A few studies and reports of import that caught my eye this week:
The Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at California State University, Sacramento issued a report this week entitled Consequences of Neglect: Performance Trends in California Higher Education which finds those trends to be in decline. Using national data, "[r]esearchers analyzed California’s postsecondary performance in the categories of preparation, participation, affordability, completion, benefits and finance, and found that the state’s performance is average, at best, and trending downward."
Among the findings:
- California ranks last in total funding per student
- Tuition and fee increases exceed the national average rate
- Each successively younger working-age generation is less highly educated that the one before.
- Black and Latino students continue to lag behind other racial/ethnic groups in levels of college preparation, participation, and completion
A new study from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility entitled Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States rates the states with the most toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants based on publicly-available data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory, a database of emmissions reported by industrial sources. Findings include that power plants are the single largest industrial source of toxic air pollution in 28 states and the District of Columbia. For the full methodology and to find out how your state ranks, see the analysis at: http://docs.nrdc.org/air/air_11072001.asp.
The Environmental Working Group released a study of the varying health, climate, and other environmental impacts of meat and dairy consumption: Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health. which finds that "that if every person in the US refrained from eating meat or cheese one day a week every week for a year the reduction in emissions would be equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road." Their interactive website includes a handy chart for comparing the consumption of different foods with miles driven. On methodology:
To assess climate impacts, EWG partnered with CleanMetrics, an environmental analysis and consulting firm, to do lifecycle assessments of 20 popular types of meat (including fish), dairy and vegetable proteins. Unlike most studies that focus just on production emissions, our assessment calculates the full “cradle-to-grave” carbon footprint of each food item based on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated before and after the food leaves the farm – from the pesticides and fertilizer used to grow animal feed all the way through the grazing, animal raising, processing, transportation, cooking and, finally, disposal of unused food. The analysis also includes the emissions from producing food that never gets eaten, either because it’s left on the plate or because of spoilage or fat and moisture loss during cooking. About 20 percent of edible meat just gets thrown out.
And a new study published in the July 15 issued of the journal Science from a group of twenty-four researchers - Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth - details how the decline of large apex predators, such as wolves, lions, and sharks, represents one of the most powerful impacts of humanity on the world's ecosystems, as their removal leads to a wider range of ecological disruptions through the processes known as trophic cascades. From the abstract:
Until recently, large apex consumers were ubiquitous across the globe and had been for millions of years. The loss of these animals may be humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature. Although such losses are widely viewed as an ethical and aesthetic problem, recent research reveals extensive cascading effects of their disappearance in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems worldwide. This empirical work supports long-standing theory about the role of top-down forcing in ecosystems but also highlights the unanticipated impacts of trophic cascades on processes as diverse as the dynamics of disease, wildfire, carbon sequestration, invasive species, and biogeochemical cycles. These findings emphasize the urgent need for interdisciplinary research to forecast the effects of trophic downgrading on process, function, and resilience in global ecosystems.
Presenter: Lenny Goldberg, Executive Director of the California Tax Reform Association (CTRA)
Wednesday, February 2, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability
Lenny Goldberg will address the ongoing fiscal crisis of the state of California, where the government must operate within the limitations of its existing property tax regime. A major challenge is confronting the irrational and dysfunctional commercial property tax, which costs our cities, counties, and schools billions of dollars each year and makes little sense as law, economics, fiscal policy, or land use. Lenny will describe the California Tax Reform Association's long-term strategy to expose this problem and make it so apparent that a solution can be achieved.
The mission of the CTRA is a fair tax system in California, in order to provide the foundation for a healthy public sector and a successful economy. Founded in 1976, CTRA has been involved as an advocate for fair taxation in virtually every major tax policy debate in the legislature and at the state tax agencies. It has also been involved in many statewide ballot measures involving tax policy, and have provided our expertise in many forums, presentations, articles, and in the media.Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.
Sustainably Speaking: Energy in California, Challenges and Solutions, Locally and Globally
Presenter: Journalist Peter Asmus, author of Introduction to Energy in California, U.C. Press
Thursday, September 17, 12:30PM to 1:30PM
Pacific Room at Tides, in the Thoreau Center
Join us as Peter gives us an introduction to California’s energy resources, challenges and solutions, locally and globally.
Peter will sum up the history of California energy development, then outline key challenges, and then go into solutions, focusing on the potential of ocean energy (he recently authored a 100 page plus report on the topic) and the evolution of the "locavolt" movement taking root in his own backyard in Marin County.
Peter Asmus has been covering energy issues for over 20 years. Previous books include Reaping the Wind and Reinventing Electric Utilities, both published by Island Press. His articles on energy have been published in leading newspapers such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. He has served as a consultant to the California Energy Commission and California Air Resources Board.
Defined as much by its mythology as by its geography, California is a place of rich human variety, spectacular natural beauty, historical extremes, and complex political contradictions. Learn more about your home state, its history, and the difficult issues it faces today with the books in this subject guide, which represent just a few of the ones about California available in the library's collection. Visit the catalog at library.thoreau.org to find more, and remember that we will having a discussion in the library about one of the books on this list - Rand Richard's Mud, Blood, and Gold - next Wednesday, July 22, from 12:30pm to 1:30pm.
Kevin Starr. California: A History. (2005)
Author of the sweeping eight volume historical study, California and the American Dream, and former state librarian, Kevin Starr in thirteen chapters chronicles California's history from the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century to 2005. Surveying the full sweep of geological, economic, political, cultural, and technological forces that have shaped the state, he emphasizes key themes of diversity, mythmaking, and innovation. It is also an examination of the paradoxical relationship between the state's veneration of nature and its rapacious consumption of it, how California became such a representative American place, and the question "Is California governable?"
John McPhee. Assembling California. (1993)
Rivaling the diversity of its population, the geology of California is a uniquely complex story of shifting geometries in continual motion. Part science, part biography, part travel narrative, McPhee explores the state with geologist Eldridge Moors while explaining the geological dynamics that have pieced together the state and shaped its familiar features for hundreds of millions of years. Illustrating how these forces have directly affected human development, he also discusses the gold rush, vinicultural diversity, and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Brian Fagan. Before California: An Archeologist Looks at Our Earliest Inhabitants. (2003).
Long before there was a state called California, the land it occupies was home to a diverse array of societies and cultures, including some of the highest linguistic diversity every recorded on the planet. Written for a general audience, this book is a survey of the lives of these native peoples from the earliest human settlement over 13,000 years ago to the arrival of Europeans, as based on interpretations of the archaeological record. Acknowledging that many questions remain to be answered, Fagan addresses a wide range of topics, including human travel and migration patterns, the changing availability of different food resources, the effects of alterations in the ecology of the coast and inland regions, and detailed explorations of specific geographic regions.
Peter Asmus. Introduction to Energy in California. (2009)
From the University of California Press' California Natural History Guides series, this book is a comprehensive and accessible reference guide to all aspects of energy in the state, with over a hundred photographs, illustrations, and maps. Beginning with an historical overview of energy development in California, it also examines the pros and cons of all existing energy sources, including alternative and renewable ones, and describes the numerous challenges facing the state today in this sector along with some potential solutions for a more sustainable future. With an afterword by Arthur O' Donnell, executive director of the Center for Resource Solutions.
Linda & Wayne Bonnett. Taber: A Photographic Legacy, 1870-1900. (2004)
This survey features over 200 photographs of California and San Francisco taken by Isaiah West Taber (1830-1912), one of the most famous, talented, and prolific photographers of the state in his day, with a genius for self-promotion needed to thrive in the competitive world of nineteenth century portraiture. Documenting views of a world now lost, it includes images of Chinatown, the mansions of Nob Hill, Sutro Heights, the 1894 Midwinter Fair, Yosemite Valley, and individual portraits of famous Californians. It also presents the story of West himself, from his arrival during the gold rush to the 1906 earthquake when all of his glass negatives were lost.
Rand Richards. Mud, Blood, and Gold: San Francisco in 1849. (2009)
By the author of Historic San Francisco (also in the library collection), this work presents a detailed account of San Francisco in the year when its population exploded as tens of thousands of people from around the world poured through on their way to get rich in the newly discovered gold fields of California. From eyewitness accounts of that tumultuous year, Richards creates a vivid picture of daily life filled with drinking, gambling, prostitution, violence, real estate speculation, government corruption, and boundless ambition. Strained to the breaking point, the town was transformed into a city in ways that echo to today.
Also in the Chronicle, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed bills to coordinate local planning measures to control sprawl in an effort to combat global warming, and to approve bond funds for water storage, levee improvement, and conservation projects, but he vetoed a measure that
would have set a $60 per container fee on shipping traffic at the state's ports in Oakland, Long Beach and Los Angeles. The money would have been used to clean up truck and ship emissions.
