♪ tonight on "kqed newsroom," san francisco holds a global summit tacklingclimate change. also checking up on california's legal pot market from testing the safety of cannabis to keeping track of where it es. plus two governors spanning four generations. new book examines california's history through the story of the brown family. hello and welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. we begin with theenvironment. this week, thousands of people attended a global summit on climate change in san francisco. industrytitans such as mark benioff of salesforce was there plus politicians from around the world and actor harrison fd. >> educate and elect leaders who

believe in science a understand the importance of protectin nature. stop -- for god's sake -- the denigration of science. stop giving power to people who d believe in science or, worse than that, pretend theyli don't beeve in science for their own self-interest. >> the eve was launched to show that cities, states, regions and industries are stepping up to meet the carbon-cuing targets of th 2015 paris climate agreement. on monday, governor jerry brown signea bill requiring californians to generate all its energy from renewable sources by 2045. brown co-hosted the summit along withrm new york mayor michael bloomberg. they sounded a defiant note against the trump adminisulratin whichd out of the paris agreement last year. their message, cities, states an industries 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 daniel a cammen san francisco chronicle reporter curtis alexander. welcome to you both. curtis, you ha been covering the climate change summit. what do you think it accomplished this week? >> well, the climate change summit was not the paris conference that the world held three years o, so it wasn't national leaders coming to the table to agree on a landmark deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. what it was about was cities, states, and businesses and other regional actors really getting together to figure out what they could do to try to help the national efforts to reduce greenhouse g emissions. i think they talked a lot about kind of what they're doing. ey showcased their efforts, and i think they're going to go ome with a lot of knowledge on what they can do better to try to help reduce greenhouse gases. >> so a bottom-upp ach? is that effect, dan? >> it is. in fact, we've seenspecially now with really challenging politics in washington, d.c. that this subnational approach,

-called under two mou, the under two degree coalition. now it's up to 220-some members around the world. it's more than 40% of the global economy. it's a group of the coalition of the willing, and everything from installing solar panels to investing in climate-smart transportation and food. there's a lot you can do, and these groups ne to learn from each other because there is no umbrella organization except for his thing that california is co-chairing. >> one of the other things that stood out were all the protesters. thousands of thmonstrators ughout the week. why were they protesting? >> well, it's a really interesting moment where environmentalists are protesting an environmmntal , and that really shows you how engaged many people are and to 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 many fronts. p theotesters have a really ealid point, but it's in this context of thare the group

who already want to get something done. it's this mix of how far d we have to go and how much do we need to push back against the parts of t world and the politics that are not enabling us to go green. >> it is reallybenteresting use across the world, governor jerry brown is seen as sort of a leader on climate, yet like you said, atis conference we had hundreds of protesters knocking at the doors and even intrupting a few of the speakers during the sessions. but in california, the goverasr approved additional fracking, aitional offshore oil drilling, and like dan said, there are people who just say, you need to stop all new oil development. >> because they don't feel he's -big oil enough despite all his other climate and environmental initiatives. >> that's right. but at the sametime, the governor signed two really landmark things on monday toly reick the summit off. one is to commit california to being 100% clea energy by 2045. then he followed that a few executiver with an order that said we have to go to

all clann energy zero carbon in our economy overall, and once we get there by 2045 or before, then we need to go carbon-negative. so we ed to grow more trees. we need to suck carbon out of the air. we need to gese oursel some breathing room, if you will, because a lot of the worldng ist goast enough. those are landmark, but we can't leave the social just and that's what the protesters were focusing on. >> curtis, what were some of the other bil the governor signed yesterday? >> he signed a lot of bills this week. i think like you said the most important was getting california on the path tobeg 100% renewable energy by 2045. but yesterday he focused on the transportation sector, which is sort bo a st sector when it comes to trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissios. it accounts for about 50% of the state's greenhouse gases. what h did was he passed a number of bills that are going to encourage more people to buy electric cars, encourage electric van pools, and one of them that stood out to me was

putting standards or requirements on ride hailing companies like lyft and uber to make sre they're putting enough electric cars on the road since they're becoming an increasingf amounte traffic on california highways. >> and so here in the bay area, curtis, what a some of the things that bay area cities are doing to fight climate cnge? >> well, the first thing, i think this is sort of the low-hanging fruit, is they're moving to buying more renewable energy. that's one of the things they're doing. another thing they're doing is trying to encourage the electrification of ttransportation systems prevent cars and buses from putting out greenhouse gases. one thing that the san francisco department of the environment is working on is ane initiato generate zero waste in the city, and that's big because wh you put trash at landfills, it generates methane which is much more pont than carbonmo

oxide. other cities joined in that initiative to try to commit to zero waste which ey probably won't do anytime soon, but it's a very admirable goal. >> as a whole, do the local initiatives r enough? do they have quantifiable goals, many of them, orst are they j 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 innovatn electric vehicles, having on-road charging for them, so you can pay y withr easy pass kind of thing. another city has a program to invest in urban infill agriculture. one place needs to learn from the other. that's what the summit is getting done. as california hasnd exceeded its goals -- in fact, california met its 2020 goal 3 1/2 years early. so california is now down to about 1.1% of global emissions.

so this summit is really an effort to partner, and so i spent a lot of time this week in partnership with someri an leaders and in particular with chinese cities and provinces. one thing you find from that is we do something on electric vehicles like setting a state mandate of a million. china turns around and says, well, we'll sttop that. we'll do 5 million by 2020. fiw california isring out how we can up our own number and discovering that brings down the cost of driving, brings down urban pollution that leads to asthma. all of these kinds of benefits one city or state won't learn from unless someoneit else does because you need to share that knowledge. >> you've been governments in china and africa about how to cut greenhouse emissions at the local level. what are some o the projec you've been seeing, and how much success have they had? >> some have been really dra dramatic. nya 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, wch ironically has support from a u.s. company, ge, and the chinese government. >> some of these places are using phone technology, mobile apps, to enable these things to happen. >> this is a fun one because there's about 1.3 billion people without access to electricity at all. as solar and .ed. lights get cheaper and the batteries in your phone get cheaper, you want to get that technology nout. now you can do it on your so mobile money is very trusted, often more trusts than the banks. in africa a dia. you can take home these devices all the way up to televisions 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 technology. i> and effect of global warming, theediate effect

anyway, really hits poorer communities yhe most. ca talk about that? >> so that's the sad story. climate change hurts us ll but the rich have a much better seility to act and to insulate themselves bechey're rich. so the poor can't move quickly, and we're seeing that right now with hurricane fl. we've seen that with fires and droughts in africa, and the ssternational body, the ipcc, thatses this came up with this really clear statement and that is climate change will affel of us, but it will affect the poor first and most severely. >> and, curtis, without the federal government's support, is it possible f the u.s. to have a major impact in fighting climate change? >> there was study that came out in the run-up to the climate summit this week by le university that suggested that cities, states, and businesses, the regional players, could fill about half the gap in the pledged emission cuts that the d nation has for paris. so they can get halfway there,b

the national government does play ae considerarole. unfortunately on the global ecale, regional governments are filling a lot of the gap. so it really is an issue largely for national governments. >> all right. curtis alexander with the san francisco chronicle and also dan kammen, ucerkeley energy professor, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. attention now our 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 marijua aa that gets person high. testing show that thc amounts did not fall within 10% of wha the product labels advertised. meanwhile, california is wrapping up its effortsra to and trace cannabis, to monitor its movement through the supply chain from farms to dispensaries. to take a closer look are david downs, california bureau chief for leafly.com, and josh

drayton, spokeswomfrom drayton.re josh, yoith the trade group for the cannabis industry. nat is your reaction to the finding thatrly 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. i think knowing the mandated testing was coming online on july 1st, the industry should have done more to get prepared for that. they knew what the testing nkquirements were going to be, but i also t a lot of challenges are landing within the testing labs. you know, th c onlyme online july 1st as well. there's no standardized r mechaniht now, no standardization of testing labs, and there not much oversight at this point. >> so one lab could find one finding, and another ab cou 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

edifferent items and different variables unique to cannabis. if a flower is exposed to too much air, it's going to change testing results. if itreceives too much light, it's going to change testing results. so there are a lot of cariables thuld change the testing from one lab to the test. >> yeah. i mean this is evidence that legalization is working. we knew we had supply cha problems here in california. readers have been telling me, i had one edible one day,no and ing happened. i had the same edible the next e-type the same pack edible a week later, and i had a really, really strong asperience. we knew there a variance problem with these products, and then we knew there might have been pesticides and mold out there in the system. the good news is most of the problems have beeno related 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 market. a good chunk of consumers say ie

want to s money by still going to my guy, and i think health consciousrs consumant to start with not putting cannabis pesticides in their body. >> one of questions i have varianchis, is the 10% 200 sma too small we have products that range from one milligram to ten milligrams. being able to test really creates a lot of challenges that testing labs have not quite figured out h to find solutions to. > can they challenge the test results? >> not really. as far as i know you can go back and label your package. but if it tests positive for pesticides, it's hflagged. >>e'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 system which we've seen in other states. you know, passing anitem through one lab, let's say it fails. aking it to the next lab that says, okay, can pass that

through, and we'll increase potency. it ends up being a pay to play system. >> let's talk about the track and trace system for cannabis a well because the state is ramping that up. how does it work and ho are thingsing? >> we're going to try and track and trace every single cannabis plant in the state. and we're talks millions and millions of plant per year. we've seen solutionsli come o in colorado and washington, and they have their failures. we have trouble keeng g. mail working or slack working in our offices. ima kne trying top this third party system going when you're working with the state. haveat kinds of failures other states seen? >> we can deal with issues of the system coming down, so one of the regulations now would say all storesst stop doing any sort of transactions if metric, which is the vendor that california isusing, goes down. we're trying to -- critics want to seehat particular rule go these stystems are subject to data breaches, subject to internal issues. it's just like any government process where you have a third party vendor who is not

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

states. >> just to remind people, metric is the third party vendor that's doing the tracking. >> yeah, that won the contract. >> and the aning with track trace, though, is that it amountsmonitor the vast of marijuana from unlicensed growers, right? so is there any evidence that legalizing recreational marijuana here in california is helping to decrease the black h market, wh one of the objectives? >> well, i think it's a process. i don't thinkwe can anticipate that come january 1st of 2rn8 when cali had adult use go into play, that that was going to solve all of our problems and fully mitigate the illicit market. what i do think is it is a process. the illicit market is going to have a lot harder time in a way shape, or form working with retailers, selling to consumers because we're going to be able lo track every plantthe way t the consumer level. it's an over thee process i believe. >> and california doesn't exist in a vacuum. there's obviou 61% of americans tt support

legalization. they are pulling cannabis out of california to their states. .ere's demand out the four of the five pounds we're growing in this state are leaving because they're demanded out there. we'r dealing with that rig now. >> since you brought up voter and voter sentiment, with the midterm elections coming up, are you seeing this idea of legalizing recreational rijuana spread from the coastal states more inland? >> we haveour ballot initiatives in the midterm elections. get out there and register.no michiganh dakota, missouri, and oklahoma are all going to have referendums on recreational legalization or medical and these are really the new battleground states and it's evidence of how this has become coast tisan issue on the and in -- >> and what we're seeing is 30 initiatives on the ballot for november. as we've made our way through public comment, our focus now needs to be on finding candidat the city council

level, at the county supervisorf level, ture out who is willing to work with the industry so we can start to local up the local municipalities. >> in california, there are a number of bills bere governor brown, right? how likely is he to sign them? >> i would say there's a lot of bil front of governor brown right now. there are a few priority bills that we're watching closely. one of those bills is goinge to e a provisional license period, and that is to deal with the endra of the tem license which happens on december 31st. so there's compassionate care bill that i think would have great impact. there's a distributor to ll distributor hat i think will have great impact. i would say roughly there are tenibills tou cannabis that are on his desk that he could sign by october 1st. d vid, where is the cannabis industry headed next? what are new trends you're seeing? >> we're going to see continued regulatory bite-down. it's a phase-in processhat the bureau of cannabis control has begun. become re going to stricter of the purity of products on shelves. we're also going to see more

choice price start to come down as more of the industry adapts to this new environment. >> all right. david downs and josh drayton, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. now to lifornia's political dynasty. in the last 120 years, california has elected democrats has governor just ave time three of those times they have been from the same mily. first pat brown and then his son jerry brown reshaped and california. a new book examines the role the brown family played in the state's history. the browns of california, the dyfamilysty that transformed a state and shaped a nation is written by miriam powell. she spoke with scott shafer. w lcome to "kqed newsroom." >> thank you. thanks for having me. >> so this book is part history. it's part biography.hy did you decide to tell the story of california through the brown family? >> because thought thatthe four generations of browns just

so mirro the -- the arc of that family mirrors the history of the state of california, thats t great vehicle for saying some really fundamental things about the history of this place. andso in turn the family wa important and influential in shaping it. i mean between pat and jerry brown, they have governed the state for more than ha of its modern history. >> yeah. and pat brown, of course, born in san francisco as was jerry jerry brown's grandmother moved here from the ranch to get to the big city, igues and pat brown was elected governor in 1958. what kind of a politici was he? >> pat was the perfectti poan for that era of this criminal expansi credible expansion. how california was formed, how it joined the union. it's an immigrant story about german immigrants and irish immigrants and that opportunity to remake yourself inalifornia as the land of opportunity.

pat was just beloved, a gregarious person. >> kind of a backslapper. >> really believed if he could justalk to everybody i the state one-on-one, he would win every single vote. >> how do youhink california shaped him? >> you'd be hard to find someone who is as passionate about the state as pat brown was. he just believed that it was the only place on earth he would want to. li he was, you know, a backpacker into his advanced age, grew up going to yosemite every summer, really instilled in his whole family a love of that outdoors and the environment and the importance of t natural world. >> he gets elected in '58, re-elected in '62, beats dick nixon. then ronald reagan comes along. what happened that led to his defeat in 1966? >> the end of that era of expansion, that sense that suddenly bigger was not tter, that the state was kind of out of control. the riots 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 brown, and they about ready for someone who was a good tv personality also, which is not something that pat brown was . l >> jerry brown was in the seminary, jesuit nase. how did that shape him as he did get into politics? >> i think the jesuit piece of jerry brown is a key part of his personality, his philosophy. he went to saintna us, then 3 1/2 years in the seminary, really at a very formative age and believes in a lot of those sortncf core ples of the jesuits. >> and he of course isth agains death penalty, which seemed to get the family, both pat and his sister in trouble over the years. he gets elected as a reform the governor's office in 1974 during the watergate era.

and h turns right around and runs for president, and then does itgain in 1980. how did that go over with voters? >> i h think that campaign in rk '76 was rely successful. there was some sense that he was a young,at chari, rising star. the 1980 race, not as successful, not as kind of a sense that he was bored with theaovernorship -- >> and very unfocused. >> he is the first of that po -watergate generation, cover "time" magazine, really this face of the new politics. >> gal i vanting with linda ronstadt and all those things. people are tired of him, leaves office. and then he goes into the years of wilderness as you describe it. what did he learn i japan and studying buddhism and working for three weeks with motour teresa aswrite. >> jerry brown has such that

fier intensity of intellect where when he focuses on something, he focuses it on it very directly. even the three weeks with mother teresa was an important impact on him. i thinkd that whole per the wilderness, he is exploring things and learning things amsut lf and the world but looking for a way back into politics, which ultimately he fin finds in oakland. >> he gets elected and re-elected. then he becomes attorney general. he's governor of course in his last months. he has obviously embraced thenv onment and climate change as his issue. why do you think he's done that? wht is it abois life up to now? e he has talked in times about how theironment is this core issue that really reminds him of his jeit training, that there are things pure and absolute about the environment and nt.utable and impor it's not like deciding about whether you're going to buy a second car. it's about saving the world. it's really sort of core values and a csistent theme throughout his administration. he has changed his positions on

some things but not really on enviuenmental is. >> interesting this week to hear him being criticized by some environmentalists for being not against oil enough. >> right. >> yeah. so how do you think, you know, of course it's rd to saywhat his legacy will be, but the brown famill how whey be remembered? >> i don't think you will 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, atown ore california story can you have than someone who comes back after being out of the public loe for so 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 jutice. >> it' sort of an ultimate california story. >> you had a chance to spend a fair amount of ti with him in writing this book. what's your guess as to what he does next. >> i think he will go to the ranch that his great-grandfath 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 climate chan and on nuclear proliferation in ways that he has been and continues to be anernational voice on those issues. >> the book is called "the browns o california." thanks for coming in. >> thanks for having me. that will do it it for us. you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. i'm th f vu. thank y joining us. ♪

thbert: a legendary reporter shines a light otrump presidency. i'm robert costa. tonight, we welcome bob woodward to "washington week." a new book by pulitzerin prize winn reporter, bob woodward, depicts chaos ie the white house. thy are so many officials questioning presid trump's decisions on trade, national security, and the showdown with the special couel. 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 chy