San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/author/Ambika-Kandasamy/)
Community organizations say the systems in Chinatown to protect older populations during extreme weather are not enough to meet the needs that could arise. Without sufficient financial backing, the health of many older residents in the neighborhood could be threatened during extreme weather disasters. Similar scenarios could transpire in San Francisco’s other climate-vulnerable areas.
Chinatown faces higher threats during periods of extreme weather due to a range of socio-economic factors as well as the built environment. Within the neighborhood, older adults living in single-room occupancy buildings are among the populations at heightened risk. Reasons for this include physiological changes related to aging and financial barriers associated with making climate-resiliency adaptations to older buildings.
As climate change exacerbates droughts, wildfires, floods, storms and other catastrophes, community organizations in the city are racing to put systems in place to both measure its impacts on residents and to provide the tools they need to support themselves during disasters.
Mental health experts based in the San Francisco Bay Area are exploring the ensuing physical, mental and emotional effects of climate change, particularly on the lives of older adults.
Dr. Andrew Chang, an attending physician specializing in cardiology at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, is investigating how the biological mechanisms of aging and a warming world will affect the health of older adults.
For four years oil companies, airlines and ground transportation industry groups have petitioned California for exemptions from the state’s cap-and-trade greenhouse gas market, saying consumers would take the hit through higher prices at the pump and in stores. And in court they are still arguing that the state lacks the regulatory authority to compel participation. To a degree, they have succeeded. This story is part of a special report on climate change in the summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
California’s effort to ensure that the state receives low carbon electricity could end up increasing greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in the country, thanks to a practice known as contract reshuffling.Importing low-carbon electricity from out-of-state suppliers of renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower is one way California’s electric utilities can decrease their carbon emissions.
This story is part of a special report on climate change in the Summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
Sequestration isn’t just some Washington abstraction. It’s hitting home. The automatic federal budget cuts that rolled out on Friday — known as the sequester — are going to hurt the University of California, San Francisco. The world-class teaching hospital and research center receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. According to KQED’s “California Report,” the university’s vice chancellor for research, Keith Yamamoto, said that some laboratories have already instituted hiring freezes.
Proposition 37, the state ballot measure requiring labels on genetically modified food, has revived a long-simmering debate about whether genetically modified food harms human health or the environment. But it’s the claim by opponents that food prices would increase that is riling proponents.
Scientists have devised an intricate network of carbon dioxide sensors in the Bay Area that could offer objective measurements to evaluate which climate change initiatives are effective in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The sensors provide real-time local data on how much carbon dioxide is being emitted, said lead researcher Ronald Cohen, a professor of chemistry and of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.
