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The week started with a Berkeley Town Hall on COVID-19 with Mayor Arreguin. I waited until late in the week when the recording would be posted and I could watch it on YouTube at 1.5 speed. By that time the U.S. had in 16 days added another million new cases of COVID-19 crossing 32,000,000 according to Johns Hopkins. I still prefer www.worldometers.info for my daily tracking with its easy to read spread sheet. The state by state incidence goes up and down, with hot spots appearing, being flattened and then popping up in a different location, all the while keeping the addition of another million on average of every 16 days since mid-February.

Dee Williams-Ridley, Berkeley City Manager, reported that the planning process for returning city staff to working on site will take about four months and that telecommuting (working remotely) for some will continue. While Williams-Ridley gave no speculation as to what degree telecommuting will continue in a post pandemic world, it is the big hovering question for all of us.

WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is planning around a robust commuting future that will spill over to support ferries and the proposed Berkeley Pier. The Ashby and North Berkeley BART housing projects are centered on a commuting population that will infuse new revenue and fill the trains. The $40,000,000 from Berkeley’s Measure O bonds will only provide enough funds to have 35% affordable housing at each station. That leaves 65% of these units to be filled by tenants with ample incomes for market rate apartments. 

At a non-city meeting I attended over a week ago, someone observed that people need to work remotely to decrease the impact on the environment. 

In the week that we remember for the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin on all charges, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, 

“We are seeing, indeed, that we live in a triple crisis: a climate crisis, a biodiversity crisis and a pollution crisis. And if we don’t act immediately, we are, as I said, on the verge of the abyss. There is no time to lose.” 

What caught my attention as I listened to the Democracy Now Tuesday news report was that global warming was now at 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels. 

When the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released their 2018 interim report, IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, global warming was at 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels. Monday’s stark warning came with a 0.4°C temperature rise in 2 years. At this rate we’ll be lucky if we aren’t at 1.5°C of temperature rise by 2025 let alone staying at or below 1.5°C for the future. 

This grim news was at the center of my sketchy two-page response to the LRDP (UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan) DEIR (Draft Environmental Impact Report) that was due Wednesday at 5 pm. My critique was the absence of innovation. UC Berkeley’s LRDP and DEIR are a vision of a future that is the same as the past , but with adding even more students, staff, faculty and buildings. 

I remember an old Bill Moyers show from 2013 where the impact of these small temperature rises was explained in an easy to understand language by scientist Anthony Leiserowitz. He said think about when you get sick, with a fever of 1° above normal you might feel a little off, but you can keep going, at 2° you are feeling sick with hot flashes and chills so you want to stay home in bed, at 3° you are really sick, at 4° and 5° your brain is slipping into a coma, you are close to death. Where is the planet on this scale? 1.2°C = 2.16°F, 1.5°C = 2.7°F, 2°C = 3.6°F. 

The City of Berkeley’s 75-page response to the LRDP DEIRk, signed by new Planning Director Jordon Klein (formerly in Economic Development), looked like preparation for a CEQA lawsuit with all the references to legal cases and attention to impacts on traffic, city services of the Berkeley Police and Fire Departments, wildfire risk, housing and the addition of 12,070 students, faculty and staff. 

At the core is that none of this moves past business as usual into a future that addresses the triple crisis of climate, biodiversity and pollution. 

The one momentous action in Berkeley came from Councilmember Kate Harrison on July 23, 2019, when with her team they lined up so many experts to speak in favor of banning natural gas in new buildings that the council voted unanimously to become the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas in new construction. That is the last of Berkeley as a climate leader. 

I am digging my way through the draft of Berkeley’s Existing Building Electrification Strategy. Since I eliminated all natural gas from my 103 year old house in 2019, I know a little something about what it takes. So far, I haven’t found anything that tells me that the strategy is grounded in reality, but then I am only on page 66 of 167. 

As to the flailing city council, in a 7 to 2 vote (Harrison and Taplin abstained) Berkeley imposed temporary rules that only legislation related to COVID-19 will move forward. All other new significant legislation will be recorded, but placed on an “unscheduled” list. The rule expires on July 27, 2021 unless it is shortened or extended by council vote. This was the first time I can recall that Taplin was not voting in lock step with Arreguin. 

In the same vote, the council majority ended their practice of allowing the public to comment through an email sent to the city clerk to be read aloud at the end of the public comment period of a council meeting. Not to worry, Mayor Arreguin declared that he can multitask: read emails and listen to public comment speakers at the same timeL. 

The rest of the week for the COB was the BAU (business as usual) mode. The budget and finance policy committee listened to the parade of departments giving their budget pitches. Committee Chair and former Councilmember Gordon Wozniak had the most cogent response to the police presentation, pointing out 1) $65,000,000 from the general fund goes to policing while only $2,000,000 goes to streets. 

Streets are a public safety issue. People get killed and injured on poorly maintained city streets. The Berkeley Police Department (BPD) is basically given a free ride. If BPD wants to maintain the very large amount of overtime they now collect ($6,751,000), then they should go to the voters. 2) There has to be a policy of budget discipline. Budget overruns need to be encumbrances that are paid back over three years. 

The week of city meetings closed with ZAB (Zoning Adjustment Board). On the consent agenda were three new single family homes on three large vacant lots in fire zone 2 in the hills waiting formal approval. You may recall single family homes are the exclusionary racist structures that city council just voted to expunge from Berkeley, except, of course, where... 

In closing , I finished the audiobook A Promised Land by Barack Obama. My walk partner and I continue our daily walks as we have for some eight years engaging in cordial conversation while keeping our eyes peeled to avoid sidewalk hazards in the Berkeley flats. It was my walk partner Miriam who introduced me to the delight of our wonderful local libraries. She stopped listening to A Promised Land for the exact reason I loved it. Her opinion: “we lived through it.” 

For me as an Obama critic living through those eight years, I loved hearing President Obama’s reflections. It’s a long 27 chapters. Yes, I do think differently about the presidency, at least parts of it. And, Michelle did succeed in her vow never to be photographed in a swimsuit.