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Glynda Glover, 82, from Kentucky had this to say about her uninhabitable apartment and being in a shelter, “I’ll stay here until we get back to whatever normal is, and I don’t know what normal is anymore.”

It is December. When I was growing up in the Midwest at this time of year we would have snow on the ground and definitely be in our warm winter clothes with temperatures at or below freezing. When I pulled up the news on Wednesday, December 15^,I was shocked to see the first ever recorded December tornado in Minnesota. It hit the tiny town of Hartland about 15 miles from where a childhood friend lives. And, the temperature was in the mid 60’s.

This wasn’t the end of the climate fueled events on Wednesday. There were 21 tornados across Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin with five confirmed dead. There were hurricane gale winds that caused wildfires in Kansas and dust storms in Colorado that reduced visibility to zero. This was after the Tuesday evening Berkeley City Council meeting, but this is no excuse for Council, because look at what happened before Tuesday evening. 

It was the Friday, December 10, 2021 meeting before the final Berkeley City Council meeting of the year that a Quad-State Tornado crossed four states in four hours and lofted debris up to 38,000 feet in the air, with reports of people in Ohio finding old family photos in their yards and on their cars which had blown out of demolished homes in Kentucky. The death count keeps climbing, but by Tuesday it was estimated as over 70 with 100 still missing. There were at least 30 tornados Friday evening into Saturday, including initial reports that one traveled over 220 miles across Kentucky. Another hit the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois and killed six people. 

These super storms occurred with just a little over 1°C of global warming over pre-industrial levels. If these are the kinds of storms we get with 1°C of warming, what happens when we cross 1.5°C of warming–or what if we blow by 1.5°C and the temperature rise keeps climbing? Do we ignore greenhouse gas emissions and stand by as we watch CO2 continue to rise, now at 416.67 ppm? The climate-fueled super storms of the last week are not, of course, the only climate-fueled extreme events of the last year. There were the wildfires, with the heat dome over the northwest this last summer that killed over 1000 and the heat dome that reached Lytton, British Columbia, which burned to the ground after hitting 121°F. There are the atmospheric river rain storms and flash floods and mud slides. 

With all this, how is it that the Berkeley City Council could NOT find $200,000 Tuesday evening in their mid-year budget allocation, the Annual Appropriation Ordinance (AAO), to kick start a climate project? 

Councilmember Harrison was asking for just $200,000, the amount staff requested to start organizing the Pilot Existing Building Electrification. 

You might ask, why does it even matter? The answer is, we are living right now in a climate emergency crisis--no action is too small, and when cities act and others follow it gets big. 

The ban on natural gas in new construction that Kate Harrison ushered through the council July 16, 2019, started a movement that has spread beyond the Bay Area and held up in court. We could be doing the same with building electrification, but instead this city, with a mayor that declared on November 30, 2021 the importance of responding to climate, has once again put this project that was first presented in 2019 on hold. Oh, Mayor Arreguin said it will be a priority in May, but actions speak louder than the bluster of words. 

Starting with a defined pilot, this one of $1,500,000 for building electrification is the way to start. The problem isn’t finding the dollars in the budget to fund the building electrification, the problem is the will to do it. And that is where this mayor Jesse Arreguin, this city manager Dee Williams-Ridley, and Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Sophie Hahn, Susan Wengraf, Rigel Robinson and Lori Droste all failed. 

Rather than getting too far into the budget weeds and fuzzy accounting, Andrea Mullarkey, Berkeley Librarian sums it all up so clearly in her public comment at the beginning of Video Part 2, December 14. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx 

Councilmembers threw in one wrench after another, and some were noticeably silent like Ben Bartlett, Terry Taplin and Rigel Robinson. Kesarwani opined on how there is too much uncertainty and said that a previously funded project that didn’t move forward shouldn’t be unfunded. Hahn wanted to understand the numbers and had nothing else to say. 

Arreguin asked about the $200,000 allocated to the Civic Center, which Harrison quickly agreed to postponing. And, then a round began on the Civic Center from the uninformed who have not attended the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meetings. The uninformed have not heard the presentations by Marc Steyer, SE from Tipping Engineering, on their seismic study and Elmar Kapfer from Public works on the progress of the water intrusion study. 

Gehl was the firm hired to assess the condition and needs of the Maudelle Shirek building ( old City Hall) and the Veterans’ Building. They pocketed $375,000 without ever doing the seismic or water intrusion studies. Gehl did produce a lengthy report and flowery vision, but not the needed studies. That was left to the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) and COB Public Works to clean up. Eleanor Hollander, who was the COB project manager assigned to work with Gehl, has not attended the CCCC meetings. 

The $200,000 according to Hollander is for further design work. Progressing on design is really premature without the Tipping seismic studies of both buildings and those studies offer opportunities for additional space. The Veterans’ Building is more unstable than Maudelle Shirek. The water intrusion study found the roof on Maudelle Shirek must be replaced. Simply repairing the roof was considered and discarded, because of the condition and design of the roof. These studies, findings and proposals are now progressing to cost estimates. 

Wengraf opined about the Civic Center buildings as demolition through neglect, and imagined housing built on top of the Veterans’ Building. Adding housing on top of the Veterans’ Building is out of the question—it has already been rejected by the Veterans even before this most recent report. 

Actually, the whole Gehl vision should be categorized as demolition by design. The recommendation to the City Council of which Eleanor Hollander was a part was to bring the Civic Center buildings to the Seismic Performance Level of Life Safety (LS). 

What does this mean? 

Life Safety: The building does not collapse. Life threatening falling hazards are mitigated. Egress routes are maintained out of the building. The building could be severely damaged and may be beyond repair after the event. 

Not only did Gehl use old ideas instead of contracting for current seismic studies, but they did not consider the intermediate level of seismic performance, which is to stabilize the buildings so not only are routes to exit the building maintained, but also building damage is repairable. The repair may take weeks to months, but whatever has been invested, and that amounts to millions even for the bare-bones life safety, is not a total loss. 

In the end, after hours of discussion and public comments, action on climate lost. 

Wednesday evening, I attended the Friends of Nature Zoom organized by Erin Diehm with Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Waterfront and Recreation presenting the Berkeley 2050 plan. I’ve heard several 2050 presentations as part of commission meeting agendas, but the Friends of Nature group questions and comments were very different. The real takeaway was planning for and integrating nature needs to be at the front end not an afterthought. 

Robin Grossinger from the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), emphasized science-based decision-making in choosing trees and urban planning and referenced SFEI work with the City of San Jose. San Jose is just one of multiple SFEI projects on the Peninsula. Re-Oaking Silicon Valley is another. https://www.sfei.org/projects/re-oaking 

Scott Ferris mentioned the grant for tree planting in Berkeley, then someone stated the tree plantings she had seen in Berkeley are pistache. Pistache may be drought tolerant, but they are non-native and do not support local species. Pistache would not fit what Robin Grossinger emphasized, basing choices in science, science that encompasses ecological health, biodiversity. 

I thought of the article I received from Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer, Office of Economic Development, How Planning for Birds Makes Our Communities and Economies Healthier. https://www.planning.org/planning/2021/summer/how-planning-for-birds-makes-our-communities-and-economies-healthier/ 

I can’t report on Wednesday’s Independent Redistricting Commission, the Planning Commission Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) or the goBerkeley SmartSpace Community meeting as too much was scheduled at the same time and I attended a presentation by Kristina Hill on sea level rise and groundwater. 

Thursday evening at the Design Review Committee (DRC) the only project for review was 600 Addison, the Berkeley Commons research and development campus. The developers have done a lot to improve the project from the first submission. It will be 100% native plants except on the back wall next to the railroad tracks. Erin Diehm spoke to not using pesticides and no neonicotinoids. https://xerces.org/pesticides/understanding-neonicotinoids Diehm’s information was accepted into the final conditions for the project. 

Steve Finacom was intent on speaking to the proximity of 600 Addison to Aquatic Park and sea level rise (SLR). Steve asked me for my opening comments on what is predicted for Berkeley. I answered that Kristina Hill’s presentation was not specific to Berkeley, but SLR planning is now for 3 feet by 2050 and 10.5 feet by 2100. Steve kept pressing the development team on SLR and their planning. They are building to the known flood zone (for 2021). The trees and buildings have been moved up to a higher elevation on the site, and then the proposers stated they couldn’t imagine SLR where they would be underwater. 

The bigger question asked of the developers was, what did they expect to happen when water comes lapping at their doors? Does the City come to the rescue? Heavy rains already make Bolivar Drive and Aquatic Park a walking in water experience; flooding is here. Other DRC members said that SLR wasn’t within the Design Review Committee purview. Another climate question left on the table for the City. 

If you have a burning need to go over any old commission agendas or minutes get them now. Anne Burns, DRC Secretary, informed us that in January the new websites will be activated for the commissions and all of the prior meeting records will be moved to Records Online (not the easiest to navigate). 

Science fiction is far from my usual genre of reading, but a friend suggested the climate-themed The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was a real push to get through it in a week. The timing was a fitting choice given the climate fueled extreme weather events of the last week. It seemed whenever I put down the book there was more news on another catastrophic climate charged event or another article on accelerated melting of the glaciers in Antarctica. That with our city council’s failure to act on the request to fund the climate pilot electrification project makes The Ministry For the Future a very fitting read. 

Last week I closed my Diary with the book Empire of Pain, Purdue Pharma, how the Sacklers had slipped billions into their greedy pockets as Purdue Pharma, their privately held drug company, the maker of oxycontin, declared bankruptcy. There was a turn of events this week on December 16, 2021. The bankruptcy settlement provision to grant the Sackler family members immunity was thrown out. If you read Empire of Pain you will be enormously pleased that the Sacklers are not off the hook, but, of course, there are appeals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/16/purdue-pharma-sackler-ruling/ 

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