Climate change is rapidly accelerating in California, state report says The report finds that about 26,000 people commute to work by foot, bike, and transit, and says that the number in the pipeline could be even higher.
More than half of Californians have experienced a severe weather event in the past 10 years, according to a new report by the California Department of Public Health and UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies.
The report finds that California’s severe weather has caused an estimated 41 deaths, nearly $4.7 billion in property damage and $20 billion in total economic losses nationwide in the past 10 years. The majority of those affected — 28,000 — live in California.
The report, presented Monday at a California Democratic Party’s forum in San Francisco, comes as the state is grappling with its worst drought in the past 50 years. Though water consumption is down, wildfires are becoming more frequent. And there are growing worries of an increasingly unstable climate.
The report, which drew on a review of more than 35,000 public records, is part of a push by the state to develop policies to better prepare for the effects of climate change.
That’s a shift from the past year, in which the state’s leadership on climate change in California appeared to be based on science but on policy at high levels in an administration that was seen as largely on the sidelines of the issue.
A key factor in the new push has been a push by the state’s elected leaders to take a stronger stance against the Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Power Plan. The plan seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by more than 50 percent by 2030.
While scientists have said there would be economic, health and environmental costs if that goal is met, the Clean Power Plan has become a symbol for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party nationally.
“When we have our best practices, or even our worst practices, that have come out of all of our offices, there are consequences,” Dr. Connie Ho, director of the Department of Public Health and the report’s co-author and chair of the
