Apartments: more housing, better climate
7-minute read
This Week
Apartments: more housing, better climate
Heavier rain plus longer droughts means big problems
Solar and wind power helps struggling farmers
Replacing old wind turbines kills fewer wild birds
Building back better after big fires
Oil companies support Xavier Becerra
We should ban ads for dirty fuels
Brief climate news
Climate jargon explained
Contacts for Santa Cruz County
Unrelated advice
Click on the underlined links to learn more.
About me
I’m Rex Sanders, a science writer who’s lived in Santa Cruz County more than 20 years. Each week I check dozens of reliable sources for climate news that affects our county. Focused on how we can create a better future together.
Apartments: more housing, better climate
Proposed apartment building in downtown Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Local
Analysis: We need a lot more housing in Santa Cruz County, with prices climbing far too fast. New single-family houses cost too much to build, and we’re running out of land for them.
Apartment buildings in town are a great solution. A new report says they have many benefits. Prices are lower because land and construction costs are lower.
They create housing for many more people per acre, reducing pressure on farmland and forests. Plus homes in forests, also called the wildland-urban interface, are more likely to start wildfires, and burn down in them.
Most apartments are all-electric, making much less indoor and outdoor air pollution. All-electric buildings cost less to build, with lower utility bills if they use heat pumps. Apartments also have lower heating and cooling costs because they’re smaller and share walls.
Living in town means more walking, bicycling, and taking buses to nearby shops and jobs. So people drive less, creating less traffic than single-family homes.
In the last 6 years the population of the city of Santa Cruz has dropped about 2,400 people. Even though UCSC student numbers have increased. Capitola and Watsonville numbers are dropping, too. Lower cost apartments could attract more people back to these expensive towns.
Plus living in an apartment makes far less climate pollution than living in a house outside of town.
Quotes: “I think most people are willing to say: We want people to have homes,” said Amanda D. Smith, senior scientist at Project Drawdown.
“Apartments are the climate solution hiding in plain sight,” said Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute. “The main thing that we need to do is re-legalize apartments in a much larger area of our cities.”
Limitations: Many neighbors of planned apartment buildings stop them because apartments change “neighborhood character.” But I’ve watched Santa Cruz County become a rich playground with too many second homes and short-term rentals. Forcing teachers, police, firefighters, and families with children to move away and commute long distances. So neighborhood character is changing anyway.
Actions: Please support apartment buildings in Santa Cruz County, especially in your neighborhood. They reduce global overheating and climate change that hurts everyone. Whether you live in a house, your car, or on the streets.
Source: Matt Simon, Grist, 6-minute read
Heavier rain plus longer droughts means big problems
Left to right: Pajaro flooding in 2023, dried lake bed in Marin County. From California DWR and Wikimedia
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Analysis: California rainfall is coming in heavier storms, with longer droughts in between. So more rain runs off into the ocean instead of soaking into the earth. This dries out the soil, plants, and trees. Hurting water supplies and farming, and making flooding and wildfires worse. And it’s happening in large areas around the world. As climate change scientists had forecast.
Quotes: “The more concentrated rainfall you get, the drier you become,” said Justin Mankin at Dartmouth College. “We are not adapted to the climate we have, let alone the one that seems to be unfolding.”
Limitations: This new study was peer-reviewed and published in the scientific journal Nature. It’s one of the best journals we have. So this article should be very reliable.
Actions: Prepare for more droughts and heavy rainfall. Vote for climate friendly politicians at every level of government, from school boards to President. And ask everyone you know to do the same. Vote with your dollars and buy from companies that actually reduce climate pollution.
Source: Ian James, L.A. Times, 3-minute read
Solar and wind power helps struggling farmers
Farming under solar panels, from the article
Farmers and farming are under a lot of new pressures. The war we started with Iran has jumped the price of fertilizers, pesticides, and diesel fuel for tractors and water pumps. Other countries can’t afford to buy our crops because the cost of fuel and everything else is skyrocketing.
Add extreme weather from climate change, like droughts, floods, and severe storms, and many farmers can’t afford to farm anymore. So they sell the land to developers. And farm communities suffer as farming services shut down from lack of customers.
But many farmers install solar panels on land that doesn’t grow crops well. Or install them over crops, also called agrivoltaics. Some install wind turbines that tower over their farms without using very much land. Reliable income from solar power and wind power helps them keep farming.
These clean energy projects also create local jobs for construction and maintenance. And pay property taxes that local governments can use to make life better for everyone.
Santa Cruz County farmers should look into solar power and wind power to keep on farming. We can help them by supporting those projects when they need government approval.
Steve Hanley, Clean Technica, 6-minute read
Replacing old wind turbines kills fewer wild birds
Old, small wind turbines at Altamont Pass, California, Wikimedia
One of the wind farms in the Altamont Pass east of Livermore is replacing 400 old, small wind turbines with 19 large turbines that make the same total electricity. And the new turbines should kill fewer birds. They use cameras to detect them, then slow down or shut off the spinning blades. Even though wind turbines kill far fewer of our feathered friends than other human causes in the U.S.
Chart of U.S. wild bird deaths related to humans, after Wikipedia
Upgrading current wind farms could more than double the electricity they generate, and supply about one-fifth of U.S. electricity. While creating lots of jobs and reducing climate pollution. And wind turbines generate the most power when solar is dropping off around sunset.
We could use wind farms in Santa Cruz County to make electricity locally. And we’ll need more clean power as we switch to electric cars, trucks, homes, and businesses.
Justin Gerdes, Quitting Carbon, 6-minute read
Building back better after big fires
Example of a fire-resistant home and neighborhood, from the video
We must build back better after last year’s massive fires in Los Angeles. Houses built with concrete and steel won’t catch fire or spread fire like houses built with wood. And better houses don’t cost much more. Often the homeowners don’t even know that’s an option.
It’s like the old story about the Three Little Pigs. One pig built a house with straw, one with sticks, and one with bricks. Then the Big Bad Wolf blew down the straw and stick houses, but not the brick house.
The L.A. fires destroyed older wood homes, and most of the newer homes built to recent fire codes. But nearly all the homes built better than code survived, using much less wood, plus other changes.
It’s not too late to build back better in L.A. More than 16 months later, most replacement homes haven’t started construction.
We have similar problems after our own 2020 CZU fires. And with climate change getting worse, so will massive fires that burn through forests and suburbs. UC Santa Cruz and most of Scotts Valley were evacuated as the CZU fire approached. Luckily the weather changed and firefighters stopped it.
If you are rebuilding consider building back better. Plus all-electric homes help with climate change.
Jonathan Vigliotti, CBS Sunday Morning, 3-minute video
Oil companies support Xavier Becerra
The Chevron logo and Xavier Becerra, from Wikimedia and Wikimedia
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Xavier Becerra is one of many people running for governor in our June 2 primary. And large oil companies support him.
Chevron donated the maximum legal amount of $39,200 to his campaign. Doesn’t seem like much. Except …
“Chevron, they’re not the bad guy,” said Becerra last month at a public forum. “Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, the people of the state of California need Chevron.” And the California Resources Corporation, one of our state’s largest oil drillers, gave $500,000 to an independent group that supports Becerra.
While Becerra was California’s attorney general, he never investigated ExxonMobil’s lies about global overheating. Even after the L.A. Times and Inside Climate News reported on them. And after getting a petition with 70,000 signatures asking him to look into this. Our next attorney general sued ExxonMobil and other oil companies over their “decades-long campaign of deception.”
“I think Big Oil is choosing its governor,” said RL Miller of Climate Hawks Vote. “They are indicating very clearly which side they’re on.”
You should vote for Tom Steyer, the best candidate for helping with climate change.
Sammy Roth, Climate Colored Goggles, 2-minute read
We should ban ads for dirty fuels
Cigarette billboard in Times Square, New York, 1965, Wikimedia
In 1971, the U.S. banned TV and radio commercials for cigarettes and other tobacco products. Smoking was clearly proven to be dangerous to our health. Eventually the ban covered other kinds of ads, like billboards.
Now the city of Amsterdam in Holland has banned advertising for dirty fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. Because burning dirty fuels is clearly dangerous to our health, through indoor and outdoor air pollution, and climate pollution.
But this won’t happen in the U.S. until we get a new president and Congress. So vote for climate friendly politicians. And ask everyone you know to do the same.
Miranda Green, Atmos, 3-minute read
Brief climate news
State grants now available to prepare for wildfires. Includes good fires, pest management, replanting forests, and worker training. CAL FIRE, 2-minute read
Big electric trucks can get big rebates in California. Replacing dirty diesel engines means cleaner air and less climate pollution. California Air Resources Board, 4-minute read
Climate jargon explained
Agrivoltaics: Farming under solar panels
Clean energy: Cheaper energy from the sun, wind, dams, or underground heat, that creates very little air pollution or climate pollution
Clean power: Cheaper electric power from clean energy
Climate: Long-term weather pattern somewhere
Climate change: Long-term changes to Earth’s weather caused by climate pollution, including global overheating and too much ocean acid
Climate friendly: Better for our climate than other choices
Climate pollution: Gases in the air that trap the Sun’s heat and cause climate change, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, also called greenhouse gases or carbon pollution
Coal: Fuel from underground rocks that adds climate pollution when it’s mined, and when it’s burned for power or heat
Dirty fuel: Coal, oil, gasoline, diesel, propane, or natural gas that creates air pollution and climate pollution, also called fossil fuel
Drought: Unusually long time without rain or snow
Electric car: Car that runs on an electric motor and a large rechargeable battery
Electric truck: Truck that runs on an electric motor and a large rechargeable battery
Electric vehicle (EV): Any kind of vehicle that runs on an electric motor and a large rechargeable battery, including cars, trucks, trains, and boats
Global overheating: Rapid increase in worldwide temperatures starting around 1970, also called global warming
Good fire: Carefully setting a fire to prevent fires, reduce fire damage, and improve forest health, also called controlled burn, prescribed burn, prescribed fire, or cultural fire
Heat pump: Two-way air conditioner that can cool or heat a building, heat a hot water tank, or boil water for factories
Methane: Climate pollution gas 80 times worse than carbon dioxide, second-worst cause of climate change, but it doesn’t last as long
Natural gas: Fuel pumped from underground, almost all methane, that adds climate pollution when it leaks, and when it’s burned for power or heat
Solar panel: Panel that turns sunlight into electricity
Solar power: Clean electricity made from sunlight, mostly using solar panels
Wildland urban interface (WUI): Area where homes and businesses are mixed with forests
Wind farm: Group of wind turbines in one area
Wind power: Clean electricity made from wind blowing through wind turbines
Wind turbine: Tall machine with long fan-like blades that makes clean electricity when the wind blows
More at climatejargon.com
Contacts for Santa Cruz County
City council: Watsonville, Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, or Capitola, depending on where you live
County supervisors
County Resource Conservation District
Regional Transportation Commission (SCCRTC)
Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) and PG&E
State Assembly: Gail Pellerin, Dawn Addis, or Robert Rivas, depending on where you live
State Senate: John Laird
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Air Resources Board (CARB), and Energy Commission (CEC)
Governor Gavin Newsom
U.S. Congress: Jimmy Panetta or Zoe Lofgren, depending on where you live
U.S. Senate: Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff
Unrelated advice
The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
John F. Kennedy