potential tipping point phenomenon, i.e. it is irreversible
once it commences," Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of Atmospheric
Science and Meteorology, told Salon via email.

"And we might be quite close to critical tipping point responses in the
west Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland ice sheet," he added. "This is one
of the reasons it is so important to try to stabilize warming below 2.7°
[Fahrenheit] relative to the pre-industrial."

Despite the changing climate and intensifying wildfires, there are those
who are committed to staying.

Laura Patch, a California resident who works for the Sierra Club, said her
"big reason for staying [in California] is that our changing climate
affects everywhere and everyone; there's not a place you can move to that
won't have its own issues."

"I'd rather live in a state that is proactively trying to prevent it from
getting worse," Patch said.

*Nicole Karlis is a news writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech
and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis
<http://www.twitter.com/nicolekarlis>.*

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