♪ tonight on "kqed newsroom," san francisco holds a global summit tackling climate change. also checking up on california's lgal pot market from testing the safety of cannabis to keeping track of where it goes. plus two governors spanning four generations. a new book examines california's history brown family.ry of the hello and welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. we begin with the environment. this week, thousands of people attended a global summit oncl ate change in san francisco. industry titans such as mark benioff ofsalesforce was there plus politicians from around the world andactor harrison ford. >> educate and elect leaders who

believe in science and understand the importan of protecting nature. stop -- for god's sake -- the denigration of science. stop giving power to people who don't believe in science or, worse than that, retend they don't believe in science for their own self-interest. >> the event was launched to show that cities, states, regions and industries areg steppin to meet the carbon-cutting targets of the 2015 paris climate agreement. on monday, governor jerry brown signed a bill requiring californians to generate all its energy from renewable sources by 2045. brown co-hosted th summit along with former new york mayor michael bloom serg. theyounded a defiant note trump administration which pulled out of the paris agreement last year. their message, cities, statest and ies can protect the environment even when the federal government won't. joining me now to talk about the global climate action summit are

uc berkeley energy professor danielen cam and san francisco chronicle reporter curtis alexander. welcome to you both., curtou have been covering the climate change summit. what do you think it accomplished this week >> well, the climate change summit was not th paris conference that the world held three years ago, so it wasn't natnal leaders comi to the table to agree on a landmark deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. what it was about was citie states, and businesses and other regional actors really g together to figure out what they could do to try to helphe national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. i think they talked a lot about kind of what they're doing. they showcased their forts, and i think they're going to go home with a lot of knowledge on what they can do better to try r helpuce greenhouse gases. >> so a bottom-upapproach? is that effect, dan? >> it is. in fact, we've seen especially now with really challenging politics in washington, d.c. that this alsubnati approach,

so-called under two mou, the under two degree coalition. now it's up to 220-some members arond the world. it's more than 40% of the global economy. it's a group of the coalition of the ngwill and everything from installing solar panels toin sting in climate-smart transportation and food. there's a lot you can do, and the groups need to learn from each other because there is umbrella organization except for this thing that california is co-chairing. >> one of the other things thatr stood out all the protesters. thousands of demonstrators throughout the week. why were they protesting? >> well, it's a really interesting moment where environmentalists are protesting an environmentalsummit, and that really shows you how engaged many people are and what extent what we're seeing is action by those who are willing to act, but also recognition that we're not moving fast enough on mny fronts. the protesters have a really val point, but it's in this context of these are the group

who already want to get something done. it's this mix of how fe do have to go and how much do we nded to push back against the parts of the world the politics that are not enabling us to go green. >> it isng really interes because across the world, governor jerry brown is seen as sort of aer len climate, yet like you said, at this of ference we had hundreds protesters knocking at the doors and even interrupting a few of the speakers during the sessions. but in california, the governor has approved additional fracking, additionaoffshore oil drilling, and like dan said, there are people who just say,n you to stop all new oil development. >> because they don't feel he's anti-big oil enough despite all his other climate and environmental initiatives. >> that's right. but at the same time, the governor sgned two reall landmark things on monday to really kick the summit off. e is to commi california to being 100% clean energy by 2045. then he followed that a few hours later with an executive order that said we have to go to

ll clean energy and zero carbon in our economy overall, and once we get there by 2045 or before, then we nd to go carbon-negative. so we need to grow more trees. we need to c suckrbon out of the air. we need to give ourselves some breathing room, if you will, because a lot of the world isn' going fast enough. those are landmark, but we can't leave the social justice behind, and that's what the protesters were focusing on. >> curtis, what were some of the other bills theovernor signed yesterday? >> he signed a lot of bills this week. i think like you sathe most important was getting california on the path to beingab 100% ren energy by 2045. but yesterday he focused on the transportation sector, which is sort of a stubborn sector when it comes to trying to reduce greenhouse gas it accounts for about 50% of the state's greenhouse gases. what he did was he passed a number of bills that are going to encourage more people to buy electric cars, encourage electc van pools, a one of them that stood out to me was

putting standards or requirements on ride hailing companies likeyft and uber to make sure they're putting enough electric cars on the road since increasing ming an amount of the traffic on california highways. >> and so here in the bay area,, curhat are some of the things that bay area cities are change? fight clima >> well, the first thing, i think this is sort of the ru low-hanging t, is they're moving to buying more renewable energy. that's one of thehings they're doing. another thing they're doing is trying to encourage the electrificatiota of transpon systems to prevent cars and buses from putting out greenhouse gases.on thing that the san francisco department of the environment is working on is an initiative to generate zero waste in the city, and that's big because when you put trash at landfills, it generates methane which ish m more potent than carbon

monoxide. other cities joined in that initiative to try to commit to zo waste which they probably won't do anytime soon, but it's a very admirable goal. >> as a whole, do the local initiatives go far enough? do they have quantifiable goals, many of em, or are they just sort of, you know, paying lip service almost to the cause? >> well, it's definitely not lip service, but it's also not far enough. one of the real features of the summit was to learn from one city to the next. singapore does something really innovative on electric vehicles, having adon- charging for them, so you can pay with your easy pass kind of th cng. anothey has a program to invest in urban infill griculture. one place needs to learn from the other. that's what the summit is getting done.ca asfornia has met and exceeded its goals -- in fact, california met its 2020 goal 3 1/2 years early. so lifornia is now down to about 1.1% of global emissions.

so thisummit is real an effort to partner, and so i spent a lot of time this week in partnership with som african leaders and in particular with chinese cities and pvinces. one thing you find from that is we do something on electric vehicles likein se a state mandate of a million. cha turns around and says, well, we'll sttop that. we'll do 5 million by 2020. now california is figuring out how we can up ouran own number discovering that brings down the cost of driving, brings down urban pollution that leads to asthma. all of the kinds benefits one city or state won't learn from unless someone else does it because you need to share that knowledge. >> you've been advisin governments in china and africa about how to cut greenhouse emissions at the local level. what are some of the projects you've been seeing, and how mucc ss have they had? >> some have been really dra dramatic. kenya went from a place basically powered by diesel power and some hydro to a global

leader in wind and geothermal and solar, and yet they're still fighting against a potential coal plant, which ironically has support from a u.s. company, ge, andrnhe chinese gont. >> some of these places are using phone technology, mobile pps, to enable these things to happen. >> this is a fun one because there's abo 1.3 billion people without access to electricity at all. as solar and l.e.d. lights get cheaper and the batteries in your phone get cheaper, you wan to get that technology nouout. nowan do it on your phone. so mobile money is very trusted, often more trusts than the banks. in africa and india. you can take home these devices all the way up to televisis and freezers but pay for it with mobile money on your phone, which they call pay as you go. it as opened up energy access through information techlogy. >> an the effect of global warming, the immediate effect

anyway, really hits poorer communities the mo can you talk about that? >> so that's the sad story. climate change hurts us all, but the rich have a much better ability to ac and to insulate themselves because they're rich. so the poor can't move quickl and we're seeing that right now with hurricane florence. we've seen that with fires and droughts in africa, and the international body, the ipcat assesses this came up with this really clear statement and nge willclimate c affect all of us, but it will affect the poor first and most severely. >> and, curtis, without the federal government's support, is it possible for the u.s. to have a major impact in fighting climate hehange? >> was a study that came out in the run-up to the climate summit this week b yale university that suggested that cities, states, and businesses, the regional players, could fill about half the gap in the pledged emission cuts that the nation has made for paris. so they can get halfway there,

but the national government does play a considerable role. unfortunately on the global scale, regional governments are ng a lot less of the gap. so it really is an issue largely for nional governments. >> all right. curtis alexander with the san francisco chronical and dan kammen, uc berkeley energy professor, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. let's turnti our att now to cannabis. this week the associated press reported that nearly 20% of california marijuana products failed potency and purity tests. the primary culprit, mislabeling of a product's concentration of thc. that's the chemical com pound in marijuana that gets a person high. testing show that thc amounts did not fall within 10% of what the product labels advertid. meanwhile, california is wrapping up its efforts to track and trace cannabis, to monitor its movement through the supply chain from farms to dispensaries. take a closer look are david downs, california bureau chief

for lely.com, and josh drayton,om spokfrom drayton. josh, you're with the trade group for the cannabis dustry. what is your reaction to the finding that nearly 20% of california's marijuana products fail tests for potency and purity? >> i would say i'm not surprised. this is an issue that our association has identified months back. thinkowing the mandated testing was coming online on july 1st,st the in should have done more to get prepared for that. they knew that theting requirements were going to be, but i also think a lot of challenges are landing within the testing labs. you know,nl they came online july 1st as well. there's no standardized mechanism right now, no standardization of testing labs, and there's not much oversight at this point. >> so one lab could findne finding, and another lab could test the exact same product and come up with something else, different results? >> that is a possibility, but that also -- you know, part of the conversation needs to be the

different items and the different variables unique to cannabis. if a flower i exposed to too much air, it's going to change testing results. if it t receiv much light, it's going to change testing results. so there are a lot of variabl that could change the testing from one lab to the test. >> yeah. i mean this is eidence that legalization is working. we knew we had supply chain problems here in california. readers have beening me, i had one edible one day, and nothing happened. i had the same t edib next day or the same package-type edible a week later, and i had a really, really strong experience. new there was a variance problem with these products, and then we knew there mightbe have pesticides and mold out there in the system. the good news is most of the prlems have been related to labeling, and they haven't been issues around pesticides or mold. and for the first time we're actually stopping and interdicting those products from hitting the shelves, which we we weren't doing under the medical system. >> should consumers be worried? >> i think they can be less worried than what they're going to buy on the black rk.

a good chunk of consumers say i want to save money by still going to my guy, and think health conscious consumers want to start with not putting cannabis pesticides in their body. >> one of the questions i have around this, is the 10% variance 200 sma too small we have products that range from one milligram to ten milligrams. being able to test really creates asot of challenthat testing labs have not quite figured out how to find solutions to. >> can they chaenge the test results? >> not really. as far as i know you can go back and label your utackage. if it tests positive for pestic es, it's flagge >> there's not a current pathway to challenge testing results at one lab. there are bills trying to address that. what we're trying to avoid is a pay to play syst seen in other states. you know, passing an item through one lab, let's say it fails. taking it to the next lab that says, okay, we can pass that

through, and we'll increase potency. it ends upng be a pay to play system. >> let's talk about the track and trace system for cnabis as well because the state is ramping that up. work and how are things going? >> we're going to try and track and trace every singlebi can plant in the state. and we're talks millions and millions of plant peryear. we've seen solutions come online in colorado and washington, and they have their failures. we have trouble keeping g. mail working or slack working in our officeng imagine trto keep this third party system going when you're working with the state. >> what kinds of failures ha other states seen? >> we can deal with issues of the system coming down, s one of the regulations now would say all stores must stop doing any sort of transactions metric, which is the vendor that california is using, goes down. we're trying to -- critics want to see that particular rule go away. these stystems are subject to data breaches, subject to internal ssues. it's just like any government process where you have a third party ven ir who not

performing up to snuff. imagine running internet y explorer aur work. >> regarding data breaches, does that mean that private consumer information is also subject or vulnerable to these kinds of >> we have seen that in the past. that has happened in other states. i think from an industry perspective, our big conrn is if metric goes down -- and it nnevitably will. they've gone dn every single state. there is no pathway to continue get product en route from a distributor into the retailer. it haso stop completely. there's not a paper path. there's no other mechanism where we can continue to move that product. >> we also have farmers that are up in the hills on solar power with no connection to data necessarily. they're trying to plug into this system. everyone's going to have to leat how to use manually at a terminal, and it works like a dmv terminal. we don't have the robustness of open source development here.in so there's g to be issues. there's been issues in other

states. >> just to remindme people,ic is the third party vendor that's doing the tracking. >> yeah, that won the contract. >> d the thing with track and trace, though, is that it doesn't monitor the vast amounts of marijuana from unlicensed growers, right? so is thece any evid that legalizing recreational marijuana hereor in cala is helping to decrease the black market, which is one of the objectiv t? >> well,ink it's a process. i don't think we can anticipate that co january 1st of 2018 when california had adult use go into play, that that was going to solve all of ourroblems and fully mitigate the illicit market. what i do ink is its a process. the illicit market is going to have a lot harder time in any way shape, or form working with retailers, selling tosu crs because we're going to be able to track every plant all the way to the consumer level. it's an over the time process i belifve. >> and cnia doesn't exist in a vacuum. there's obviously 61% of americans that support

legalization. they are pulling cannabis out of california to their stemes. there'sd out there. four of the five pounds we're growing in this state are leaving because they'reemded out there. we're dealing with that right now. >> since you brought up voter and voter sentiment, with the midterm elections coming up, are you seeing this idea of legalizing recreat nal marijuaread from the coastal states more inland? >> we have fourallot initiatives in the midterm elections. get out there and register. michigan, north dakota, missouri, and oklahoma are all going to have referendums on recreational legalization or medical legalization. and these are really the new battleground states and it's evidence of how th has become a bipartisan issue on the coast and in -- >> and what we're seeing is 3 initiatives on the ballot for november. as we've made our way through ocus now mment, our needs to be on finding candidates at the city council

level, at the county supervisor level, to figure out who is willing to work with the industry so we can start to local upe local municipalities. >> in california, there are a number ofgoills beforernor brown, right? how likely is he to sign them? lot ofuld say there's a bills in front of governor brown right now. there are a few priority bills that we're watching closely. one of those bills is going to create a provisional license period, and that is to deal with the endt o temporary license which happens on december 31st. so there's a compassionate care bill at i think would have great impact. there's a distributor to distributor bill that i think will have great impact. i would say roughly there are ten bills touching cannabis that are on his desk that he could sign by october 1st. >> david, where is the cannabis industry headed next? what are new tnds you're seeing? >> we're going to see continued regulatorbite-down. it's a phase-in process that the bureau of cannabiss control begun. rulers are going to become stricter of the purity of products on we're also going to see more

choice prices start to come down as more of the industry adapts to this new environment. >> all rig. david downs and josh ayton, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. now to california's political dynasty. in the last 120 years, california has ected democrats has governor just five times and three of those times theyave been from the same family. first pat brown and then his sor brown reshaped and reinvented california. a new book examines the role the brown family played in the state's history. the browns of california, the family dynasty that transformed a state and shaped a nation is written by miriam powell. she spoke with scott shafe >> welcome to "kqed newsroom." >> thank you. thanks for having me. >> so this book part history. it's part biography. why did you decide t tell the story of california through the brown family? >> because i thought that the four generations of browns just

so mirror the -- the arc of that family mirrors the history of the state of cifornia, that it was a great vehicle for saying some really fundamental things about the history of this place. andrn in the family was so important and influential in shaping it. i mean between pat and jerry ro n, they have governed the state for more than half of its modern history. >> yeah. and pat brown, of course, born in san francisco as was jerry brown. jerry brown's grandmother moved here from the ranch to get to the big city, i guess. and pat brown was elected governor in 1958. what knd of a politician was he? >> pat was the perfect politician for that era of this criminal expansi credible expansion. how california was formed, how it joined the union. it's an immigrant story abo german immigrants and irish immigrants and that opportunity to remake yourself in california as the land of opportunity.

pat was just beloved, a gregarious person. >> kind of abackslapper. >> really believed if he could just talk to everybody in the state one--one, he would wi every single vote. >> how do you think california shaped him? >> you'd be hard to find someone who is as passionate about the state as pat brown was. he juselved that it was the only place on earth he would want tolive. he was, you know, a backpacker into his advanced age, grew going to yosemite every summer, really instilled in his whole family a love of that outdoors and the environment and thep tance of the natural world. >> he gets elected in '58,-e lected in '62, beats dick nixon. then ronald reagan comesg. alon what happened that led tois defeat in 1966? >> the end of that era of expansion, that sense that suddenly bigger was not better, that the state was kind of out of control. theio in watts. the student rebellion on the

campus of berkeley. ronald reagan's campaign slogan was clean up the mess at berkeley. >> the free speech movement. >> people were tired of pat brown, and they about ready for someone who was a good tv a personalio, which is not something that pat brown was . l >> jerry brown was in the seminary, jesuit seminary. how did that shape him as hege d into politics? >> i think the jesuit piece of jerwn is a key part of his personality, his philosophy. he went to saint ignatius, then 3 1/2 years in the seminary, really at a very formative age and believes in a lot of those sort of core principles of the jesuits. >> and he of courn is ag the death penalty, which seemed to get the family, both pat and his sister in troubar over the he gets elected as a reformer to in 197ernor's office during the watergate era.

and he turns right around and runs for president, and then does it again in 1980. how did that go over with voters? nk i t that his campaign in '76 was remarkably successful. there was some sense that he was a young, charismatic, rising star. the 1980 race, not as successfu not as popular. kind of a senseat t he was bored with the governorship and -- >> and very unfocused >> heis the first of that post-watergate generation, cover "time" magazine, really this face of the new politics. >> gal i vanting wit linda ronstadt and all those things. people are tired of him,v l office. and then he goes into the years of wilderness as you describe it. what did he lrn inapan and studying buddhism and working for three weeks with teresa as you write. >> jerry brown has such that

ierce intensity of intecelt wh on it very directly. even the three weeks with mother teresa was important impact on him. i think that whole period in the wilderness, h is exploring things and learning things about himself and the world but looking for a way back into politics, which ultimately he fina finds in oakland. >> he gets elected and re-elected. then he becomes attorney general. he's governor of course in his last asnths. he obviously embraced the environment and climate change as his issue. why do you think he's done that? what is it about his life up to now? >> he has talked in times aowut he environment is this core issue that really reminds him of his jesuit training, that there are things pure and absolute about the environment and immutable and important. it's not like deciding about whether you're goito buy a second car. it's about saving the world. it's reallyre sort of values and a consistent theme throughout his administration. he has changed his positions on

some things but not really on environmentissues. >> interesting this week to hear him being criticized by some environmentalists for being not against oil enough. >> right. >> yeah.do so how you think, you know, of cose it's hard to say what his legacy will utbe, the brown family. how will they be remembered? >> i don't w think youl find a family that has had the kind of impact on california that the browns have had or will have. again here's jerry brun, brown, what more california story can you have than someone who comes oack after being out of the public eye for long and is able to reinvent himself and come back and even undo and fix things he did the first time around he did as governor. >> around criminal justice. >> it's sort of an ultimatest californiy. >> you had a chance to spend a fair amount of time with him in writing this book. what's your guess as to what he does next. >> i think he will go to the ranch t gat hisat-grandfather settled on in the 1800s, which he views as very much the

ancestral home and an important, almost spiritual place. i think that he will try to be a force on clima change a on nuclear proliferation in ways that he has been and contin s to an international voice on those issues. >> the book is called "the browns of california." thanks for coming in. >> thanks for having me. that wil do it i for us. you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. i'm thuy vu. thank you for joining us. ♪

robert: a legendary reporter shines a light on the trump presidency. i'm robert costa. tonight, we welcome bob woodward to "washington week." a new book by pulitzer prize winning reporter, bob woodward, depicts chaos ie the white house. why are so many officesls tioning president trump's decisis on trade, national security, and then showdow with the speal counsel. is the trump administration on the brink of a nervous breakdown? we discuss the stakes for the president and the country, next. announcer: this is "washington week." funding is provided by -- newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own food products to