>> building a better bay area. moving forward. finding solutions. this is abc7 news. kristen: i'm kristen sze. you are watching "getting answers." we ask experts your questions every day at 3:00 p.m. to get answers for you in real time. today we are looking at the soaring cost of wine tasting in sonoma county. in your report finds the cost is at 44% before the pandemic -- up 44% from before the pandemic. we will talk about what's driving these higher prices. also our media partners at the san francisco standard are investigating the practice of injecting thousands of people in custody with a sedative. is it normal, safe, ethical? the standard senior reporter

will join us with details. environmentalists are sounding the alarm about newsom's climate change package he hopes lawmakers will approve by next week's deadline. activists say it looks good on the surface, but has seriously dangerous strings attached. joining us live now is the founder of climate talks about, a grassroots group for the climate movement. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. kristen: everything he's been announcing things like something environmentalists would embrace, make lots of clean energy investments, stop the sale of gasoline cars by 2035, emissions by 2045. you applied all that -- applaud all that, right? what are the concerns here? >> the first course is politics. it is hard to look at anything that newsom is doing without

speculating about whether this is intended to furnish his credentials in 2024 or 2028 or some other point. the second thing is, it is real obvious that all of these bills he is proposing regarding setbacks and codifying executive orders he already issued are intended to be sweeteners for keeping diablo canyon open, the nuclear power plant, that is highly controversial. it was supposed to be shut down by the end of 2025. , instead, he has decided he needs to keep it open. why does he believe that he needs to keep it open? some people say that we cannot get through the summer without rolling blackouts our keeping natural gas plants open, which is a climate no-no, or keeping diablo canyon open. so he settled on keeping diablo canyon open.

he is throwing a lot of -- they are not very creative -- but a lot of sweeteners at the legislature, to make sure that the environmentally minded legislators in california will go along with the plan to keep diablo canyon open. it's been made really clear to sacramento folks, diablo is the main course, the rest is dessert. kristen: let's put aside political ambitions for a second and fork -- and focus on what you are concerned about, number one you mentioned the diablo canyon power plant that newsom wants to keep open, but he says it is needed to buy time to shore up the power supply. because it's not like we snap our fingers and suddenly we have so much clean energy -- nobody wants rolling blackouts, right? our energy grid has not exactly been that reliable. do you acknowledge there's a degree that we -- even if we

don't want it, may need the energy supplied by that for a while longer? >> we want to get in energy online -- clean energy online as fast as we possibly can. we want newsom to step up and be a climate leader. we want him to do something about the california poc's decision to put a huge solar tax on rooftop solar homeowners. i appreciate his concern in keeping diablo and open for a year or two, but at the same time there are analyses floating around the assembly, saying that we do not need diablo, we can do this and avoid rolling blackouts, with clean energy entirely. and that would be far preferable. kristen: i also want to explore another element you object to. that is a local, if you will -- a loophole, if you will, for industries to stop cutting emissions. explain to our viewers

what you mean by this. explain how carbon capture technology works. >> i don't have a science degree. carbon capture technology's a very broad term for the idea that we can pull carbon out of the atmosphere and pump it underground, into what is called capture and storage. it has never been proven to work. it is extraordinarily expensive. there is a lot of money in the big federal bill that president biden just signed. so there's going to be a lot of experimenting around with it. at the same time, the oil companies see this as their lifeline to keep on drilling and keep on fracking. the scientists say that some amount of carbon capture may be necessary to -- to pull out carbon that's already been emitted.

it is entirely different for the gold company something that they can just keep on extracting -- oil companies to think that they can just keep on extracting and just swallow a magic pill that will make the emissions go away. i, too, would like to swallow a pill that would make me after eating chocolate beautiful for the next 30 years. kristen: president biden certainly supports it. it is in the inflation reduction act, with subsidies for companies doing that. i understand the argument, being able to capture it, put it aside may extend the lives of these companies by saying, we are not that bad. but do you see this as an all or nothing? do we not need to do both, as we continue to cut emissions and move to clean energy, do we not also need to support the capture of emissions and say we've got to do both? >> we needed to get that bill

passed. we had to throw in some billions of dollars in political bribes, let me just be blunt here, bribes to senator manchin and some of the people on the other side of the break i'll. -- other side of the aisle. we got it done. we need to acknowledge that we can do something with this money. we can set it on fire, or we can invest it in carbon technology. i'm not sure which one is going to be less useful in the long run. i have not seen anything that carbon capture works, that it is economically efficient, or that it is ever going to scale to the way that we need to have it scaled. all in all, i am pretty opposed to carbon capture technology and the better answer is to ramp up all the clean energy right now, get rid of that solar tax that governor newsom wants to put on solar homeowners, and go

forward with clean energy and solar for all of california. kristen: the rooftop solar tax issue will be much debated. i want to ask you about your hope, for the building of more and c -- more infrastructure for clean energy. how do you think we are doing and that regarding california? -- in that regard, in california? >> we are doing a lot and still not doing enough. speaking as a wildfire survivor, this is personal to me. we need to get more solar, all the time, everywhere. if you fly over the inland empire and you see all those naked roofs, by that i mean all those warehouses that don't have solar panels on the tops, you think that we are just not doing enough. we are doing about. and honestly governor newsom is doing a lot of very good things,

including the order today, to stop selling ice cars -- gasoline powered cars by 2035. at the same time, we need to do more. we always need to do more. kristen: legislators assert only that deadline next week. they adjourn for the year next wednesday, do you think it will pass? do you hope it will pass despite the imperfections about it? >> there's nothing bad in what he's trying to do. other than diablo, i felt it was not terribly creative stuff. there's one very good bill, the bill for oilwell setbacks. the idea is to impose a half-mile of setbacks between an oil well and somebody's home. which doesn't seem terribly controversial. texas has oil well setbacks. california doesn't. but governor newsom was not there when we had bills to try

to get them through the last point in the legislature, i'm glad that he is finally coming on board. i wish he had done it last spring. but it's a very good bill. the only question is -- what are the legislators going to do with it? i do appreciate governor newsom putting forth that setback bill at the last minute. kristen: we will be following the bill for sure. we are out of time. i appreciate you coming on the show, elle miller. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. kristen: coming up next -- we are talking wine. but you may not want to say cheers, because raising a toast is costing you a lot more in the famed sonoma county wine country. we will explore

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kristen: if you have been

planning a trip to the wine country this fall, perhaps for the first time since the pandemic, get ready for sticker shock. winetasting costs have soared in sonoma county. the new winetasting report finds the average cost of a tasting in march of 2020, just before the lockdown, was $25. make that $26. compare that to june of this year, the average price of a tasting -- $36. a whopping 44% increase. joining us live now is eric schwartzman, editor of the sonoma white -- sonoma wine tasting blog. what did you set out to prove here? >> it's a pleasure to be here to talk about the winetasting report. as you saw on the cover of the san francisco chronicle today, i think what we set out to find from the report is how healthy

is the sonoma winery business post-pandemic? and what shape did the -- did the pandemic, the lockdown, and inflation put on the industry? kristen: how healthy is the industry? it can be. i will get into the health with you in a little bit -- i want to talk about the prices. they were shocking. let's show people another point of comparison. glen ellen ben's inger -- benzinger. >> you got it right. kristen: walk us through the prices of their tasting and 2020 and 2022. an abbott passage, too. >> first off, i don't think they are shocking. i think the increases are marginal compared to other sectors.

they are of the highest in healdsburg. in santa rosa, prices were up 70%. the city of sonoma, prices are up 33%. sebastopol, winetasting is up 20%. glen ellen, up 12%. interestingly enough, prices were actually down in kaiserville. the furthest distance from san francisco. kristen: i like that. i was going to ask you that, what are some tips for visit ors. using differences -- are you seeing differences in prices with wineries? >> we are the someone a winetasting blog. the reason this is the sonoma winetasting report and we do not include not but it is because it is one of the big wineries -- it is where the big wineries are.

as much as we love tech, i don't think any of us wants to live in a world where we all work for just bezos or elon musk. we like to support small business. to support the sort of intimate, not pretentious, almost, should i say, divine experiences that you can have at a small winery -- kristen: people love -- >> following the product from grape to glass. kristen: the price increases, is that a result of their cost increasin? -- increasing? supply chain issues? or is it something else? that finally people are coming back and they did not make money for two years so they will just raise the prices. >> the thing to understand about the wine business is it has a durability that unique to the hospitality sector. hotels and restaurants can easily change their prices. but winemaking costs are quite loaded.

because of the aging process, wines made this year will not be sold for years in advance. winemakers still have to pay current market labor, transportation, and materials costss. that's probably why prices are up. kristen: all right. in addition to the prices being a little different costing, causing sticker shock, what have you, what is different, in terms of the experience? in the winetasting room? anything that's changed because of the pandemic? >> yes, and the sonoma winetasting report, we segmented our research by town. what we found is that we basically -- the big changes some wineries are reservation only now. it used to be that you could just show up. now 85% of sonoma winetasting rooms are by appointment only. i think this is probably because of two things -- first, social

distancing made tasting pretty much impossible because you cannot pack a bunch of people around a bar. for the second reason, the shift of reservations makes it easier for small wall -- small wineries to balance staffing against customer demand. if you are a small winery, you cannot do -- you cannot afford to staff a winetasting room if you do not have enough customers. kristen: any money-saving tips before we leave? other than driving a little farther out to kaiser ville? >> look, sonoma draws a different type of consumer. sonoma is the place that attracts people that want something new, off the beaten path. not herded through a hospitality center like cattle, like a make

a year. these people want to go somewhere making 25,000 cases a year. prices not big of a factor for that audience. whether it's $25 or $36. it is nominal. . the reality is, this is a chance to get outside the world of big tech, outside the world of multinational corporations. and really sort of get your hands into the soil, walk the vineyard, and have a spiritual experience. kristen: i hear what you are saying. it is a more intimate experience and a lot of people do like that. folks can check out the full winetasting report where? >> thank you so much, great talking with you. cheers. kristen: paramedics sometimes have to calm people with a sedative, but are they doing so in alarmingly large numbers in san francisco without consent

and without regard for potential side effects? our media partner, the san francisco

- you okay? - there's a flex alert today so i'm mentally preparing for the power outage. oh, well we can help stop one because we are going to reduce our energy use from 4-9pm. what now? i stepped on a plug. oh that's my bad! unplugging. when it comes to preventing outages the power is ours.

kristen: our media partners at the san francisco standard launched an investigation into the san francisco fire department after their practice of injecting people with sedatives came to light. we first reported on it earlier this month when the woman in this video filed a lawsuit against the city and county of san francisco. she was forcibly removed from the chase center while protesting at an nba finals game in june. she then says a paramedic injected her with a sedative, without her consent. at their standard report, this has occurred 4000 times since 2018. now they are asking why. joining us live is the senior reporter for the standard. good to see you, josh. >> great to see you, too.

kristen: the fire department and emts do enter situation that they have to calm people down, so what are the questions raised in your investigation? >> the first question was just, how often is this happening? we were looking into the lawsuit filed by the person who claimed that they were drugged against their will. so, the first question was, ok, if this happened to this person, how often is it happening to other people? we found out based on our records it happened more than 4000 times since the beginning of 2018. just broad numbers that are startling. no one was aware that sedatives were being administers 2-3 times a day across the city. we started reaching out to medical experts, peopled in the activist community. and many of them were also surprised to learn how widespread this practice is

amongst paramedics and the fire department. kristen: we saw a video of mcknight, inside the ambulance. they told her that the sedative was administered for safety. so, is that a reasonable explanation, one that your investigation found that the use a lot? >> well, for mcknight's case, she says that it was done against her will. that there was no reason to do it. it was an act of civil disobedience. one said that a fire department official -- the sedative that the administered was usually only done to protect someone from harming themselves or others.

we do know that there have been instances in the past in which people were being noncompliant with officers trying to arrest him and they were administered a sedative. in 2017 a man died after receiving the shot. the medical examiner did not rule that was the cause of death and we did just find out this afternoon from the fire department that they are saying that they are not aware of anyone having a severe, adverse reaction, or dying after result of receiving the sedative while in restraints. kristen: i know in hospitals, it is not unreasonable to give potentially violent patients a sedative. what are emt's allowed to do so on the streets without consent? using it on protesters, who don't think they are being violent? i wonder if that is in the books in the books and the fire department. >> they do have a policy in

place on how and when to give a sedative to someone. in the policy, it says that someone can refuse to receive it, however, the policy also says that you are not going to give us that unless they are basically not capable of calming down. so, it kind of goes both ways. we are all used to seeing movies in which a person is given a sedative, often against their will. when it comes to the way that san francisco fire desert, we try and ask for one, where, and why all these sedatives are being given, and the fire department has cited hippo law and that they do not compile this data in a way. i would question whether or not that is a best practice, considering if you are going to be given out -- giving out 4000 shots since the beginning of 2018, the public has a right to know, why people are being given the shots, when and where.

mcknight's case is apropos to this, because they were protesting. there were a lot of protests in 2020, which is also the year the fire department gave out the most sedatives out of this 4.5 year period. so we would like to know more answers about why, when, and where. kristen: don't go away. we want to continue the conversation with you to dive more into what the san francisco public health department told you. and with the fire department's response is. in the meantime, check out more of the san francisco standard's original reporting on their website, sf standard.com -- their website, sfstandard.com.

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joining us on this interactive show, "getting answers." we will be here every weekday at 3:00 p.m. on air and on livestream, answ tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. a judge ordering the release of the redacted affidavit tied to the search of trump's mar-a-lago. rising alarm over the potential for a nuclear disaster in ukraine. and millions on alert for more major flooding in the deep south. first, the breaking news in the mar-a-lago search. the affidavit the government relied on to justify the search of former president's trump's home. a judge ordering a redacted version released by noon tomorrow. agreeing with the justice department that certain portions should be blacked out. what could the document show? jonathan karl with late reporting. in ukraine, u.n. officials sounding the alarm about europe's largest nuclear power plant. for the first time, that plant cut off from the power grid. all six nuclear reactors shut

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