Events
A BERKELEY ACTIVIST'S DIARY: Week Ending July 17
It was around 1970 on one of those trips from visiting my parents when I looked out into the night sky through the plane window and felt the thrill of seeing the expanse of bright lights down on the ground as we descended for the landing. The lights were Los Angeles and I was on my way home.
A lot has happened since 1970 beside recognizing that those Los Angeles night lights are light pollution, damaging ecosystems and habitat, a factor in the sixth extinction and laced with links to breast cancer, colon cancer, thyroid cancer and macular degeneration.
Since 1970, we’ve lost nearly a third of the birds in North America. We read that micro plastics are everywhere, in our food, in our bodies, and the science hasn’t caught up yet with what havoc those microplastics inside us might be causing. We know about giant garbage patches in the ocean, animals being attracted to eating plastic and dying. We know or should know that much of plastic recycling is wishcycling.
In 1970 the CO2 was only 325 ppm. The famous Exxon paper was still seven years away.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the fix we’re in with the global average temperature of 1.6°C above preindustrial levels for the twelve months from June 2023 through May 2024, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Eunice Newton Foote wrote in 1856 in the American Journal of Science that the heat trapping ability of CO2 “would give to our earth a high temperature.” It was in 1896 that Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius recognized that burning coal could increase carbon dioxide and warm the climate. Sixty-seven years later Edward Teller warned of global warming at a 1959 petroleum conference “Energy and Man” and President Johnson was warned in 1965. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-1959
On July 16, 2024, CO2 was measured as 425.79 ppm.
On the night of October 4 and in the early hours of darkness on October 5, 2023 before sunrise, nine hundred sixty-four (964) migrating song birds, thirty-three (33) species died in one night from the combination of night light pollution and glass at McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago, Illinois. It was a shocking preventable event.
In the book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scoot Weidensaul wrote about how, through the use of tiny GPS devices on the backs of migrating birds, birds are being pulled off their migration flyways by the bright lights of cities.
It is not just birds that are impacted by artificial night light.
In 1970 washing the family car still required “bug removal” to do the job.
Insects are in rapid decline. Habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species and climate change all have a role. The article “Light pollution is a driver of insect declines” covers the overlooked role of artificial light at night (ALAN). ALAN causes insect declines due to affecting insect movement, foraging, reproduction, and predation.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320719307797
Douglas Tallamy, entomologist, who speaks around the country on the importance of native plants often starts his talks quoting from E.O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world.”
Ecosystems can’t function without the millions of insects that make up the base of the food chain. Insects aren’t just the pollinators. The biosphere would rot without Insects as the decomposers.
If we know that birds, insects, amphibians, plants and mammals are impacted by artificial light at night, what about us? We are mammals.
The impact of ALAN on human health was what consent agenda item 13 “Community Health Commission Comments on Dark Skies” addressed.
Following the linked studies and references within those studies in the report on the Dark Skies Ordinance referral makes for very interesting reading on ALAN and breast cancer, thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer, diabetes and macular degeneration.
So where was Berkeley City Council when given the opportunity to vote on a lukewarm referral on a Dark Skies Ordinance?
This Berkeley City Council has a mayor who brags how advanced Berkeley is as a progressive leader; it was that same mayor, Arreguin, who was the first to voice his opposition to agenda item 13 on the Dark Skies Ordinance.
Council rejected in a seven to two vote to add the Community Health Commission comments to the Dark Skies Ordinance that has been languishing in the Planning Commission to do list since November 2019 and to also refer to the City Manager to request the Department of Public Works implement a moratorium on the installation of street and building lighting exceeding 3,000 Kelvin.
Only Councilmembers Bartlett and Tregub stood in support for the Dark Skies Ordinance referral. Councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin, Humbert, Wengraf and Mayor Arreguin all voted no. Councilmembers Hahn and Lunaparra abstained.
Last summer I joined my childhood friend in Palm Springs for a road trip to Santa Fe with many stops along the way and home again. Our last nights were in Cottonwood, Arizona. Cottonwood is a delightful small city. We had two terrific dinners at local restaurants. The two of us walked around town late in the evening after dinner, hours after sunset, with the night sky above us. It never occurred to me that the well lit streets and sidewalks with lighting where we needed it were in a recognized, designated International Dark-Sky Place.
It was after I got home and attended a Dark Skies webinar that I discovered my friend and I spent our last night in an internationally recognized Dark Sky Community. Cottonwood became a designated location of the International Dark-Sky Places in 2019 four years before my friend and I arrived.
The City of Cottonwood website states, “Since 2016 it has been the City of Cottonwood’s mission to obtain the designation of a Dark-Sky Community to promote and protect our dark skies…Light pollution effects the world as a whole. Excess light disrupts the natural day-night pattern and has negative impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife and human health. The City of Cottonwood is committed to protecting the night skies for present and future generations.” http://cottonwoodaz.gov/747/Dark-Sky-Community
There is a misconception that a Dark Skies Ordinance means our streets will be dangerously dark. Protecting the environment and our own health doesn’t mean the Department of Public Works can’t install lighting. What it does is give direction to not installing the wrong kind of lighting, adding to night light pollution, and to instead direct light to where it is needed, with the lowest amount of brightness to do the job.
Do street lights three stories high above the tree canopy direct lighting to where we need it? Do street lights from the top of tall light poles glaring down at us put light where we need it? I would answer both of those with a resounding no.
The new Director of Public Works Terrance Davis wasn’t called on to comment on night light and the Dark Skies Ordinance referral.
I have no idea where Director Davis stands on the impact of night light pollution or where he stands on other environmental and climate measures that cross into public works like tree canopy and heat island effect and water runoff and permeable paving. His profile on Linkedin and the internet doesn’t offer a clue to where he might stand on climate change, rising ground water with sea level rise, protecting ecosystems and habitat.
As for our councilmembers that couldn’t bring themselves to support a Dark Skies Ordinance was this ordinary ignorance or as Minnijean Brown-Trickey from the Little Rock Nine would say, “Profound Intentional Ignorance”.
I certainly expect more from our councilmembers. If we were truly a progressive city we would be like Cottonwood, Arizona actively pursuing the designation as a Dark Skies Place.
And, certainly a progressive City Council wouldn’t be sacrificing such an easily mitigated hazard to our health and the health of ecosystems, just to give free rein to developers if that is what lurks beneath the languishing Dark Skies Ordinance.
I always learn something when I make it to the Commission on Disability. And it is not just that commissioner Helen Walsh sent me the link to the National Center on Disability and Journalism. https://ncdj.org/style-guide/ These commissioners should be everywhere. They truly are wonderful and deeply knowledgeable.
Rex Brown, City of Berkeley DEI Officer, was the first speaker at the Commission on Disability.
I didn’t know Berkeley had hired a DEI Officer.
Programs on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are what governors in the South like DeSantis are banning from education calling such programs discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.
If Trump is re-elected DEI is on the hit list for elimination along with the FDA, EPA, NOAA, Department of Education, school lunch programs, contraception, marriage equality, no fault divorce, plus so much more in the Mandate for Leadership Project 2025.
In Brown’s answer to the question on why he took the DEI Officer job in Berkeley, it boiled down to his perception of Berkeley as a progressive city.
Someone (I didn’t catch who) responded that Berkeley as progressive city was past history not current.
Brown was hired November 27, 2023. DEI is a start-up program and I didn’t get the sense that there is a vision to where this program is going or what it should encompass. It didn’t sound like anyone had filled Brown in on the Mason-Tillman Report and contracting habits in Berkeley, the report on biased policing, the Police Bicycle Team and racist texting.
Brown had been filled in enough that he couldn’t talk about the Disability Rights Advocates lawsuit against the City of Berkeley for disability discrimination. It isn’t just the Commission on Disability commissioners who are feeling the discrimination from the heel dragging of providing remote access (ZOOM) to City of Berkeley public meetings. This is front and center to DEI.
The closed captioning for City Council meetings is definitely lacking of late. I notice it more now that I have become a heavy user of voice recognition software in zoom meetings where it is made available and more importantly when the meeting is set up to allow attendees to save the transcript. The City Council and Zoning Adjustment Board meetings use a live transcriber (captioner). The City Council Policy Committees use voice recognition software and the commissions, that is where the gap in access lacks citywide.
The next presentation came from AC Transit Planner Crystal Wang on the proposed Transit-Supportive Design Guidelines, i.e. bus stop design and its multimodal integration with paratransit, sidewalk users, and bikeways. We can only hope Wang took good notes as the commissioners were full of suggestions to improve the design of bus stops. These meetings need to be recorded.
The Commission Chair Rena Fischer who is a wheelchair user said she can get to Point Isabel with her senior aged dog using Paratransit, but to get home by AC Transit it is a mile across the park to the bus stop and a six hour wait.
When it comes to transit, I often complain it doesn’t get me to where I want to go. Commissioner Fisher pointed out the other dilemma:When transit may get you to where you want to go, the amount of time waiting for it makes it impractical before even considering the location of the bus stops and other factors.
At an AC Transit presentation,I heard some months ago, it isn’t just budget that is impacting service. Another problem is there are not enough bus drivers filling the ranks to replace the bus drivers that are retiring.
I thoroughly support making bus stops accessible, but I am not an enthusiast of spending millions of dollars on infrastructure if we don’t have the other pieces to make it a functional system. Dedicated bus lanes do make it easier for buses to be efficient and on time. Buses have the flexibility over rail to change routes which isn’t always an advantage when that route change is a takeaway instead of an addition.
When it comes to door to door convenience, mass transit is in tough competition for those who can use Uber and Lyft. A friend who uses the GoGo Grandparent program for seniors 70 and older and disabled had saved up enough in her ride “bank” to use to GoGo Grandparent to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I could have driven – I have a car, but the service was amazing. The ride home arrived nearly instantaneously not even the expected three minutes.
It is great for the users, but I am not so sure the drivers are getting a fair deal. (I’ve been reading Rana Foroohar’s book Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed It’s Founding Principles – and All of Us. Chapter 8 is The Uberization of Everything)
I left the Commission on Disability early to catch the Will Knight Presentation and Q&A on the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson Supreme Court decision. It was promised to be recorded, but Carole Marasovic reported at the Agenda Committee that city staff lost the recording. Such a shame.
Knight gave an excellent presentation. He saw the Grants Pass ruling as narrow which leaves some ways out for homeless persons. However, as we observe, this Supreme Court with its secure six to three majority doesn’t leave the courts as answer.
Councilmember Lunaparra, submitted an emergency agenda item at council on July 9 after the Grants Pass ruling stating, “Adopt a Resolution reaffirming the City of Berkeley’s commitments to enact no additional restrictions to effectively prohibit sleeping by an unhoused individual if there is no shelter space available in the jurisdiction for the unhoused individual to sleep, to not impose criminal penalties for sleeping in public spaces without first making an offer of shelter, and to construct, repurpose, and offer non-congregate shelter and permanent housing options whenever possible.”
The resolution lost in a four to five vote. Taplin, Bartlett, Tregub, and Lunaparra voted for the resolution, Kesarwani and Humbert voted against and Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin abstained.
At the beginning of the council meeting Kesarwani, Wengraf and Humbert all voted against even bringing up the resolution for consideration.
alternate motion on the resolution for the unhoused was to refer the item to the City Attorney for analysis and to schedule a closed session for consideration of the issue. The impression was left that such a meeting could take place before summer recess begins on July 31.
The City Attorney had answered yes to
question whether an analysis could be completed within two weeks to precede a closed council session.
The motion passed in an 8 to 1 vote. Lunaparra voted no. Whether anything gets done before summer recess, we shall see.
The votes on Lunaparra’s emergency resolution on the unhoused came at the end of the council meeting after the report on “Gap Analysis of Berkeley’s Homelessnesss system of Care” by Peter Radu from the City Manager’s Office who introduced himself as the Neighborhood Services Manager and Zoe Klingman from Berkeley Public Policy, The Goldman School.
For all the bragging coming from Mayor Arreguin and last evening from Sophie Hahn, candidate for mayor, at the mayor’s forum on how well Berkeley is doing on homelessness, there are still big gaps (more on the mayor’s forum in my next Activist’s Diary).
The average wait for an unhoused person to get permanent housing after being referred to the waiting list is 280 days (more than nine months). Sixty-six percent of the funds that support homelessness services come from Measure P which according to the presentation charts have been declining since Fiscal Years 2021 – 2022. The recommendation in the supplemental report summary is in bold, “Berkeley should look for opportunities to increase funding for homelessness services and affordable housing.”
The Point-in-Time homeless count which is done every two years nationwide at the end of January counted 844 homeless individuals in Berkeley in 2024 down from 1,057 in 2022. It is an improvement that the city ‘s electeds celebrated.
There will be a boost in affordable housing with the two BART Housing projects, but those are years away. There are affordable housing projects in the pipeline/planning but when rent for a studio apartment in Berkeley can fall somewhere between $1595 in an old building to over $3000 in a new building that doesn’t give much hope for the unhoused. There is no place for someone with low income to go except on the street unless they can get subsidized housing or stuff more people into an apartment that can reasonably expected to live there.
If the Republicans clean up in the fall election as they are now projected to do, the poor are going to have harder times ahead.
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