Vote No on CA Proposition 36

Do you remember when California spent more money on building and operating prisons than on higher education?  I remember.  Those were terrible times for every one involved except for the prison profiteers. 

[We are still grappling with the aftermath as public university tuitions soared, UCs made up lost revenue by admitting out-of-state students instead of qualified in-state students, and student loan balances approached the size of mortgages for their parent's generation.]

Rehabilitation and reintegration into society are hard to explain in a soundbite. They are not as catchy as "3 Strikes and you are out!", but they have more evidence showing that they work and they are more cost-effective. 

I am not going to link to that awful LA Times article about the person who was let out of prison, only to commit a murder. You can always find a few recidivism stories. But, you will rarely find a news story about rehabilitated prisoners who successfully reintegrate into society because they very understandably need their privacy. 

You will also not read stories of the children whose parent came home from prison, possibly on "supervised release" where they wear a GPS ankle bracelet. Even a parent on supervised release can perform childcare so that their co-parent can go to work. This can prevent a family from falling into poverty and repeating the cycle. 

Crime statistics show that crime is going down at the same time that we are using evidence-based principles to decide appropriate punishments/rehabilitation, and to reduce prison populations. This is the time to stay the course. Do not harm families, bankrupt the state, and steal our futures again. 

Criminal justice reform, just like climate change mitigation and adaptation, requires clear-eyed analysis of the complex issues, and consistent practice of evidence-based solutions. It takes time, but it is worth it. 

While you are voting, please reflect upon why it is easier to build prisons than college dorms and vote for people who will help build college dorms and more housing in general. 

Need more convincing? Read League of Women Voters California's recommendation of why to vote no on 36. 

Read all of LWVC's Ballot Measure Recommendations. 

Open Space is Working Land

The framing of Eastern Sierra housing crunch: With all this open land, why are so many workers living in vans? made me scream internally in rage. 

In Mono County "more than 90 percent of the land is owned by conservation-minded government agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and, most controversially, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power." 

Public open land is usually not developed for a reason. Read the legal definition of Open Space. Most importantly, Open Space has value for ecosystem services (that may indirectly help humans). 

Open space for the preservation of natural resources including, but not limited to, areas required for the preservation of plant and animal life, including habitat for fish and wildlife species; areas required for ecologic and other scientific study purposes; rivers, streams, bays and estuaries; and coastal beaches, lakeshores, banks of rivers and streams, and watershed lands.

One of the reasons for acquiring US Forest Service lands is to protect watersheds for downstream users (farmers and urban users). If you don't see any buildings or roads on it, the land is working as intended. I don't want to get into a debate about whether it is appropriate to divert water from the Eastern Sierras for the City of Los Angeles. But, if this is the headwaters for a water supply (one of many) for 4 Million people, it is correct to protect the upper watershed from housing development & the roads necessary to service the housing. The USFS lands protect watersheds for other downstream users, including wildlife and farmers. 

Mono County is over 2 million acres, 94% of which is publicly-owned.  This leaves 120,000 acres of privately-owned land that could potentially be used for housing. About 7,500 people reside in the Mammoth Lakes region and another 35,000 visit annually. You can easily find enough space to house workers if you build densely enough in already-developed areas. The only thing preventing you is imagination and bad zoning. (You will also have to do some infrastructure work, but it will be much less than if you continued the sprawl development pattern.)

The population density of Mono County is 4 people per square mile. Even if you add in visitors (vacation home owners), the density is still < 20 ppl/sq mi. In contrast, my census tract in suburban Los Angeles County has 18,000/sq mi. If you use only the 6% of private land, that's still only ~500 ppl/sq mi. I know that some of the land is not suitable for housing, but there is still lots of room to build infill housing if the local government were to allow it. 

Not allowing denser housing in town, near the jobs, is causing the homelessness euphemistically called "Van Life". Small towns can build social workforce housing so that workers won't have to compete with vacation home buyers. Salida, CO is doing that. They are building UP--allowing mixed use housing above downtown commercial space. They purchased land downtown to build a 100% affordable workforce housing project. Why don't the Mono and Inyo county towns do something similar? Infill workforce housing of < 100 units is exempt from CEQA (Class 32). 

I was incredulous when I learned that the communities did not have public bathrooms and showers. It would not take that much space and $ to build public bathrooms and showers. Colorado mountain towns often have laundromats that sell showers. (So refreshing after a backpacking trip.) Why don't the CA towns build their own public showers or partner with a laundromat to add showers?

Don't whine about others so you can perpetuate sprawl. Make bathrooms and showers available in the short term. Upzone the small towns and keep everything compact, affordable and sustainable. 

Cool Roof 2: Cool Roof, Cool City

 Los Angeles is in the middle of a record-setting (again!) heat wave. NWS reposts that LAX airport, along the coast, recorded a high of 102 F (old record of 99 F in 2020) while Downtown LA hit 112 F. 

Several people asked about our Cool Roof and Heat Pump. I wrote about replacing our asphalt shingle roof with a composite shingle "Cool Roof" back in 2012. Our roof went from reflecting 30% of solar heat (absorbing 70% of the heat) to reflecting over 70% and absorbing less than 30%. If you look closely at the shingles, they incorporate bits of recycled glass, tumbled to a frosted gray, green or blue. From a distance, it looks like a light-medium gray. You wouldn't even know it was a cool roof unless I brag about it. 

When you install a cool roof, you mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) impact of urbanization. "Georgescu et al. (2012, 2013) reported that summertime statewide warming due to projected urban expansion for Arizona could be reduced by about 50% with the complete integration of highly reflective cool roofs." SoCal would likely be similar. 

So, which should you pick, a cool roof, a green roof, or a photovoltaic (PV) solar roof? The answer turns out to be dependent on local climate and geography. Materials change the radiative impact of buildings. They can reduce the amount of heating during the day, but they can also disrupt the amount of cooling at night. They can heat the air above the city, strengthening the urban heat dome. There are so many variables, it takes a radiative full-physics model and a supercomputer to track them all. 

Take the case of Phoenix and Tucson, studied by Salamanca et al: Citywide Impacts of Cool Roof and Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Deployment on Near-Surface Air Temperature and Cooling Energy Demand. "In Arizona, cool roofs reduced daily citywide cooling energy demand by 13–14%, while rooftop solar photovoltaic panels reduced them by 8–11% (without considering the additional savings derived from their electricity production)."

But, if you were in London, Brousse et all found that cool roofs would be most effective in reducing extreme heat. Nonintuitively, green roofs wouldn't make much difference overall (but help during the day). Vegetation makes a minimal difference on a city-wide scale. Rooftop solar might have an overall heating effect, as would running AC. But, if the rooftop solar energy was used to run AC, and people could take shelter from the heat indoors, they could be a net benefit. 

In Sydney, Khan et al found that PV solar could disrupt the cooling diurnal land-sea breeze and heat the Sydney area overall. 

Governments can encourage behaviors good for society and suppress behaviors that are detrimental with subsidies/fines. If you were running the government, you would like to find out the cost-effectiveness of different interventions (eg subsidies) and fund what gives you the most bang for the buck. If you had even more money, then fund the slightly less effective but still helpful stuff. 

COOL ROOFS reduce heat experienced inside the buildings and in the urban environment. Require them in new construction. Replace dark roofing materials with cool roofs first. If you have money left over install rooftop solar. 

In 2012, I got a 10% tax credit on the cool shingles we used, but that is only a small amount compared to total cost of installation.  The shingles cost the same as the darker colors in the same product line that absorbed more heat and didn't qualify for the tax credit. I didn't need a nudge of a few hundred bucks to do what I knew would make my house cooler. 

Adding rooftop solar was not on my radar back in 2012 because I figured that the prices were still high and technology was still changing. A few people in our neighborhood installed them, but they were much bigger energy consumers than we are. We hadn't installed a heat pump yet. 

BTW, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory puts out an annual pricing survey called Tracking the Sun, with useful data on actual installed prices of solar systems. 

DIGRESSION:

When we got our heat pump back in 2020 (or maybe 2019?), people asked why we didn't get solar panels as well. I dragged my feet because the rooftop solar salesmen (and they are always bros) were so sleazy, and I also didn't want to buy anything made with forced labor. I was waiting for the solar supply chain to clean up. I am also waiting until I replace my roof again. The timing just wasn't right. 

Besides, I know that California has an excess of solar power during the day. It used to be worse, but utility-scale batteries have been soaking up the excess solar power so that we need to shut down feed in (curtail) solar farms less than in prior years. For the last month, we have been curtailing solar farms during all the hours rooftop solar would have produced at my location. 

Even during the heat wave this week, we had to curtail cheap solar farm power. 

Yes, even during the hottest day ever (so far) in LA. 

There just wasn't much value-add for society if I add solar panels to our cool roof.