I'll be performing my comic monologue Citizen Josh at Berkeley's Live Oak Theater next Saturday, Oct. 20, to benefit Jovanka Beckles's campaign for the California Assembly, District 15. Tix & info here. Jovanka, a two-term City Council member in Richmond, Calif., is in the Richmond Progressive Alliance, an impressive coalition that has succeeded at the ballot box despite the millions of dollars that the Chevron Corporation has spent to defeat them. A children's mental-health professional and an immigrant (from Panama), she brings a community organizer's skills and mentality to her political work. Plus, Sara and I just saw Jovanka and her wife in Trader Joe's yesterday. (I realize that this last point may not be super-persuasive, but it was pretty cool to run into them there.) 

People's Park is a landmark. The university doesn't mention it, but it became a city landmark in 1984 "for its historic and cultural importance to the City of Berkeley." The landmark designation is not necessarily protective, but it should be instructive to a community being carefully trained to ignore its own significant moments in history. The chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission behind the landmarking was a Republican who owned a local car repair shop, named Laurie Bright. 

Creative autonomy was part of southside culture. Even the City of Berkeley' s official Southside Plan acknowledges this, noting the revolt over increasing traffic which "led to the placement of street barriers to protect adjoining neighborhoods from the Southside and its traffic" and the response to the "redesigned Telegraph Avenue’s streetscape, creating wider sidewalks" which "soon filled with street artists. These independent artisans represent a creative autonomy that is a defining element of the Southside’s commercial district today."[1] 

The university has nine other sites on which to build housing, including a ten acre site at Smyth-Fernwald just further up Dwight Way, but only one, People's Park, that comes with a legal obligation to host any applications for amplified monthly concerts and events. A court decision requires this use by court order in a case represented by civil rights attorney Osha Neumann, who argued in 1987 that "a park is a 'quintessential public forum' for assembling together and the expression of opinion, where First Amendment rights have their broadest extension." 

The block now know as People's Park was acquired by a fraudulent use of eminent domain. The public record says it all. University officials, according to their meeting minutes, were terrified of what was, according to W. J. Rorabaugh in his book Berkeley at War, Telegraph in 1964, an area near the campus that "was cosmopolitan, artistically aware, politically diverse, and open to new ideas.” But after its acquisition the system-wide regents evaluated the university plans, which alternated between sports courts, office space, and (ironically) housing, and didn't vote UC Berkeley any funds to develop the bulldozed block. It was not a priority, according to the regents' inaction, a crucial element in the use of eminent domain. Under Cal Code Civ Proc § 1245.220, eminent domain requires that government agency "must adopt a formal resolution, also known as resolution of necessity to acquire the property before commencing an eminent domain proceeding in court[i]" which "must find (1) that the project for which the property is to be acquired is necessary; (2) that the property is necessary for the public project; (3) that the project is located in such a manner as to offer the greatest public benefit with the least private detriment." The muddy, rebar-filled lot left behind for years after bulldozing the community housing was an insult to southside's community. The land sat empty, and one day in spring community members, including Michael Delacour, built a park. 

People's Park has cost lives - and changed lives. It built at least one political career along the way as well; Ronald Reagan as the Governor of California used the anti-war movement as a contrast platform for his national ambitions. But it cost James Rector his life, Alan Blanchard his sight, and played a role in more deaths over the years if you're willing to count Rosebud DeNovo, who broke into the Chancellor's mansion as a protest and was shot in the back in 1992. For some of us it will always be the backdrop against which former Ashkenaz owner David Nadel lost his life to a gun. But for many people the park is the first place they ever built something together with others and watched a project move from an idea to fruition, whether it was a shingled freebox, a garden trellis, or a mural. "User development" remains the park's guiding principle, as much as the university attempts to obscure the fact. 

All of our parks, not just People's Park, have evidence of homelessness and poverty. And we don't tear down our overpasses when a tent shows up underneath it. We can respect our parks and landmarks and demand that the university do its part to house its students, something the university has not only historically neglected, it is something the university of California was originally forbidden by law to do: 

“Dormitories were suspected by midnineteenth-century educators and moralists of being incubators of student disorder.” (Stadtman, 1967: 157) 

This neglect can be easily addressed without abusing the surrounding city, or its parks and treasured cultural wealth. 

As a coalition of community groups who work with people with disabilities, seniors, and homeless people, we strongly oppose implementation of SB 1045 in San Francisco. We agree that we have a crisis of homeless people living and dying on our streets. But an expansion of involuntary conservatorship is the wrong approach and will do nothing to address the underlying drivers of psychiatric disabilities, substance abuse, and homelessness.  

Conservatorship is a serious matter. It takes away every single one of a person’s civil liberties-- their ability to make decisions about what happens to their body, their pet, where they live, what they eat, how they spend their time and their money. Our government should not ignore the long and shameful history of institutionalization, involuntary sterilization, and other forced treatment of people with disabilities. As Susan Mizner, Disability Rights Program Director of the National ACLU stated, “Conservatorship is the biggest deprivation of civil rights aside from the death penalty.” 

Current law under the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act was carefully constructed to balance safety and personal liberties, and centers on whether the individual is harmful to themselves or others, or cannot care for themselves due to their mental illness. This new law adds addiction to mental illness, and focuses instead on whether someone has been detained more than 8 times. It therefore moves the reason for the conservatorship away from medical and safety necessity to police intervention. It is police who 5150 individuals, and this law would give them great incentive to repeatedly detain people who are generating complaints, or when political pressure is applied. A punitive approach to mental health is both inhumane and ineffective. 

SB 1045 has become a political strategy to address homeless people with mental health disabilities. This strategy relies on the false narrative that people choose not to get services, when in reality services are not available. There are 1,060 individuals on the single adult Shelter Reservation Waitlist and 8,000 households on the waitlist for public housing. When this data was last tracked, there were 500 people waiting to get methadone and substance abuse residential treatment.  

San Francisco’s performance audit of Behavioral Health Services (April 2018) reads: “Clients accessing psychiatric emergency services often have dual mental health and substance use disorders and experience homelessness. Linking these clients to services on discharge is important, because without service linkage, these clients are at risk of not only decompensating mentally, but of also resorting to alcohol and substance abuse after being discharged.” And yet, of people discharged from psychiatric emergency services in 2017, nearly 40% were not offered any services. The conservatorship process is failing us now, because there are not adequate services or placements for the individual, and this new law does not change that. It just makes it easier to churn people through the system.  

Implementation would be a much greater challenge than has been recognized by government leaders. Conservatorship is a serious commitment and responsibility, making government liable for providing extensive care for conservatees -- with the same level of resources that is currently not adequate to meet the needs of the community. Where is the housing going to come from when someone is conserved from the street? Where are the services coming from? Who will not get that housing or services because the conserved person does?  

Implementation of SB 1045 encourages police action and criminalization of people who are homeless and mentally ill. To be eligible, people will need to be detained through a 5150 action eight times, which gives police an incentive to use 5150 on people with mental illness and substance abuse. In San Francisco, almost 60% of people shot and killed by police have mental health disabilities. In addition, being detained and then conserved could turn into a homeless person’s only option for accessing housing and services. 

Before we take away civil liberties--in a city that prides itself on being a pioneer on civil rights--San Francisco needs to provide housing and voluntary mental health and substance abuse services. Proposition C, on November’s ballot, will provide much needed housing and services. Real solutions are available before we turn to involuntary conservatorship. 

Senior and Disability Action 

Mental Health Association of San Francisco 

Disability Rights Program, ACLU 

Coalition on Homelessness 

Independent Living Resource Center SF 

Disability Rights California 

SURJ SF 

No New Jail Coalition 

LAGAI Queer Insurrection 

Gay Shame 

Pacifica Social Justice 

For more information, please contact Jessica Lehman at Senior and Disability Action: 415-546-1333 (w), 510-427-7535 (c)

The dire warnings that came this week from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report should be a wake-up call to everyone everywhere who are betting on being able to continue doing what they’ve always been doing, in the future, and expecting the same results. The IPCC’s message that “We can no longer continue to do business as usual” also means that no human endeavor is more impacted than how we grow.

Ironically, in the face of this stark and unarguable reality, there is a growing chorus of climate deniers, hell bent on exacerbating the problem.

I’m referring in particular to politicians like California State Senator Scott Weiner and the cadre of academics, planners, professional organizations, nonprofits, Bay Area corporate interests and their dedicated “shock troops,” the YIMBYs, all of whom promote hyper-growth as the solution to housing affordability and environmental sustainability. Like the far right, in order to rationalize their purely political agenda, they go beyond being uber-growth advocates to being outright climate change deniers in their own fashion.

These collaborators continue to manipulate data to justify environmentally destructive uber-urbanism in the name of saving the planet. But the shrill, self-obsessed YIMBYs don’t even pretend to care about the planet. In fact, they’re outspokenly anti-environmental and against regulations that protect it. They would do away with the California Environmental Quality Act completely, if they had the chance, replacing it with their “progressive” version of “trickle down” environmentalism fueled by willful ignorance of environmental science.

The YIMBY approach seems to be ‘the environment will have to wait until I own a nice house in my preferred neighborhood near my favorite barista.’

The great lie of the progressive left is that unchecked growth and particularly urban growth is good for the environment, even though there’s no contemporary science (or common sense for that matter) to back up that claim. For someone like me, who spent my formative adult years in the 60s and 70s, how the left sold out and became the other anti-environment party remains baffling. 

To state the obvious and at the risk of bursting some bubbles, growth, a consumption-addicted economic system and our antiquated methods of building construction – for affordable housing or anything else -- are not in any way, shape or form good for the planet. Not even close, particularly because of the way we presently design and construct 95% of our buildings. 

Construction of our buildings and their supporting infrastructure is the most resource intensive thing we do on the planet. Yet by and large, how we build remains stuck in past centuries, with manual labor working in the field, framing structures girder by girder and board by board, laying bricks one at a time, and shingling roofs by hand, albeit with the assistance of hand power tools. 

Growth = Development = Climate Change 

In the past, I’ve written extensively about the great myth about urbanism’s ability to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). The reaction I always get from progressives is as if I’ve committed some unpardonable sin to even suggest this. For a lengthy analysis of this subject, please see The Best Laid Plans: Our Affordable Housing Challenges in Marin, and my Marin Post piece, Plan Bay Area’s High Density, Multifamily, Transit-Oriented Development Won’t Reduce Greenhouse Gases.  

For now, however, suffice it to say, there is a great deal of talk these days about how things should be sustainable, but very little acknowledgment about how things actually are. 

According to a report by the US Green Building Council in 2016 

Buildings Account for 39% of CO2 emissions in the United States. The commercial and residential building sector accounts for 39% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States per year, more than any other sector. U.S. buildings alone are responsible for more CO2 emissions annually than those of any other country except China. Most of these emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels to provide heating, cooling and lighting, and to power appliances and electrical equipment. [Emphasis Added] 

They go on to explain: 

The most significant factor contributing to CO2 emissions from buildings is their use of electricity: 

• Commercial and residential buildings are tremendous users of electricity, accounting for more than 70% of electricity use in the United States.
• The building sector consumed 40 quadrillion Btus of energy in 2005 at a cost of over $300 billion.

The energy impact of buildings is likely to be even greater when taking into account other energy use attributable to buildings. For example, the energy embodied in a single building’s envelope equals 8-10 times the annual energy used to heat and cool the building. [Emphasis Added] 

This is referring to what is called the “energy externalities” of building: the greenhouse gases and environmental impacts of the mining, transportation, fabrication and installation of the materials and components that go into it. Or as Paul Hawkin put it, 

Everyone is for ‘sustainable solutions.’ But those solutions need to actually be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable after considering their true costs of “natural capital” and their external affects (supply chain energy usage, third world environmental degradation, etc.)[1] 

To emphasize the extent of the impact of our built environment, the Building Council notes: 

Buildings have a lifespan of 50-100 years during which they continually consume energy and produce CO2 emissions. every year [Emphasis Added] 

Even the best performing LEED Platinum designed buildings, which are far and few between, only reduce energy and water consumption by about a third, nowhere near enough to make a difference. 

These indisputable facts are constantly countered with another powerful, progressive myth about transportation, and in particular, the automobile: claiming that automobiles are the world’s greatest evil and the major polluter. This is then used as justification for urbanism and high-density development and increasingly draconian taxation, legislation and planning to get people to stop using cars. Yet all things considered, the number one GHG emitter remains our built environment, particularly in urban areas in California. Agriculture comes in second and all transportation a distant third. 

In a comprehensive study, Greenhouse Gas Emissions along the Urban-Rural Gradient, by Clinton J. Andrews, published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Vol. 51, Issue 6, 2008, the author questions the fundamental argument urbanists make for why urbanism is better than suburban living, when they argue that the data says that “Buildings in urban areas contribute more emissions than personal transportation” -- thus outweighing any other advantages that might exist. 

Sifting through the IPCC Report 

While the IPCC Report doesn’t claim to be a planning document, per se, it references various “scenarios” and “pathways” to carbon neutrality that are instructive for planning and development. 

For example, in Chapter 2, Executive Summary, page 2-4, it emphasizes the importance of limiting “growing resource-intensive consumption,” and “energy-demand reductions, decarbonisation of electricity and other fuels, electrification of energy end use” and other methods. On page 2-5 it goes on to note that “Investments in low-carbon energy technologies and energy efficiency would need to approximately double in the next 20 years” to avoid catastrophic consequences. 

This is an extraordinary fast-tracked requirement. In terms of how we build, it’s basically saying that unless we immediately change our construction methods - the materials we use and how we design our buildings (the structures, finishes, mechanical systems, appliances, etc.) - we are up a creek. 

So, how can the build-baby-build crowd possibly condone their push for more and more 20^th century urbanism and still claim to be “progressive” and caring about social justice and equity at the same time? What good is high density housing if climate change places it under water or in the path of increasingly menacing weather? 

The young, tech honchos who are pouring millions into the hyper-urbanism effort, are of course confident that their ilk will invent some brilliant new technology to sequester CO2 in the air, to avert climate disaster. But, even the IPCC Report, as hopeful and optimistic as it tries to be, is deeply skeptical of tech’s ability to save the day. Several times they note that “CDR [carbon dioxide removal technology] deployed at scale is unproven and reliance on such technology is a major risk in the ability to limit warming.” 

Yet, as incredibly thorough as the IPCC Report is and as impressive as its overall global scientific analysis is, it continues to make assumptions about categorical contributions to GHGs that fail to account for the incredible technological advances in transportation that we are seeing almost daily. 

Ironies abound 

Academic planners and YIMBYs are particularly fond of vilifying the automobile and the “rich.” In fact, one could argue that the entire philosophy of current planning doctrine is built on the single premise that the automobile is an evil invention. But, their zeal has blinded them to the fact that their theory is on shaky ground. According to the fashionable mantra, it is selfish, rich, suburban commuters (car owners) who are the true environmental evildoers. 

Meanwhile, these same academics and YIMBY groups are funded by and carrying water for the deepest pockets and the most privileged among us: major private and corporate foundations, big business organizations, tech millionaires and quasi-governmental groups such as the Bay Area Council and CASA – many of whose leaders drive really nice cars and live in really large homes in places like Palo Alto, Cupertino and San Francisco. 

While urbanists are happy to rail against the suburbs, evil rich people and the automobile, when it suits their legislative purposes and their financial interests, companies like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Toyota and Honda, which are run by some of those very rich people, and the entire automotive industry for that matter, recognize that the only thing wrong with cars is that they pollute and so they’ve have been spending billions to bring us electric, hydrogen and hybrid cars and trucks at increasingly attractive prices and improve their supply chain impacts as well. 

So, I wonder, what will all the “transit oriented development” planners do with the egg on their faces, when the tipping point is reached and the automobile has transformed itself into a carbon neutral machine? They’ll need to find another villain. I would like to suggest they turn their attention to the tech companies who fund them. They’d be a good candidate, because automotive engineering is the most rapidly “greening” technology on the planet, while gadget-happy tech companies aren’t doing a tenth as well in reducing the environmental lifecycle impacts of their products. 

Growth is just growth and there’s nothing “smart” about it 

The pro-growth crowd and the unelected bureaucrats and the tech moguls who fund their efforts are desperately clinging to politically correct but unscientific theories about high density development being good for the environment and scapegoating everyone who disagrees with them. It’s not just a losing strategy in the long run, but it will make matters much worse in the short run, because it is siphoning off billions of dollars that will be desperately needed soon, to tackle the real work we need to do to slow down climate change. 

It’s time for them to face facts: the system that has been in place during the modern era -- where there has always been some other place out there somewhere over the horizon to escape the consequences of growth -- just ain’t working anymore. 

While there is no way to stop growth, the symptoms of the societal and ecological limits we seem to be coming up against should be fair warning. We need to ask ourselves, how much CO2 and methane and other greenhouse gases will prove to be too much for life in its present form, to bear? How many chemicals and toxins can we add to our ecosystem and food web (now at a rate now of hundreds per year) before it’s fatal to keystone species, upon which all other life depends? How degraded can our oceans and rain forests become before the world’s “lungs” collapse? 

History has shown that the behavior of ecosystems is a lot like the stock market. Everything seems to be going along without a hitch one day then everything is collapsing the next. But unlike the stock market, the planet has no Federal Reserve to bail it out. 

So, why is it still business as usual for the pro-growth advocates? Is the world just filled with people obsessed with getting their slice of the pie and living a life of self-indulgence, surrounded by more and more “stuff,” like they’re taught by advertising, so for them nothing else matters? Or is everyone so stressed out just trying to make ends meet that they have no time to deal with anything else? Or is it that this “ocean liner” that is our society is just too big to turn around in time? 

I have no idea, but it’s not just what’s going on in Washington DC these days, that seems to be totally out of whack. 

What to do? 

I would argue that all of the evidence and circumstances and the critical timeline presented in the IPCC Report leaves us with only one realistic choice. We need to immediately shift gears and slow growth down as much as we possibly can, until we can retool our approach and redefine our goals and wait for building technology innovation and a newly trained workforce to catch up. And, all this must be accompanied by massive public investment in education, social welfare and innovation. 

We need to soberly recognize and accept what is working and what is not, environmentally, without political or ideological prejudice. 

The IPCC Report stresses this need. It spends considerable time suggesting that retrofitting, remodeling, reprioritizing and otherwise reusing what we already have in place, needs to play a major role in our “growth” and planning initiatives. 

It is generally acknowledged today, scientifically, that a watt of energy saved is less impactful than a watt of energy generated[2], and that the greenest buildings are the ones already standing. All this would suggest that instead of allocating hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding to build more and more of what we already have, our future is about investing those precious funds in a massive renovation, retrofit, adaptive reuse and rehabilitation of our existing built environment and its supporting infrastructure. 

Many will groan at the thought, but if we have any chance of avoiding the kinds of environmental catastrophes the IPCC foresees, we’re going to have to temporarily accept and embrace slower growth and lower investment returns in order to ensure social, environmental and economic stability and more durable and reliable returns on capital in the future. 

A nationwide re-education of our workforce is an essential part of this to get ahead of the inevitable impacts of automation, robotics, computerization and the jobs obsolescence that will result from the deconstruction of retail, office work, middle management, and just about every type of job and profession that presently exists. In a way, we are like a society of buggy whip makers at the dawn of the age of automobiles. The handwriting is on the wall, except that now there’s a double urgency to act, because the environmental wolf is at the door. 

The IPCC Report talks about how basic things like heating and cooling design, efficient equipment, lighting and appliances, thermal performance and reducing the “embodied energy” in buildings and integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) can dramatically reduce emissions and slow climate change. This is equally true of infrastructure, utilities and services, which not only need upgrading but re-imagining. 

Achieving a sustainable future and planning for change also includes how we distribute power and water and collect and process waste. Throughout history the need to share and efficiently distribute resources from a central location (e.g. water from a river or natural spring) has been a given. This is so ingrained in our thinking that we accept it without questioning its long-term sustainability challenges. But, by 21st century standards, centralized utility systems are incredibly wasteful and inefficient. 

Significant losses occur as electrical power moves out through our vast centralized power grids. A large percentage of our drinking water is lost due to leakage and evaporation as it moves through underground pipes and aqueducts. And in many U.S. metropolitan areas, 50 percent of the effluent that goes into sewer lines never reaches the treatment plant because it leaches out into the ground through old pipes. 

When it comes to really addressing our environmental challenges, all this becomes very important to consider, because efficient use of resources is fundamental to any environmentally or economically sustainable solution. So we have to ask ourselves, is there a better way? 

Advances in energy-conservation and alternative energy sources are about to tip the balance of global energy production and distribution from the top to the bottom: what is called “at the source” co-generation. Feeding power hundreds of miles in one direction out to users on the grid, from central power plants (i.e. hydroelectric plants, nuclear reactors, coal fired generators, and even solar farms.) is technologically obsolete. “Smart Grids” can distribute power the way the Internet distributes information and dramatically alter the “user / producer” relationship. 

Interactive, self-monitoring electrical grids change a “distribution” network into a “sharing” network where everyone becomes both a user and a producer. New thin-film photovoltaics can produce solar energy on any surface (even window glass), and wind is now the fastest growing clean energy source in the world. More options will be here sooner than people think, but only if we encourage it financially. 

The repercussions of this on growth and planning will be profound 

Once personal transportation options (cars and other personal vehicles) no longer pollute or rely on fossil fuels, and more at-the-source utility solutions are introduced (electrical co-generation, waste treatment, rainwater and gray water capture and recycling, etc.) today’s "urban" versus "suburban" arguments will fall apart. In fact, lower density suburban development already has significant environmental advantages over high-density urban development. 

A typical suburban home on a small lot can support a highly productive vegetable garden fed by automated drip irrigation. Food waste can be composted on site reducing trash hauling and soils degradation. Hybrid cars, energy saving appliances, passive solar design, proper insulation and solar panels can all be retrofitted in place, to the point that such a home can essentially be off the grid. It is simply impossible for this kind of conversion to take place in a thirty story, high-density apartment building on a typical city block. The vast majority of urban buildings are doomed to remain environmental polluters for decades to come. 

While lasting climate change supporting strategies need to be addressed at the highest levels of government, through supportive legislation[3], the incremental differences will be made in the trenches at the local level. On the national level, our climate change problems are primarily a national policy failure which is expressed through dysfunctional tax[4], subsidy and funding mechanisms, and our federal government has never had a national energy policy and still refuses to cooperate with every other industrialized nation in the world on climate change treaties. 

So, all this has to change for us to accomplish our transition back from the slow growth that we desperately need to adopt right now, to the more normal growth levels we’ll be able to enjoy once we’ve retrofitted and retooled our industries, businesses and our workforce. But, this effort has to begin immediately before too much of our planet’s regenerative capabilities, which are vital to the continued health of our society, are lost. 

[2] Amory Lovins 

[3] E.g., Providing federal tax credits and funding and guidelines for the retrofitting of our built environment, or phasing out internal combustion engines using oil as a fuel or power generation using coal as a fuel, etc.. 

[4] E.g., Massive “business” write-offs and tax benefits on trucks and gigantic SUVs. 

An eagle-eyed reader noticed that last week’s editorial accidentally left out the race for the state’s 15^th Assembly District. He successfully deduced, however, that the ideologically consistent position, for both me and my fellow members in the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, was to endorse Richmond Councilmember Jovanka Beckles, as indeed we did. For heaven’s sake, don’t you miss that slot on your ballot.

It’s harder and harder to concentrate on what’s happening in California, given the plethora of shocking news national and international, but we have to keep trying. What we do here will ultimately affect the whole planet, so we need to make sure to elect the right people in November.

So I was planning to devote space this week to explaining what the main issue that tied all the endorsed candidates together is, but luckily my Marin Post colleague Bob Silvestri just sent me his own excellent dissection, which you can now read here, The IPCC Report on Climate Change in the Age of Entitlement, Growth Addiction and Urbanism.

What links the candidates for the state assembly and the Berkeley City Council is whether or not they adhere to the Scott Weiner/ Nancy Skinner/corporate dogma that we can build our way out of climate change.

Folks, we can’t. Bob saves me the trouble of citing chapter and verse of why growth won’t work to save the planet, so be sure to read what he says. (My only quibble is that he's too willing to cede the "progressive" title to the MeFirstNow crowd.) 

The shorthand slogan has been around for years: “Growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” 

Here in Berkeley, as in all of California, we’re in the middle of a great big gold rush. We’ve seen big bucks in corporate technological enterprises in the last decade, so those who’d like to share the experience at all levels have been rushing here in droves to populate enormous numbers of start-ups, the majority of which will sink without trace. 

Just like the original gold rush, this one has created a parallel land speculation boom. This time there’s an ideology to match: that building near existing and/or planned public transit locations will mitigate the climate-altering effects of hyper-urbanization. 

Just a couple of counter facts should be inserted here: 

(1) BART is failing six ways from Sunday. All it’s good for is to transport well-paid workers from suburbs like Berkeley and Orinda to San Francisco jobs, and increasingly it’s too crowded to do even that adequately. Both the many techies who are trying to commute from Berkeley to Silicon Valley and the poorly paid workers who drive hours to work there from Tracy are out of luck. 

The BART infrastructure is collapsing. 

(2) Buses, those energy-consuming behemoths, run almost empty a large part of the time—just look inside. AC Transit does not publish an energy consumption per passenger mile figure, which is what counts. 

Despite this, there’s a political push to build more and more market-rate (“luxury”) apartments along these dysfunctional “ transit corridors”. The legislators at the state and local level who peddle this snake oil are funded by the development industry, often by all three classes who profit from building projects: owners, managers and labor. A review of their campaign contributors and of the “independent” political action committees which back them makes this clear. 

Their legislative proposals are designed to shift the locus of planning and decision-making to Sacramento, where it’s easier for corporate interests to lobby for decisions that they find lucrative. That’s why, in Assembly District 15, which includes key parts of Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito and Richmond, corporate Democrats (we have no admitted Republicans) are trying to parachute in a newbie who backs the same agenda favored by San Francisco’s Scott Weiner. 

The discussion is garbled because Weiner and his East Bay ally, Senator Nancy Skinner, have been fronting for an ever-changing series of bills designed to pre-empt local control over housing construction. The shorthand for this class of measures is “827”, the number (Senate Bill 827) of the first incarnation of this concept, which put the fear of the lord into some (though not all) local elected officials. It originally referenced a somewhat obscure Metropolitan Transportation Commission map which, if adopted, would have ceded almost all control over Berkeley land use to Sacramento mandates. 

827 was a stalking horse which has now been disavowed by its proponents, but it’s the UnDead, already rising again in multiple incarnations. That first run didn’t even make it out of committee, but since then there’s been a rush of differently numbered attempts, some of them successful, to grab control of ever more local land. And there will be more. 

The major difference between Berkeley backers of this strategy and Berkeley’s opposing progressive candidates for City Council is the definition of exactly what the “housing crisis” that has accompanied the tech boom might be. 

Three Berkeley candidates, incumbent Kate Harrison (District 4), Planning Commissioner Mary Kay Lacey (District 8) and ZAB Commissioner Igor Tregub (District 1), contend that what’s needed is more affordable housing, particularly for low and very low income residents, not just more housing in general. All three are endorsed by the Wellstone Club, Berkeley Progressive Alliance, and Berkeley Citizens Action, as is Jovanka Beckles for the 15^th District Assembly seat 

The opponents of all four espouse what are sometimes called “neoliberal’, sometimes “trickle-down” and sometimes “market-based” theories with various particulars. The key contention is that if enough housing of whatever kind is built it will eventually result in making housing available to those at all economic levels. 

There’s a touching faith in the efficacy of markets which is seldom supported by data. One UC study estimates that this process will take 50 years to work its magic, but whatever… 

The four candidates who are running against the progressives are heavily backed by middle-of-the road establishment Democratic National Committee types. In your mailbox you can find the evidence: their endless expensive glossy brochures depicting every politician you’ve ever heard of in living color posing for selfies with them. 

Jovanka Beckles’ modest flier, by contrast, features snapshots of the several local Democrats she defeated in the June primary in order to make it into this runoff—they’ve all endorsed her. Well, all but one, of course, the beauteous big bucks-backed Buffy. 

A related separator is that all four progressive contenders discussed here support Proposition 10, which ends Costa-Hawkins, the state-mandated ban on much of local rent control. Buffy Wicks opposes lifting the ban (hinting at minor modifications), while the rest of the Berkeley candidates tip-toe around positions on 10—I can’t find any endorsement of it from any of them except Alfred Twu, at least online. 

And speaking of District 8, where I live, we do seem to have three interesting candidates. I support Mary Kay Lacey, who’s smart, sophisticated and empathetic. She’s not afraid to take positions on controversial issues, unlike the current councilmember, who’s been generally wishy-washy and compliant—a loyal supporter of the worst schemes of former mayor Tom Bates. 

The incumbent likes the middle of the road, bringing to mind the quip that there’s nothing much in the middle of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos. Someone in the online commentariat compared her to Susan Collins. 

But I do plan to fill the second and third slots on my ranked choice ballot—I haven’t decided in what order—with the names of Russ Tilleman and Alfred Twu. Russ is opinionated in a good way, and articulate about what he believes. Alfred’s wardrobe, campaign signs and web page are delightful—if there were a city office called Designer-in-Residence he’d have my vote for it in a hot minute. Maybe Mary Kay should pledge to appoint him to the city’s Design Review commission. 

One last point, not housing related but which should be obvious. This is one of the very few Assembly Districts left in the state which could conceivably return an African American woman. It seems really too bad to blow that opportunity on a White woman, especially one from a rural background whose main experience is as a party operative. Jovanka Beckles would bring a depth of urban experience to the Assembly which her opponent woefully lacks. 

If you are thinking of sitting out the upcoming Congressional elections on November 6th, think again; because the results will, directly and indirectly, affect you and your whole family in ways that you never imagined.

So, instead of pushing the snooze button, think about the issues that matter to me that I've outlined below and should matter to you. It's worth the effort as the stakes are high!!! The issues to consider, not necessarily in order of importance, are: 

1. Decent Jobs at Livable Wages
2. Voter Suppression
3. Global Warming
4. Public Education and Student Loans
5. Women's Choice
6. Medicare and Medicaid
7. Affordable Health Care
8. Campaign Finance Reform
9. The Supreme Court and Federal Judges
10. Sexual Abuse and Equal Justice
11. Separation of Church and State
12. Increasing Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness
13. Assault Weapons on the Street
14. Social Security
15. Consumer Protection
16. Immigration Reform
17. Preemptive War and National Security
18. Disaster Preparedness
19. Maldistribution of Wealth and Economic Justice
20. Fair and Progressive Tax Reform
21. Basic Research in Science, Health and Technology
22. Renewable Energy and a Sustainable Environment
23. NPR, NET (Sesame Street, et. al), the National Endowment for the Arts and the National
Endowment for the Humanities
24. Cronyism, Lying, Manipulation and Incompetence in Government
25. Infrastructure Development (Mass Transit, the Energy Grid, Schools, Bridges, Roads and Airports) 

After careful analysis of the issues listed above one can safely conclude that the positions of the Democrats are mainstream, moderate and reasonable; whereas the positions of the Republicans are ideological, opportunistic and dangerous. The choices are stark, the stakes are high, and the consequences could be devastating. 

Finally, it must be said that it's far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The most important thing to do, for those who are concerned about the character, integrity and future of our country about democracy, the rule of law and the common good is to spend the next few weeks until Election Day putting our energy, money and time into efforts to move control of Congress, both the House and the Senate, to the Democrats. Then we will have both Congressional committees and the Special Counsel doing their legitimate jobs of investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, cover ups and possible collusion; as well as having the legislative authority to limit the worst excesses of the Trump administration. 

Achieving a minimum wage in Berkeley for $15 an hour, which unlike most minimum wage laws, will be increased annually in the beginning of July next year according to the inflation rate. The law, which became effective October 1, was a major victory.

The vast majority of minimum wage laws pay well under $15 an hour and lack an inflation adjustment provision. As a result the purchasing power of these wages will continually decline. But generally speaking, these new minimum wage laws make an enormous difference in the standard of living of many thousands of working people. As low as these wages are, they are an immense improvement over the federal minimum wage of only $7.25 an hour

However, without exception these wages are still poverty wages.

According to an official study of poverty in California, at $15 an hour, which is in the $31,000 range annually for a full time year round worker, a family of four would still lack the resources to meet basic needs. The California poverty rate, which is 20.6 percent of the population, is the highest in the country. Prices keep rising but wages for several decades have been stagnant. 

What working people need to escape poverty is not simply a higher wage. They need a living wage. A living wage would provide a family with the costs of health care, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and other essentials to enjoy a decent life.  

Thorough and careful research was conducted by MIT and the liberal Economic Policy Institute to determine the costs of essentials throughout the United States and the annual wage that is needed to cover these costs. But because prices often rise considerably and rapidly, there is an inherent tendency of these institutes and others to underestimate the cost of living. Let us look at these issues in Alameda County, California where probably many of the readers of this commentary live. For a family of four - husband, wife, and two children -- with only one person working, the minimum hourly wages must exceed $33 an hour for a 40 hour week to qualify as a living wage.. That amounts to a wage of $70,000 annually. 

According to the estimated budget, these families have to spend for housing over $26,000 a year, which is $2,166 a month. However, the average rent for a two bedroom apartment now in Alameda County is $2,529 a month, which is over $300 per month more than their budget would permit. Most of the rental increase occurred within the last six months. So as careful as the studies about the cost of living may have been, costs are actually higher than what the experts determined. The estimated wage of $70,000 to adequately support a family of four is a rock bottom figure, at least in Alameda County. That's more than twice the minimum wage that was achieved in Berkeley. 

Nationally, things are very tight for many individuals and families. Rents and the employees' share of health care are rising rapidly, which appreciably erodes the paychecks of working people. According to the Federal Reserve, 40 percent of Americans cannot pay for a $400 emergency expense. Moreover, thirty-four percent have no money in the bank, and many others have very little. So the total number of individuals with little or nothing is 65 percent. In fact, the average household debt according to the Federal Reserve is $137,000. So ironically, borrowing is among the necessities of life. 

Since the problem of poverty is a national problem, the federal government rather than the states and cities should be mainly responsible for addressing this issue. That it has failed to do so is a national disgrace. The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 since 2009. 

Had the federal minimum wage kept up with the increases in worker output, it would be over $20 an hour. That certainly would have been welcome because many poor workers and their family would be less poor. However, this hourly rate would still be lower than a living wage for families. 

Actually, the federal minimum wage law is worse than it is realized. In addition to the hourly minimum the law exempts many businesses from providing any minimum wage. As a result, the number of workers who are paid below the minimum under the law is larger than the number of employees who receive the minimum wage. The gap would be greater if many in the workers in the federal exempt category were not covered by state and local wage laws.  

What then could be done to achieve a living wage for all workers? That's a formidable challenge. Perhaps it would be helpful to keep in mind that we should not be shackled by a culture of low expectations. So along with celebrating our minimum wage victories, our slogan must be "Not Enuff, Not Enuff, and Not Enuff". 

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "No business which depends for existence on paying *less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.. By living wages, I mean more than the bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of a decent living."

On September 27, 2018,California Governor Jerry Brown approved Senate Bill-1045 , which creates a five-year pilot program for San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties for a conservatorship program in the Welfare and Institutions Code. 

Current conservatorship, the two sections of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act and probate section provide a procedure to appoint a conservator for people who are "gravely disabled" as result of a serious mental health disorder or an impairment by chronic alcoholism. 

SB-1045 expands the scope of conservatorships to allow housing with wraparound services to the most vulnerable Californians living on the streets. In order to be considered for conservatorship under SB-1045, an individual must be chronically homeless, suffering from serious mental illness and substance use disorder such that those co-occurring conditions have resulted in that individual frequently visiting the emergency room, being frequently detained by police under a Section 5150, or frequently held for psychiatric evaluation and treatment. In short, SB-1045’s aim is to make it easier to help troubled homeless deemed too impaired to care for themselves. 

The San Francisco 2017 Homeless Count & Survey showed a homeless count of 7,499. More than two-thirds of this number (68% or 5,099) reported one or more health conditions. Over half of respondents (53% or 3,974) reported their condition limited their ability to take care of personal matters or to get and keep a job. These conditions include a psychiatric or emotional condition, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a chronic health problem, drug or alcohol abuse, a physical disability, a traumatic brain injury, and an AIDS or HIV related illness. 

Too often, we have a revolving door of homeless, especially the chronically mentally ill. They are picked up off the streets or in Golden Gate Park or at Homeless Connect. The homeless may or may not be placed in a treatment facility, if one is available. Once they complete treatment, they are too often dumped back on the streets with no housing, jobs, money, or followup by a professional case manager. In a short time, these homeless are back on the street. 

While we as a society must safeguard the civil rights of the unfortunate, we also have an obligation to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. SB-1045 provides San Francisco with an additional tool to help these homeless people. 

In order to take part in this program, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors must opt-in to the pilot program. Mayor London Breed is in favor of an opt-in. This pilot program, also called a feasibility study or experimental trial, is a small-scale, short-term experiment that will help to learn how SB-1045 might work permanently throughout California. 

I urge the Board of Supervisors to follow Mayor Breed’s lead. 

There are many reasons to dislike Donald Trump. He's an unrepentant sexual predator, who lies without remorse. In addition, Trump is a bigoted bully whose only moral precept is "might makes right." Nonetheless, the most important reason to dislike Donald is that he refuses to protect our children and grandchildren. Trump is obsessed with immediate gratification and. therefore, has chosen to ignore global climate change. Now it's coming home to bite all of us. 

If you blinked, you missed the October 8th report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/). It's very disturbing; if we don't take immediate action to control emissions, we're screwed. More about that later. 

You may have not seen the IPCC climate change report because the mainstream-media focus quickly shifted to the fight between Donald Trump and Taylor Swift. And then to sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh's first day on the Supreme Court -- by the way, he has four female clerks. Or, if you live in the southeast, you may have been preoccupied with Hurricane Michael bearing down on the Florida panhandle. 

If you're among the unfortunates living on the coast of Alabama and Florida, I sympathize with your situation. Perhaps, as your considering the hurricane damage, you'll have a moment to reflect that you, too, are a victim of global climate change. These days, that's the pattern: people don't pay attention to climate change until it comes to their neighborhood. 

Every American has an opinion about climate change, but few of us rank it as an important concern when deciding who to vote for. Instead, prospective voters focus on the near term: healthcare costs, jobs and the economy, or guns. This is the recurring pattern when Americans ponder climate change: they decide it's too abstract or difficult and they don't do anything about it. Unless you are fortunate enough to live in California. 

In August, Quinnipiac ran a small poll (175 respondents) that asked: "Do you think the United States is doing enough to address climate change, doing too much, or do you think more needs to be done to address climate change?" 64 percent responded "more needs to be done;" the highest number since Quinnipiac started asking the question. (And "doing too much" or "doing enough" were at all all time lows.) The pollsters added a new follow-on question: "The wildfires in California are the worst in the state's history. Do you think climate change is a factor in making these fires more extreme, or not?" 53 percent of respondents believed climate change was a factor. 

In California, we take climate change very seriously and a strong majority believes that climate change was a factor in our fires. A recent Public Policy Poll ( http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-views-on-climate-change/) found that 80 percent of Californians view climate change as a serious "threat to the state’s future economy and quality of life." (California Democrats and Independents view climate change more seriously than do Republicans -- only 22 percent of Trump's Party see it is a threat; they're more worried about Taylor Swift.) Californians have to take climate change seriously; a recent report indicated that the frequency of major fires will increase by 77 percent by the end of the century. 

In California we're taking a variety of actions to stem the tide of climate change -- such as limiting our carbon emissions -- because we understand that we don't have a choice. 

Meanwhile, the October 8th IPCC report indicates that the world is rapidly reaching the point of no return: "We are on track to cross a key threshold of danger —1.5 degrees C or 2.7 degrees F—much earlier than anticipated: 2040." (A 1.5 degree Celsius increase is the point at which irreversible sea level rise, massive coral reef extinctions, and food shortages begin to occur.) In California, this would increase the severity of fires and the probability of drought. It would also increase flooding along the coast and raise the probability that salt water would intrude into the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta -- an event that would have cascading consequences, threatening drinking water supplies and impacting farm land. 

California is taking steps to deal with this and it's likely Florida will join us. The day the IPCC report appeared, Florida got news that Hurricane Michael was heading their way. (On the afternoon of October 10th, Michael hit the Florida panhandle with winds between 115-155 mph.) It's the third major hurricane to hit Florida in the past 3 years. 

It's not Florida's only global climate change event. For almost a year, Florida has been beset by the "red tide" (https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/8/30/17795892/red-tide-2018-florida-gulf-sarasota-sanibel-okeechobee ), which has killed: "At least a hundred manatees, a dozen dolphins, thousands of fish, 300 sea turtles, and more have died or washed along shores in putrid-smelling masses." The red-tide has become a factor in Florida's election: Republican Governor Rick Scott exacerbated the situation by cutting Florida's water-management budget. 

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration chose not to respond to the IPCC report. When queried, Donald said, "It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew it... Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good. But I will be looking at it. Absolutely.” Trump isn't going to read the report and he isn't going to lead an effort to protect our children and grandchildren from future harm. 

Response to the IPCC report will have to happen at the state level. In the meantime, move to higher ground.