Public Comment

If you want to appreciate how California SB 9 and SB 10 will change the local climates go out on a warm day and stand on the sidewalk in the bright sunshine and then walk into the shade under the canopy of a Western Sycamore or large majestic oak. It’s hard to miss the difference between the cooling of majestic trees and the heat that radiates from sidewalk baked in a full sun. Add in buildings that collect and radiate heat and you have the “heat island effect.”  

Trees need space to grow. Eliminating green space by covering land with buildings that soak up heat is the future Toni Atkins and Scott Weiner in SB 9 and Scott Weiner in SB 10 have planned for us. It’s not a good one and it looks like Buffy Wicks will vote for this. Let’s remember our own councilmembers Bartlett, Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin and Mayor Arreguin all declared their allegiance to SB 9 on June 15^th by refusing to support a letter to the State legislature in opposition to SB 9. 

The week after the 4^th of July was light in meetings. I attended only two of the nine I listed in my weekly Activist’s Calendar. 

If I had listened to the Thom Hartmann podcast from July 6 and let the end of the Centers for Disease Control’s recording of breakthrough COVID infections, except in cases of hospitalization or death, sink in before the Saturday outdoor birthday party, I might have reconsidered attending. The party was over food, so of course no one had on masks. We were all vaccinated so that was reassuring. 

What we know is that the incidence of COVID across the country, and even here in California, has nearly doubled in the last two weeks. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ What we don’t know is what percent are breakthrough infections and what percent of breakthrough infections result in Long Haul Syndrome. We don’t have good statistics on the incidence of Long Haul Syndrome in people who are unvaccinated. I’ve seen reports ranging from 10% to 33%. UC Davis gives an alarming incidence of Long Haul Syndrome: “More than one in four COVID-19 patients develop long-haul symptoms lasting for months – even if they had mild cases…” https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/studies-show-long-haul-covid-19-afflicts-1-in-4-covid-19-patients-regardless-of-severity/2021/03#:~:text=Doctors%20have%20been%20estimating%20one,since%20February%20confirm%20that%20range. 

What we also know now is that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne and catching COVID through touching some object is very unlikely, though washing our hands is still a very good idea. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253578 

I did hear a lot at the birthday party about how people are sick of zoom and anxious to be meeting in person. In much the same breath no one was looking forward to all the time lost for travel. I seem to be in the minority here. I happen to like zoom. I do understand that for some a stable network and possession of a working computer is an issue, but meetings in person limit attendance too, to those who are physically able and have the means to travel to the location. 

The Berkeley City Council’s Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) met on Wednesday on one item, an ordinance to regulate plastic bags at retail and food service establishments. I don’t know about you, but I am drowning in plastic bags. The ordinance is a good beginning, but there is so much more to do to get the presence of plastic everywhere under control. No vote was taken. One more FITES meeting is planned before council goes on recess July 28^th. 

For weeks now, I have been attending Zoning Adjustment Board and Design Review Committee meetings to request that projects require bird safe glass, dark skies and planned landscapes, include native plants, only to realize that I have missed the most important part of the message on native plants. It all came together when I saw the announcement “Control Garden Pests Naturally” with pictures of leaves with bites out of them offered through the Ecology Center. I sent off my email along with some references: 

“The sign of a successful gardener is a garden with a minimum of 70% native plants and plants with bites taken out of those leaves. If we only go so far as putting native plants in our yards, but then kill the bugs they support, we are breaking apart the ecosystem we sought to create.  

Whether bugs on plants are killed with pesticides or killed with so called “natural” non-toxic pest control techniques, we are still disrupting ecosystems and putting the survival of birds and other species at risk by taking away their food. Bugs are food for birds. Even hummingbirds need caterpillars to feed their nestlings…” 

Caterpillar: It’s What’s for Dinner https://nestwatch.org/connect/news/caterpillar-its-whats-for-dinner/ 

Over 2.9 billion birds have disappeared in North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/ 

Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118 

A better webinar would be “How to get over hating bugs and loving them as food for birds.” Another could be “Getting rid of ornamental plants and gardening for songbirds and pollinators.” 

Two years ago, I used to stop at Allston Way between McKinley and Grant on my walk home from the Y to watch the dozens of pipevine caterpillars crawling and chewing the soft leaves of the pipevine. The pipevine plant and pipevine caterpillar have evolved together so that without that specific native plant there are no pipevine swallowtail butterflies. The vine was cut down to a stump to make way for a new fence and though it has started to come back I saw only one pipevine caterpillar this year. 

It is not just Monsanto’s Roundup and the other herbicides and pesticides that are killing off insects and contributing to that 2.9 million missing birds. We can look in the mirror. It doesn’t have to end this way and that is the message of my favorite webinars from Douglas Tallamy. If we just cut lawns by half, plant native plants, keep our hands off the bug spray and let nature take hold, we can turn the loss of insects and birds around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHURaRv78QY 

Bayer Healthcare, LLC which purchased Monsanto June 7, 2018 is making the rounds of city meetings to promote the proposed 30 year Development Agreement with the City of Berkeley and their suggested significant community benefits. A number of people called in to the Zoning Adjustment Board meeting Thursday night to say the offered benefits were inadequate including Loni Hancock, former Berkeley Mayor. 

I said there were others who could speak better to community benefits and asked that as the purchaser of Monsanto, that they plant demonstration gardens of native plants that grow and support insects without the use of Round-up. Bayer is on the docket again this week at the Planning Commission (significant community benefits) on Wednesday and the Design Review Committee (project design) on Thursday. 

In closing, Nikole Hannah-Jones created quite a stir as one of the journalists with the 1619 Project examining how slavery has shaped America. Some on the political right have been whipped into hysteria over the 1619 Project and critical race theory. Critical race theory was created four decades ago by legal scholars as: ”an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in America’s laws and institutions.”