Climate change impacts get worse while Fresno County supervisors play silly politics

A new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presents scary future realities for life on Earth in the face of worsening climate change.

Among the key findings that were released on Monday: Greater human suffering, such as more pandemics, is inevitable if atmospheric heating is not dealt with. The near-term extinction of 14% of the world’s species is possible. Wildfires, floods and droughts will worsen. Millions of people will live in areas of extreme heat. No part of the Earth will be untouched.

And in direct relevance to the San Joaquin Valley, “climate change will make some current crop production areas unsuitable and force millions more humans to face hunger by mid-century,” The Washington Post reported.

“Coming generations will inherit a much harsher planet than the one their parents knew,” the Post said. Any child younger than age 12 today is projected “to experience a nearly fourfold increase in extreme events at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming and a fivefold increase if temperatures rise by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit).”

Said the report: “The world must make significant investments in the next few years if it hopes to adapt to the climatic shifts that are already happening and avert more drastic change in the future.”

Note that reference to “the next few years.”

It is in that light that a Fresno County Board of Supervisors’ decision last week was particularly ill-timed.

Getting hotter

An item before the board on Feb. 22 was innocuous enough: A request to accept a $175,000 grant to assess how climate change impacts the health of the county’s vulnerable populations, particularly in rural areas.

The request was timely. Last year, Fresno recorded its most days ever over 100 degrees — 69. The average number of triple-digit days in the city is 38, according to the National Weather Service.

In advance of the global climate-change conference in Scotland last fall, AP reported that the “Earth has warmed more in the last 29 years than in the previous 110. Since 1992, the world has broken the annual global high temperature record eight times.”

Such statistics, however, were not at the forefront of two supervisors’ minds when they took up the grant proposal.

Putting up barriers

The idea, as presented by public health director David Luchini, was to get data that would help his department develop projects to lessen the impact of heat, wildfire smoke and other climate-driven problems on local rural communities. The projections would go out 20 years.

To gather the data, the county would enlist the help of UCSF Fresno, UC Merced, the Fresno-Madera Medical Society and Public Health Institute. Surveys and town-hall meetings would be part of the outreach.

Additionally, the county wanted to compare its findings with those of another study. That one is being undertaken by a coalition working on improving resilience toward climate change. The coalition is composed of Fresno Building Healthy Communities, Central California Environmental Justice Network, Healthy Fresno Air, Central Valley Health Policy Institute, and others.

Those groups, on the more liberal side of the political scale, proved troublesome to Supervisor Steve Brandau, who has his political origins in the conservative Tea Party. He said they “have sketchy résumés,” without elaborating. Never mind that the county would be in charge of its study.

Another conservative, Nathan Magsig, who represents Clovis and the county’s Sierra foothills, was worried that a climate-change study might not align with the needs of agriculture. He asked Luchini if the partners on the study “support preserving and expanding agriculture,” and if they had a “history of fighting to protect our agricultural economy.” Never mind that he is seeking higher office in Congress and can well use agriculture’s backing.

Reality check

The obstacles put up by Brandau and Magsig were just that — barriers to a straightforward proposal that, by the way, did not involve any county funding.

The silliness was furthered when Supervisor Brian Pacheco said he would want any research done “in house,” meaning the county would have to pay for it. He is a yes vote for such a thing?

The request to accept the grant was denied unanimously, meaning Supervisors Buddy Mendes and Sal Quintero joined in the nonsense.

County supervisors, get a grip. You want to face the possibility of no agriculture in the Valley in years hence if climate change is not dealt with?

All of the hooting and hollering over COVID rules will seem a quaint memory compared to the state and federal mandates that will come down if our world’s weather spins out of control, as the climate scientists suggest.

To turn away this grant proposal, from your own well-meaning public health director, was an affront to him, as well as the low-income citizens you purport to represent. Poor communities suffer more when the days are hot, water is scarce, and their wells run dry or become contaminated due to overpumping in drought.

Supervisors, put the grant proposal back on the agenda and approve it. Get the money, let Luchini lead the study, and start drawing up data to deal with the inevitable. Face reality and be the leaders you were elected to be.