The Effects of Climate Change on California Part 5/5
Speaker: Major political shifts will occur, as well. Polls show that for the first time in decades, Californians may be ready for a return to nuclear power, because—for all its controversy—it is a “carbon-free” source of energy.
Kim Stanley Robinson: We might need some “bridge” technologies to get to the sustainable future. It might even include nuclear power. It’s not a clean technology but it’s perhaps not as bad a carbon-burning technology as coal burning. So we have to make some hard choices. Restrictions on water use will likely become more common in cities and suburbs. And climate change will become a major public health issue, especially in the Central Valley.
Gleick: If you look at smog alerts, and you look at temperature, high temp and bad smog come hand in hand. And the modelers are already telling us that higher temperatures in the Central Valley are going to lead to much more frequent smog days, much more asthma, and much more deterioration of our air quality.
Speaker: And if you think interior California would be insulated from rising sea levels, think again. As salt water advances up the Sacramento River, much of the Delta’s productive farmland would be reclaimed by salt marshes, returned to the way they were in millennia long past.
Kim Stanley Robinson thinks about the future every day. He’s best known for his Mars Trilogy of science fiction novels. But he’s also written a series of books that lay out a grim future with unchecked global warming. But lately he’s been focusing on the future of his own planet and his home state.
Robinson: You can’t be an across-the-board optimist and you cannot be complacent at this moment. That would be the last thing to do. There’s no room for complacency because really, this is the biggest environmental challenge yet. Everyone we spoke to for this program agreed on one thing: that we need to prepare now.
Larry Greene: Some of the things we’re doing, as far as designing our communities, the way we do business, we’re making decisions today that are going to be on the ground in 30 years, 40 years, and we need to think very seriously about how we do that.
Robinson: I’m a Californian and I love California. It’s one of the most beautiful landscapes in the entire world and we don’t want to wreck it for our children. And so we got to do these things.
Gleick: I think we know how and I don’t think it involves inventing new technology. And maybe—maybe we’ll get our act together in time to prevent the worst consequences.
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