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From Occupying Banks to City Hall: Meet Barcelona’s New Mayor Ada Colau
A longtime anti-eviction activist has just been elected mayor of Barcelona, becoming the city’s first female mayor. Ada Colau co-founded the anti-eviction group Platform for People Affected by Mortgages and was an active member of the Indignados, or 15-M Movement. Colau has vowed to fine banks with empty homes on their books, stop evictions, expand public housing, set a minimum monthly wage of $670, force utility companies to lower prices, and slash the mayoral salary. Colau enjoyed support from the Podemos party, which grew out of the indignados movement that began occupying squares in Spain four years ago. Ada Colau joins us to discuss her victory.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are broadcasting from Stanford University in California. But we end today’s show in Spain, where a longtime anti-eviction activist has just been elected mayor of Barcelona, becoming the city’s first female mayor. Ada Colau co-founded the anti-eviction group, Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, and was an active member of the Indignados, or 15-M Movement, the protest movement that inspired Occupy Wall Street. Ada Colau has vowed to fine banks with empty homes on their books, stop evictions, expand public housing, set a minimum monthly wage of $670 per month, force utility companies to lower prices, and slash the mayoral salary.Colau enjoyed support from the Podemos Party, which grew out of the Indignados movement that began occupying squares in Spain four years ago. She’s been arrested repeatedly for her protests. I spoke to Ada Colau last week. I began by asking if she was surprised by her victory.
ADA COLAU: [translated] Thank you very much, it’s a pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by your victory?
ADA COLAU: [translated] In reality, partly yes, and partly no. It was a victory that was accomplished in a very short amount of time. It was a candidacy that was supported and driven by the people, with very few resources, and with very little money we achieved victory in the elections of such an important city, as Barcelona. But partly it was not surprising because there is a strong popular movement, and a strong desire for change. We have serious political problems here in Barcelona, and in the entire country, and so there was a need for change which you could see in the streets.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what those problems are?
ADA COLAU: [translated] There are problems related to the economic crisis, but this economic crisis is a consequence of a political crisis, of a profound democratic crisis. We have had a form of government where the political elites had a cozy relationship with the economic elites who have ruined the economy of the country, and the ultimate representation of this was the behavior of the financial institutions, of the banks. They have defrauded thousands and thousands of people, with abusive mortgages. They have evicted thousands of families and they have ruined the country’s economy. And this has happened because of the cozy relationship between the political and economical elites. In the face of this situation, where there have been losses of billions of Euros, that have caused social cutbacks in areas as basic as health care and education, it’s caused, for example, in a city that’s rich like Barcelona, a city where there is a lot of money and a lot of resources, the inequality has shot up. That means that there are people that are getting more and more rich, at the same time more people are getting poorer. So the middle class is disappearing.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, two years ago you testified at a Spanish parliamentary hearing on Spain’s foreclosure crisis. On the panel, you spoke right after a representative of Spain’s banking industry. You famously turned to the banker and said, "This man is a criminal and should be treated like one."
ADA COLAU: [translated] We’ve been negotiating for four years with the banks, with the public administration, with the courts and therefore we know exactly what we’re talking about. And this leads me to question the voices of supposed experts who precisely are the ones being given too much credit, pardon the irony, such as the representatives of financial institutions. We just had an example, I would say at the very least it was paradoxical, to use a euphemism, if not outright cynical, for the representative of financial institutions who just spoke, telling us that the Spanish legislation was great. To say that, when people are taking their own lives because of this criminal law, I assure you, I assure you that I did not throw a shoe at this man because I believed it was important to be here now to tell you what I’m telling you. But this man is a criminal! And you should treat him as such! He is not an expert. The representatives of financial institutions have caused this problem. They are the very same people who caused the problem which has ruined the whole economy of this country and you are treating these people as experts.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ada Colau, who is now the mayor-elect of Barcelona, Spain. Ada, the speech made lawmakers’ jaws drop, and you got a reprimand from the Parliament, but your speech endeared you to millions of Spaniards. Can you talk about that moment that you decided to speak out and did you have any regrets?
ADA COLAU: [translated] Well, the reality is that I went to speak in front of the parliament after many years of housing rights activism, and working closely with the thousands of families that were affected by the mortgage fraud which the banks had committed and by the evictions that came after that. The evictions and the interest rates have literally destroyed the lives of thousands of families. By "destroyed the lives," I mean they’ve caused depression, diseases, even suicides.
The only thing I did was describe what I knew, and what I had been living on the front lines for many years. When I encountered this banker who denied the reality and said there were no problems in Spain, when there were thousands of families in a dire situation, the least I could do was to denounce these lies and talk to them about what was happening in reality. I think what surprised people more, and what generated a media phenomenon after this appearance in the parliament, was that someone was talking about reality inside Parliament because, sadly, this was something that hadn’t happened in a long time.
In Spain you have the paradox that while the corrupt politicians see the statute of limitations for their crimes lapse and they make off without going to jail, the families who got into debt for something as basic as accessing housing become indebted forever, because it is impossible to forgive this debt. So, in the face of this barbarity what happened is that hundreds of thousands of hard-working families that just wanted to have a normal life, suddenly lose their jobs, they lose their house, and they become indebted for life, and becoming indebted means economic and civil death. This leads to people committing suicide, to diseases, to broken families, and the positive aspect of this was the birth of an exemplary people’s movement, which has succeeded in stopping thousands of evictions. That forced the banks to negotiate. And it showed that if our institutions did not resolve this problem it was because our institutions were accomplices in this fraud.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, you have broken through so many ceilings as the first woman mayor of Barcelona, together with the new mayor of Madrid. In your victory speech, you talked about a democratic revolution all over the south of Europe. Can you start there? What do you mean?
ADA COLAU: [translated] What is happening in Spain and in Barcelona is not an isolated event, rather there is a crisis in the way we do politics, there is a political elite which has become corrupt and has ended up as accomplices of a financial power which only thinks to speculate and to make money even at the expense of rising inequality and the impoverishment of the majority of the people. Fortunately, there has been a popular reaction, here and in other parts of the Mediterranean, for example in Greece, to confront the neoliberal economic policies, which are not only a problem in Spain but in Europe and around the world. We see very clearly that the city councils are key to confronting this way of making policy, meaning, that is where the everyday policies are made and where we can prove there is another way to govern, more inclusive, working together with the people, more than just asking them to vote every four years, and that you can fight against corruption, and you can have transparent institutions. So we think the city governments are key for democratic revolution, to begin governing, with the people, in a new way, but on the other hand we are very aware that the real change must be global, that one city alone cannot solve all the problems we are facing, many of which are global because today the economy does not have borders, that big capital, and the markets move freely around the world, unlike people.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, what would a public banking system look like?
ADA COLAU: [translated] I think, in the financial world there has been a problem of absolute misrule. You cannot leave something as important as economic policy and money which has a social function, in the hands of speculation and private interests. Here there has been a democratic deficit and a lack of global, collective and democratic control over money and the economic system in general. So, we have to take back that democratic control, and that doesn’t meant that all the banks have to be public, it can be implemented in different ways. What we need are laws that make private banks comply with the law, because now in Spain we have a banking system that breaks the law systematically and nothing happens.
For us, the people, they don’t forgive anything, they make us pay all our debts, they make us pay all our taxes, they make us pay each small traffic ticket, they don’t forgive anything. But the big banks on the other hand, which have lied, defrauded and destroyed thousands of families, are forgiven for, for example, breaking the European consumer protection regulations. So, this is unacceptable. The first thing we need is governments that serve their people, not the private interests, and that enforce the law. We are talking about something as basic as enforcing the existing law. The first thing we need is to force the financial power to comply with the law and to obey the democratic powers, something that is not happening now. It’s also true that it would definitely be good if this private, financial power, is complemented by some form of public bank that offsets and guarantees that there is financing for what is in the public interest, because if not, what happens is the private financial system has the power to decide what is funded and what is not funded.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, one of the most tweeted photos in Spain these days shows riot police hauling you away. The image is from July 2013 when you were trying to occupy a Barcelona bank that was foreclosing on homes. The caption added by Twitter users reads, "Welcome, new mayor." Can you talk about that moment that you were being dragged away?
ADA COLAU: [translated] Well, there were many similar moments in past years, because when we have unjust laws, like the ones we have now in Spain, one has to massively disobey these unjust laws to defend human rights. Here the right to housing is being infringed upon and that’s why thousands of people, in a peaceful manner, we have had to practice civil disobedience to defend human rights. In this sense, this action was one of the many that have been performed in this country, and not by me, but by many other people who have been defending the human rights of all of the others. Throughout human history, it has happened this way. In order to defend rights and to win rights, many times it has been necessary to disobey unjust laws. Of course, now, as future mayor of Barcelona, I hope the police are going to be at the service of human rights, and not of the banks.
AMY GOODMAN: In the United States there’s Occupy. You were part of the Indignados. Talk about the different protests, from anti-war to anti-corporate globalization, that have shaped you.
ADA COLAU: [translated] In reality there has been a continuity in the past 15 years at least. In the early 2000s, late 1990s when they began the anti-globalization movement, Seattle, there was a wide cycle of protests began, that continues to the present day. During this time there has been the anti-globalization movement, the international anti-war movement, there’s been the Indignados, there’s been many fights for housing rights, for peace. And all these mobilizations, not only here but also on the global level, have had many things in common. First, the global dimension, the awareness that there are political and economic problems that have a global dimension, so we need to work as a network. Because there is a single global and economic reality and it’s essential to work in alliances.
Also, the necessity for a real democracy, the awareness that even if we have formally democratic institutions, we have the sense that the decisions are not being made in parliament, but by the boards of directors or by international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, which are profoundly anti-democratic, and which the people do not control, and that they also make decisions against their own people, generating misery around the world.
This awareness of a kidnapped democracy has led to the rise of many grassroots mobilizations, propelled from the bottom, by the people, which are also seeking a way of direct representation. They’ve seen that formal democracy is not enough, that we need to find new ways of political participation where everyone can be an actor, and each person can directly contribute as much as each person can contribute.
So, I think all these mobilizations that have happened in the past 15 years, that have also increasingly used new technologies, the Internet, social media, that have pursued new forms of innovative and direct communication, in some way we are seeing an upgrade of democracy, an upgrade of the forms of political participation that have had many different expressions in different global movements, but there is clearly a nexus that unite them all.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, you are the first woman mayor of Barcelona, Spain, you’re a woman, you’re an activist. Also a female activist is now going to be the Madrid mayor. Talk about the significance of this.
ADA COLAU: [translated] Without a doubt it is important because with women making up half the population, it is completely inexplicable that in 40 years of formal democracy, I should be the first woman mayor of this city. This is not normal because women, we built this city, and we are key players in this city, but what’s happened is that this has not transferred to political representation in the decision-making positions. Clearly, we live in a sexist society, this is not a problem exclusive to Barcelona or to Spain, unfortunately it is a global problem, but also I think that what is happening now are signs of change, of rights being won, of many women and men who have come before us, and we, women, take this testimony and we keep moving forward.
It is clear that women are overrepresented in the sectors of care and housework, and the time has come for women to have more representation in places of economic and political power. But, in addition, I think we have something more to contribute and that we can learn from the feminist struggles, and in this moment of change that we are in, we can contribute by feminizing politics, this will not happen just by putting more women in decision-making roles, but also by transforming the values, more than anything, and by, in this moment of change, upgrading the forms of political participation: to demonstrate that cooperation is more effective and more satisfactory than competitiveness, and that politics done collectively are better than those done individualistically. I think these collective values of cooperation and solidarity are values that we can contribute to feminize politics, and with that, not just women will win, women and men will both win.
AMY GOODMAN: What do think your victory means for Podemos possibly winning in the national level later this year?
ADA COLAU: [translated] I think a political change is happening, a change in the politics are done in Spain, but also beyond Spain, in Southern Europe, and we hope in all of Europe. I think what happened in Spain is a democratic revolution. The people have been empowered, and they have spoken. That’s why I think the main player here is not any political group, it is not Barcelona en Comú, it is not Podemos, it is not Ada Colau, it is not Pablo Iglesias, the main players here are the people, the people who have decided to take back the institutions to democratize them, to take back politics so the people can be the real players, and the ones who make the decisions. In this movement of democratic revolution from below, there are different political parties, different acronyms, which must be a tool in this process of empowerment and democratic revolution. So this is why Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, Ada Colau, and other parties that are emerging right now, are just instruments at the service of a wide people’s process, that has decided to take back the institutions for the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, finally, what will be your first act in office as the new mayor of Barcelona?
ADA COLAU: [translated] Well, we have developed an emergency plan that includes 30 measures which are viable, ambitious but perfectly viable, for the first months in office. This emergency plan consists of three main areas: first to create jobs and fight against job insecurity, another is to guarantee basic rights, and the other is to fight actively against corruption, to make city hall more transparent and do away with the privileges, for example: lower the salaries of public officials, of elected officials, eliminate privileges like paid expenses, official cars, things that can seem simple, but are symbolically important because they send a message of ending impunity, of an end to a political class removed from the reality of the people. So, to do away with these privileges is something that we can do immediately, as soon as we take office, it depends only on political will. Without a doubt one of the first steps as mayor will be to publicly convene all the banks who work in the city, and to sit them around the negotiating table in order to stop the evictions, and to say that we need the empty homes that they have in the city as social, affordable rental housing for the families who need it.
AMY GOODMAN: Ada Colau, thank you very much for joining us, and congratulations as the first woman mayor of Barcelona, Spain. Thank you.
ADA COLAU: [translated] Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Barcelona mayor-elect, Ada Colau. We will be posting the original interview in Spanish on our website, democracynow.org. Just click on Español.
A Fossil Fuel Free World is Possible: How to Power a Warming Earth Without Oil, Coal and Nuclear
Is a 100% renewable energy future possible? According to Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, the answer is yes. Jacobson has developed plans for all 50 states to transform their power infrastructure to rely on wind, water and solar power. This comes as California lawmakers have approved a dozen ambitious environmental and energy bills creating new standards for energy efficiency. Dubbed the California climate leadership package, the 12 bills set high benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum use. We speak with Jacobson and Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University Associate Professor and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Neil Young singing, ["Who’s Gonna Stand Up? (And Save the Earth)] This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We are broadcasting from Stanford University here in California. Will it be the climate scientists who save the world? Well we’ve got two in our studio today. Mark Jacobson is with us, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, Director of its Atmosphere / Energy Program. Professor Jacobson is also the Co-founder of The Solutions Project. That is what we’re going to talk about next, solutions. Noah Diffenbaugh is also with us, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Associate Professor in Environmental Earth System Science. So let’s go back to April when California Governor Jerry Brown ordered residents to cut their water use by 25 percent.
GOV. JERRY BROWN: We’re in an historic drought and that demands unprecedented action. For that reason, that I’m issuing an executive order mandating substantial water reduction across our state. As Californians, we have to pull together and save water in every way we can. People should realize we’re in a new era. The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day, that is going to be a thing of the past.
AMY GOODMAN: When Governor Brown announced new water restrictions for California, he acknowledged the role of global warming saying, "The reality is that climate is getting warmer, the weather is getting more extreme and unpredictable, and we have to become more resilient, more efficient, and more innovative." I wanted to turn to comments now from President Obama when he visited California last year to announce new federal aid to help the drought-stricken state.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Scientists will debate whether a particular storm or drought reflects patterns of climate change, but one thing that is undeniable is that changing temperatures influence drought in at least three ways. Number one, more rain falls in extreme downpours. So more water is lost to run off than captured for use. Number two, more precipitation in the mountains falls as rain rather than snow, so Rivers run dry earlier in the year. Number three, soil and reservoirs lose more water to evaporation year round. What does all of this mean? Unless and until we do more to combat carbon pollution that causes climate change, this trend is going to get worse.
AMY GOODMAN: That is President Obama saying we need to do more. Professor Mark Jacobson, you have just released a state-by-state plan for what needs to be done. What needs to be done?
MARK JACOBSON: Well, our plans are to change the energy infrastructure in each and every state in the United States, and in fact, ultimately, every country of the world, to infrastructures run entirely on wind, water, and solar power for all purposes. So that is electricity, transportation, heating and cooling and industry. Right now, fossil fuels and nuclear power and biofuels are powering our energy infrastructure for all purposes. And the emissions associated with the burning of the fuels, primarily — from burning of fossil fuels and biofuels in particular — these emissions are causing both air pollution and global warming. And these are almost entirely the cause of both of these problems. Air pollution causes 4 million to 7 million premature deaths every year worldwide including about 62,000 in the United States and about 12,000 in California. Global warming of course is a growing and rising problem. In terms of costs, the air pollution mortality in the United States alone costs the United States about $500 billion per year or three percent of the GDP of the U.S. And in 2050, it is estimated that the U.S. emissions alone will cause $3.3 trillion of global climate damage and the rest of the world will cause a total of about $15-20 trillion per year of damage. And so we’re trying to — the only way to solve this problem is to change the energy infrastructure, that’s electrify everything, pretty much, and produce that electricity from clean energy such as wind, water and solar power.
AMY GOODMAN: So how do you do that?
MARK JACOBSON: Well in our plans, we do it state-by-state. And we first develop a plan, and we say, this is like how many wind turbines we need, how many solar panels do we need, how much rooftop areas do we have, how much land area do we require, what would be the cost, how much storage do we need? How many jobs would be created as result? And it would, in the United States, create a net of about 2 million jobs to do such a transformation. And then we have — once we have developed a plan, then we educate the public about the plans, educate policymakers, and try and hope that people will then take these plans and run with them and actually start implementing these changes.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go through some different states with you. But first, California lawmakers have just approved a dozen ambitious environmental and energy bills creating new standards for energy efficiency. Dubbed the California Climate Leadership Package, the 12 bills set high benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum use. State Senate leader Kevin de León explained one of the cornerstones of the program, SB 350, which calls for a "50-50-50" reduction in major areas of climate concern.
SEN. KEVIN DE LEÓN: Now is the time to keep the momentum going. Cleantech companies in California are creating more jobs and are investing more money than competitors in any other state. We need to pursue policies that build on this economic growth by strengthening incentives for energy efficiency and clean technology. The Golden State standards: 50 percent less petroleum use, 50 percent of electricity coming from renewable sources, and 50 percent better energy efficiency in our buildings.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senate leader Kevin de León. Mark Jacobson. What needs to happen in California? Then go across the country to where I just came from, New York, and talk about what needs to happen there.
MARK JACOBSON: Well, in California, actually, a lot has been happening. Governor Brown in January actually announced that the state will go 50 percent renewable, mostly wind, water, and solar power, by 2030. We had proposed 80 percent by 2030 conversion and 100 percent by 2050. So Governor Brown, his proposal for 50 percent by 2030 is sixty percent of what we think is needed. But the Senate of California just within the last two days actually advanced that proposal and approved a 50 percent by 2030 conversion for most sectors of the energy economy.
But we need really aggressive measures. I mean we can’t just have small changes. There are changes going on. Right now, Iowa, South Dakota, they have 30 percent of almost of all of their electric power from wind. But we need to change not only electricity, but transportation, heating and cooling industry and electricity is only on the order of 20 percent of total energy anywhere. But states are making progress. New York has made progress by implementing some policies that would get us toward — closer to a renewable economy. And there are some states like Washington state that already have like 73 percent of their electricity is already from clean energy, mostly because they have hydroelectric there. But we need much more aggressive measures because the Arctic sea ice is expected to disappear within anywhere from 10 to 30 years and that would cause positive feedbacks that would accelerate climate change. So we can’t wait 20 years for some new energy technologies to come around. We need to use existing technologies today, implement them, and get the ball rolling in terms of the transition.
AMY GOODMAN: People still raise their eyebrows when you say windmills, when you say solar panels, that these are the solution.
MARK JACOBSON: Oh, yeah. There’s all sorts of, kind of, false beliefs about renewable energy, but things have changed. Wind is, right now, not only one of the fastest — between wind and solar — are the fastest growing new sources of electric power in the United States, but wind is actually the cheapest form of electricity by far in the U.S. today. The unsubsidized cost without the subsidies is about 3.7 to five cents per kilowatt hour. Subsidies are another 1.5 cents to drop those costs per kilowatt hour. That compares with natural gas which is six to eight cents per kilowatt hour. So wind is one half the cost of natural gas. Utility scale solar is about the same as natural gas now; it’s also around six to eight cents per kilowatt-hour unsubsidized.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark, I wanted to turn to a cartoon that you were recently featured in called Tommy Tune — Tommy Time, which seeks to raise awareness about renewable energy. In this clip, Tommy, who’s played by Mark Ruffalo, asks why your home is still the only one on the block that withstood a power outage.
TOMMY: Tell me, Professor J, magic man, why are your lights the only ones on on the block? Conspiracy?
MARK JACOBSON: In the case of a grid failure, my friend, my inverter switches to off-grid mode, drawing power from my solar array and backyard wind turbine that is stored in batteries.
TOMMY: Huh?
MARK JACOBSON: It’s powered by wind, water, and sun.
AMY GOODMAN: There you have it. So explain what you were telling Tommy Time.
MARK JACOBSON: Well, it turns out that people today can actually control their own power in their own homes. You can put solar panels — I mean wind turbines may be only in a few locations in your back yard, but you can combine solar panels on your roof top with batteries and Tesla has a new battery pack that you can put in your garage that can — where you can store electricity during the day that from the solar, and then use it — use that electricity when there are peak times of electricity because that is when the price is much higher. But people can do other things. They can weatherize their home, they can use energy efficient appliances. There are a lot of things that people can do to reduce energy use and go towards 100 percent renewable energy. Using heat pumps instead of gas heaters. Getting electric cars instead of gasoline cars.
AMY GOODMAN: So what have you done at home?
MARK JACOBSON: Myself, actually, I did electrify my entire home starting in 2005, I put solar panels on the roof, got an electric car, switched out the gas heaters for water and air for electric heat pumps and also then got energy efficient appliances. So I try to do what I talk about. And I’ve realized, actually, since 2005, between 2005 and 2013, that I never paid an electricity bill. And then when I bought an electric car, I never paid a gas bill. And when I gut my gas heaters I never paid for gas.
AMY GOODMAN: So what is the simplest way for people to do it at home and people who live in apartments, apartment buildings?
MARK JACOBSON: Well, anybody can use energy efficient light bulbs, appliances, can weatherize their home. That is pretty low cost. For — solar used to be more expensive. Now, for rooftops, the price has gone down, but actually 80 percent of solar right now is leased, and so you don’t have to put up upfront costs for it, you can just pay basically like you for an electricity bill for solar that’s clean.
AMY GOODMAN: So you’re pushing for renewables, getting off also fuel. What do you think of the divestment movement? As Stanford University just announced it is divesting from coal, coming from enormous pressure from especially students. There’s a movement across the country and around the world right now on this issue. I was just at Cambridge University in Britain. Oxford students and professors as well.
MARK JACOBSON: Well divestment is one way to do a transition. There a lot of policy options that are possible and divestments where universities but also companies or individuals will take money out of fossil fuels and maybe shift them to clean the renewable energy sources. And so that will help in the transition. We don’t advocate — because we just focus on the science — but, we don’t advocate specific policies, but that is certainly one that would be effective in some degree.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we wrap up, I want to play the comment of Pennsylvania’s former Senator Rick Santorum who launched his second bid for the Republican presidential nomination in January. He told CNN host Michael Smerconish he recognizes the climate is warming, but questioned whether humans are causing it, or whether to take action to address it.
RICK SANTORUM: Is or anything the United States can do about it? Clearly, no. Even folks who accept all of the science by the alarmists on the other side recognize that everything that is being considered by the United States will have — well not almost —- will have zero impact on it given what’s going on in the rest of the world. So again -—
MICHAEL SMERCONISH: So is your answer, do nothing?
RICK SANTORUM: Well, the answer is, do something. If it has no impact, of course do nothing. Why would you do something with people admitting that even if you do something, it won’t make a difference?
AMY GOODMAN: That is one of the Republican presidential hopefuls, Rick Santorum. Noah Diffenbaugh, as we wrap up now, what is your answer to him? He says do nothing if it’s not going to make a difference.
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: Well the thing about the climate system, is it’s connected globally. And we’ve actually looked, we have asked this question, what if the developed world, what if the EU and the U.S. did nothing, and the rest of the world looks like us?. What if the rest of the world — if we had a world of 9 billion people that look like me? What that means for most of the U.S. is, what used to be the hottest summer that anyone ever experienced happens 75 percent of the time. So we are tremendously exposed to what happens around the world. And it is true that the scale of the problem is enormous. And the kinds of innovations that Mark is talking about in his home, the kinds of innovations that we are talking about here at Stanford in California, that’s what we need in order to radiate out to the whole world in order to make this transition. If we don’t make this transition, we’re going to have a lot of climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: Well I want to thank you both for being with us, Noah Diffenbaugh and Mark Jacobson, both climate scientists here at Stanford University. We will continue to follow your work and link to your reports. This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report When we come back, the first female Mayor of Barcelona. Stay with us.
From Historic California Drought to Deadly Indian Heatwave, Global Warming is Wreaking Havoc
As California’s massive drought worsens, new mandatory water restrictions have just gone into effect, requiring residents to cut back water use by a net total of 25 percent. A new study by the University of California, Davis finds that in 2015 alone, the drought will cost the state’s farmers and agricultural industry $2.7 billion and more than 18,000 jobs. The study notes: "The socioeconomic impacts of an extended drought, in 2016 and beyond, could be much more severe." Meanwhile the death toll from India’s heatwave has topped 2,300, making it the fifth deadliest heatwave on record. We speak to two leading climate scientists at Stanford University, Noah Diffenbaugh and Mark Jacobson.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are broadcasting from Stanford University in California. California, a state that is now in its fourth straight year of drought. This week new mandatory water restrictions went into effect, with residents required to cut back water use by a net total of 25 percent. Just Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor said a wet May that led to greener pastures in some areas failed to bring any relief and "the sprouting of grasses will most likely provide extra fuel for early fall wildfires once the vegetation dies off this summer." Meanwhile, a new study by the University of California, Davis finds that in 2015 alone, the drought will cost the state’s farmers and agricultural industry $2.7 billion and more than 18,000 jobs. The study noted, "The socioeconomic impacts of an extended drought, in 2016 and beyond, could be much more severe." All this comes as the death toll from an ongoing heat wave in India has topped 2300, making it the fifth deadliest in recorded history. India’s earth sciences minister, Harsh Vardhan, said, "It’s not just an unusually hot summer, it is climate change."
Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests. Noah Diffenbaugh is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and an Associate Professor here at Stanford University in Environmental Earth System Science. He recently published a study that found a link between global warming and California’s historic drought. Also joining us is Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford and the director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program. Mark Jacobson is also the co-founder of The Solutions Project, which combines science, business, and culture to develop and implement science based clean-energy plans for states and countries, and we’re going to talk about what those plans are for all 50 states. But first, Noah Diffenbaugh, the connection between the drought and climate change.
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: So we know that climate change can influence drought in a number of ways, and drought — it’s important to keep in mind — is really the effective moisture that is available. So, a people may think of drought, they think of how much is it raining. But really it’s the effect of moisture. And heat in the atmosphere can really affect that; how much moisture is available for crops, how much is available for reservoirs and in snowpack. And it does so in a few ways. It draws water out of soils. The hotter it is, the more evaporation there will be, the more transpiration from plants. That’s what we’re seeing with the U.S. drought Monitor, is really the long-term effects over this drought of high temperatures. It also affects snow. In California, about a third of our water storage is reliant on snowpack as a natural reservoir. We don’t have the concrete reservoirs to store enough water that California needs. We rely on that snowpack. And the hotter it is, the more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow and the snow that does fall melts earlier in the year. And we are seeing those in California in this drought. When we look over the long-term history of California, we’re seeing increasing occurrence of years in which there is both low rainfall and high temperature. And that’s when we know we have an elevated risk of drought.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you ever seen anything like this before?
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: Well I was born in 1974, so I was alive in the much remembered 1976-1977 drought. Something that is interesting, a lot of our climate indicators show that this drought is more severe than any drought that’s happened in California’s recorded history. One hundred and twenty years of recorded history, this is the most severe drought. And secondly, a lot of people talk about population growth and development in California and how these have been really large over the last 30 or 40 years, but interestingly, statewide, our water use is pretty similar now compared to in 1976-1977. So, we have actually become much more efficient at using water in California. So, we have a much larger population, but our total water usage is pretty similar. So it really is this is a more severe drought from a climate perspective.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Jacobson, can you talk about the drought in California and this record number of deaths in India? 2300 people in the latest heatwave.
MARK JACOBSON: Well, there are a lot of impacts of climate change or what we also call global warming. And global warming is really the increase in average temperatures over the whole globe. Someplace you get lower temperatures on average, but in more places, you will get higher temperatures, you’ll get more extreme events, mostly because the average temperature is higher, the extremes are mostly in the Mormon direction. So you’re going to get some places where you’ll have much higher temperatures than you will normally get. And in some of these places, you will have greater heat waves and more deaths as a result. Or you’ll have more drought as well. In some places you do get cool temperatures and, sort of, as some people who don’t believe in global warming or climate change will say, why is it cold outside if there’s global warming occurring? That is because you’re looking at the average over the globe when you’re talking about global warming, and so you do get both lower temperatures and higher temperatures, but you’ll get more cases of higher temperatures. These higher temperatures will result in greater heat stress on people, and that is one source of mortality. Another source of mortality is enhanced air pollution. Higher temperatures on average increase air pollution, but particularly where the air pollution is already bad. And that is another source of mortality. Another source of mortality is greater extreme storminess. You’ll get greater extremes in severe weather such as more intense hurricanes, for example. And because you just — hurricanes are driven by warmer sea service temperatures and the ocean temperatures are warmer on average over the globe, and so you will get greater intensity of the hurricanes, although, not necessarily greater number.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you say, either of you, to Senator Inhofe who takes a snowball and brings it onto the floor of the Senate and says, you call this global warming?
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: Well I think this is really a question about risk. We are seeing that in California. So one example is our drought here. When we look at the 120 years of observed record in California, what we see is temperature goes up, temperature goes down, precipitation goes up precipitation goes down. Drought indicators go up, they go down. But what we see clearly is that there is a much higher risk of drought when temperatures are high. So it takes low precipitation, but if that low precipitation coincides with warm temperatures, the risk that that low precipitation produces drought is about twice as high compared to cooler temperatures. And what we have seen is California has gotten warmer and warmer and warmer. We have gone from a regime in which about half the years were warm and half the years we are cool, and half years were wet and half the years were dry to over the last two decades, 80 percent of the years have been warm. And what that means is we’ve seen twice as many drought years. We have seen double the percentage of low precipitation years that end up producing drought. So that is really risk. It’s really about the probabilities. And when we talk about the fingerprints of climate change, the finger prints of climate change on extreme events, we’re really talking about risk. What is the probability that these extreme events occur.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you see this as a one off event in California, the drought, if it can be dealt with now?
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: Well our research shows very clearly that the conditions that are producing this drought are becoming much more probable. We see that in the historical record, the conditions are becoming more likely in the historical record. We also see it when we look at climate model experiments. We can talk about climate model experiments that if you want. We would love to put the earth in a lab and run all kinds of experiments on it like you can in a Petri dish. We’re not able to do that. We use climate models to run those experiments. But we very clearly that we are already on the cusp of really experiencing these kinds of conditions much more frequently. And in fact, even that United Nations’ target of two degrees Celsius that we have heard discussed in Copenhagen and since then in the run-up to Paris this fall, even at that two degrees level of global warming, California is likely to be in a regime where year after year we are experiencing very warm or severely hot conditions. What that means is we have a much higher risk that when there is low precipitation that it is also going to be hot. And that is exactly what we are experiencing in this drought.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about, Mark Jacobson, in India. When we talk about hot. What are the temperatures we’re talking about?
MARK JACOBSON: Well, and we look at it in terms of — well degrees Celsius most of the world uses, but in Fahrenheit, the temperatures can get up to an extreme heat. You’re getting up to — over 100 degrees in Fahrenheit for a significant period time. And so it is sustained over a period of time that is a problem, because if you just have a short, one day of hot weather, it is not going to cause a problem, but many days in a row can really increase mortality. And people most affected are already weak; the elderly and those who are sick or otherwise are weak or have illness. So, the temperatures, though, have been sustained over periods of time and so this is the main problem with — that you’ll find in any place where you are impacted. And other places that are impacted would be like sub-Saharan Africa for example where, for example, you will have extreme heat events where people already are on the verge of severe weather and then you just increase the temperature just a little bit and that causes a huge mortality as a result.
AMY GOODMAN: A lot of politicians who are climate deniers say, this has been going on for a very longtime. Professor Diffenbaugh, in 2013, you published a report that found climate change is on pace to occur 10 times faster than any change recorded in, what, 65 million years?
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: Well, so in that paper we were looking at global scale temperature change. So we were looking at global warming and the rate of global warming if we look at the two degree sea target that the United Nations is putting forward, if we look at four degrees sea which is really where we are likely to end up if we continue along the emissions trajectory that we have been on as a globe. So four degrees in 100 years, we can look back at the historical record —- when geologists look back at the sediments in the ocean and the rock record on land, look at fossils, what they find is that there certainly have been periods where there’s been four degrees of warming or 10 degrees of cooling, but these have happened over very long periods. So the most rapid warming that’s been seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was a period called the Eocene. It happened in the Eocene and it was about about 55 million years ago, long time ago. And there was four or five degrees forming, but it looked like it happened in about 10,000 years. So we’re talking about doing in a century what Earth has done in thousands of years. And that is really the big difference for the global scale. We know, looking back at that period in the Eocene, that it was a very different climate. The were alligators and palm trees inside the Arctic Circle. So the palm trees kept up because they had 10,000 years to do it. The alligators kept up, they had 10,000 years to do it. But we’re talking about an ice-free Arctic with the temperatures that look a lot like coastal Florida. So -—
AMY GOODMAN: Well wait. Say that again?
NOAH DIFFENBAUGH: So in that period — the last time that we saw this four degrees warming, it happened over thousands of years, and it created a very different climate. So if we look at the Arctic Ocean, we know that it was at least seasonally ice-free. No summer ice in the Arctic. And when geologists reconstruct those temperatures using the chemistry and looking at the fossils that were — of the plants that were there, they see it looks a lot like coastal Florida does now. So people who say Earth has been through this before, they are right in terms of the magnitude of change, but the big difference is how rapid that change was. And we know from looking at those periods in the past, that the climate was really, really different. So we are are not saying that Earth hasn’t experienced, change before. What we’re saying is that we have very strong evidence that what we’re seeing now is due primarily to human activities and that the pace of change is much more rapid than what ecosystems have been exposed to in recent geologic past.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break and when we come back, I want to talk about solutions, what is possible. Our guests or two climate scientists here at Stanford University, Noah Diffenbaugh and Mark Jacobson. And after we finish speaking to them, we’re going to Barcelona, Spain, for an exclusive broadcast interview with the mayor-elect of Barcelona, a leading anti-eviction housing activist who will be the first female mayor of that Spanish city. Stay with us.
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