♪ tonight on "kqed newsroom," holds a global summit tackling climate chaale. so checking up on lifornia's legal 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 through the story of the brown family. hello and welcome to "kqed newsrm." i'm thuvu. we begin with the environment. this week,usands of people attended a global summit on climate change in san francisco. industry titans such a mark benioff of salesforce was there plus politicians from arod the world and actor harrison ford. >>ca e and elect leaders who

believe in science and understand the importance of protecting nature. stop -- for god's sake --he denigration of science. stop giving poweretole who don't believe in science or, worse than that, pretend they don't believe in scienceor their own self-interest. >> the event was launched to show that cities, states, nd regions andtries are stepping up to meet the carbon-cutting targets of the 2015 paris climate agreement. on monday, governorwn jerry br signed a bill requiring californians to generate all its energy from renewable sources by 2045. own co-hosted the summit along with former new york mayor michael bloomberg. they sounded a defiant note against the trump administration which pulled out of the paris agreement last year. their message, cities, states and industries can protect the environment even when the federal government won't. joitang me now to about the

global climate action summit are uc berkeley energy professor daniel cammen and san fncisco chronicle reporter curtis alexander. welcome to you both. curtis, you have been covering the climate change summit. what do you think it accomplished this week? >> well, the climamm change was not the paris conference that the world held three years ago, so it wasn't national leaders coming to the tab to agree on a landmark deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. what it was abou was cities, states, and businesses and other regionaly actors rea getting together to figure out what they could do to try help the national efforts to reduce greenhouse gasem ssions. i think they talked a lot about kind of what they're doing. they showcased their efforts, and i think they're going to go home with a lot of knowledge on what they can do better to try to help reduce greenhouse gases. >> so a bottom-up approach? is that effect, dan? >> it is. in fact, we've seen especially now with really challenging politics in washing tn, d.c.

this subnational approach, so-called under two u, the under two degree coalition. now it's up to 220-some member around the world. it's more than 40% of the global economy. it's a group of the cealition of 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 need to learn from reeach other because the is no umbrella organization except for this thing that california is co-chairing. >> one of the othergs that stood out were all the protesters. thousands of demonstrators throughout the week. why were they protesting? >> well, it's a really interesting mome where environmentalists are protesting an environmental summit, and that really shows you how eengaged many people and to what extent what we're seeing is action by those who areilling to act, but also recognition that we're not moving fast enough on many fronts. the protesters have a really valid point, but it's in this

context of these are the group who already want to get something done. t's this mix o how far do we have to go and how much do we need to push back against the parts of the world and the politics that are not enabling us to go green. >> itis really interesting because across the world, governor jerry brown is seen as sort of a leader on climate, yet like you said, at this conference we had hundreds of protesters knocking at the doors and even interrupting a fewkeof the sp during the sessions. but in california, the governor has approved additional fracking, additional offshore oil drilling, and like dan said, there arest people who j say, you need to stop all new oil development. >> because teey don't fl he's anti-big oil enough despite all his otherlimate and environmental initiatives. >> that's right. but at the same time, the governo signed two really landmark things on monday to really kick the summit off. one is to commit california to ing 100% clean energy by 2045. then he followed that a few hours later with an executive order that said we have to go to

all clean energy and zero carbon in our economy overall, d once we get there by 2045 or bore, then need to go carbon-negative. so we need to grow more trees. we need to suck carbon out of the ae. we to give ourselves some breathing room, if you will, because a lot of the world isn't going fast enough. those are landmark, but we can't eave the social justice behind, and that's what the protesters were focusing on. >> curtis, what were some of the other bills the governor signed yesterday? >> he signed a lot of bills this week. i think like you said the most importantoras getting calia on the path to being 100% renewable 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 emissions. it accounts for about 50% of the state's greenhouse gases. what he did was he passed a number bills that are going to encourage more people to buy ele cars, encourage electric van pools, and one of

them that stood o me was putting standards or quirements on ride hailing companies like lyft and uber t make sure they're putting enough electric cars on the road since they're becoming an increasing amount of the traffic on california highways. >> and so here in the bay area, curtis, what are some of the things that bay area cities are doing to fight climate change? >> wel, the first thing, i think this is sort of the low-hanging fruit, is they're movi to buyingore renewable energy. that's one of the things they're doing. oinother thing they're is trying to encourage the ectrification of transportation systems to prevent cars and buses from putting out greenhoue g one 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 landfills, it generates methane which is much more potent than carbon

monoxide. other cities joined in that initiative to try to commit to zero 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 them, or are they just sort of, you ow, paying lip service almost to the cause? >> well, it's definitely not lip service, but it's also not far enough. one otuthe real fs of the summit was to learn from one city to the next. singapore doesal something innovative on electric vehicles, having on-road charging for an them, so you pay with your easy pass kind of thing. another city has aam pro to invest in urban infill agriculture. one place needs to learn from the other. that's what the summit is getting done. as california has met andd exceets 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 fort to partner, and so i spent a lot of time this week ie pahip with some african leaders and in particular with chinesecities andprovinces. one thing you find from that is we do something on electric vehicles like setting a statend e of a million. china turns around anday, well, we'll sttop that. we'll do 5 million by .20 now california is figuring out how we can up our own number and discovering thahe brings down cost of driving, brings down urban pollution that leads to all of these kinds of benefits one city or state won't learn from unless someone else does it because you need to share that knowledge. >> you've been advising governments in china and africa about how to cut greenhouse emissions at the l what are some of the projects you've been seeing, and how much success have they had?>> some have been reallydr 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 iro 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 sol l.e.d. 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 phone. so mobile money is very trusted, often more trusts than t banks. africa and india. you can take home these devices all the way upo 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 i throuormation technology. >> and the effect of global

warming, the immediate effect anyway, really hits poorer communities the most. can you talk about tht? o that's the sad story. climate change hurts us all, but he rich have a muc better ability to act and to insulate themselves because they're rich. 't the poor c move quickly, and we're seeing that right now with hurricane florence. we've seen tt with fires and droughts in africa, and the international body, the ipcc, that assesses this came up with this really clear statement and that is climate change will affect all of us, but will affect the poor first and most severely. >> and, curtis, without the federal governments support, it possible for the u.s. to have a major impact in climate change? >> there was a study that came out in the run-up to the climate summit thisk by yale university that suggested that cities, states, and businesses, the regional players, could filt about ha 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 scalgo regionalrnments are filling a lot less of the gap. so it really is an issue large for national governments. >> all right. curtis alexander with theo san franci chronicle and also dan kammen, uc berkeley energy professor, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank yot' turn our attention now to cannabis. this week the associated press reported that nearly 20% of california marijuana products failedotency and purity tests. the primary culprit, mislabeling of a product's concentration of thc. that's thehemical com pound in marijuana that gets a pe high. testing show that thc amounts did not fall within 10% of what the product labels advertised. meanwhile, california isin wrapup its efforts to track 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. josh, you're with the trade group for the cannabis industry. what is your reaction the finding that nearly 20% of california's marijuanail produc tests for potency and purity? >> i would say i'm not surprised. our is an issue that association has identified months back. ted ink knowing the man testing was coming online on july 1st, the industry should have done more to get prepared for that. they knew what the testing requireme s were going tobe, but i also think a lot of challenges are landing within the testing la. you know, they only came online july 1st as well. there's no standardized mechanism right now, no standardization of testing labs, and there's not much oversight t this point. >> so one lab could find one finding, and another lab could test the exact same product and come up with something else, diferent results? >> that is a possibility, but that also -- you know, part of theeonversation needs to the

different items and the different variables unique to cannabis. a flower is exposed to too much air, it's going to change testing results. if it receives too much light, it's going change testing results. so there are a lot of variables that could change the testing rom one lab to the test. >> yeah. i mean this is evidence that legalization is we knew we had supply chain problems here in california. readers have been telling me, i ibhad one e one day, and nothing happened. i had the same edible the next day or t same package-type trible a week later, and i had a really, reallyg experience. we knew there was a variance problem with these products, and then we knew there might have been opesticides and mold there in the system. the good news is most of the y oblems have been related to labeling, and tven'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 doin under t medical system. >> should consumers be worried? less hink they can be worried than what they're going to buy on the black market.

a good chunk of consumers say i want to save money by st tl goi my guy, and i think health conscious consumers want to stt with not putting cannabis pesticides in their body. >> one of thest qns i have around this, is the 10% variance 200 sma too small we have products that range from one milligram to ten milligrams. eing able to test real creates a lot of challenges that testing labs have not quite figured out how to find solutions t >> can they challenge the test results? a not really. far as i know you can go back and label your package. but if it tests positive for pesticides, it's flagged. >> there's not a curren pathway to challenge testing results at one lab. there are bills trying to address that. what we're trying to avoid is a paylay system which we've seen in other states. you know, passing an item la through one , let's say it fails. taking it to the next lab that says, okay, we can pass tat

rough, 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 as well because the stat is ramping that up. how does it work and how are things going? >> we're go ag to try track and trace every single cannabis plant in the state. and we're talks millions and millions of plant per year. we've seen solutions come online in cndorado and washington, they have their failures. we have trouble keeping g. mail working or slack working in our offices. imagine trying to keep this te third party s going when you're working with the state. >> what kinds of failures have other states >> we can deal with issues of the system coming down, so one of the regulations now would say all stores must stop doing any sort of transactions if metric, which is the vendor that california is using, es down we're trying to -- critics want to see that particular rul away. thes stnystems are subject to data breaches, subject to internal issues. it's just like anovernment process where you have a third

party vendor who is not performin up to snuff. imagine running internet explorer at your work. >> regarding data breaches, does that mean that private consumer information is also subject or vulnerablto these kinds of breaches? >> we have seen that in the past. hat has happened in oth states. i think from an industry perspective, our big concern is if metric goes down -- and it inevitably will. they've gone down in every single ste. there is no pathway to continue to get product en roe from a distributor into the retailer. it has to stop completely. there's not a paper path. there's no other m chanism where continue to move that product. >> we also have farmers that are up in e hil on solar power with no connection to data necessarily. they're prying toug into this system. everyone's going to have to learn how to use it manually at a terminal, and it works like a dmv terminal. we don't have theobtness of open source development here. so there's going to be issues. there's been issues in other

states. >> to remind people, metric is the third party vendor that's doing the tracking. >> yeah, that won the contract. >> and the thing with track and trce, though, is that it doesn't monitor the vast amounts of marijua from unlicensed growers, right? so is there any evidence that legalizing recreational marijuana here in california is helping to decrease the black arket, which is one of t objectives? >> well, i think it's a process. anticipatenk we can that come january 1st of 2018 when california hadse adult go into play, that that was going to solve all of our problems and fully mitigate the illicit ma dket. what i think is it is a process. the illicit market is going to have a lot t hardere in any way shape, or form working withe retailers,ing to consumers 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 believe. >> and california doesn't exist in a vacuum. there's obviously 61% of americans that support

legalization. they are pulling cannaors out of cala to their states. there's demand out there. four of the five pounds we're growing in this state are leavincause they're demanded out there. we're dealing with that right now. te since you brought up v and voter sentiment, with the midterm elections coming up, are you seeing this idea of legalizing recreational marijuana spread from the coastal states more inland?> we have four ballot 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. andhese are really the new battleground states and it's evidence of how this has become a bipartisan issue on the coast 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 candidates at the city council

level, at theounty supervisor level, to figure out who is willing to work with the industry so we can start to u loc the local municipalities. >> in california, there are a number of bills before governor right? how likely is he to sign them? >> i would say there's a lot of governor brownof right now. there are a few priority bills that we're watching closely. one of those bill is going to create a provisional license period, and that is to deal the end of the temporary license which happens on december 31st. compassionate care bill that i think would have great impact. there's a distributor to distributor bill that i think will have great impact. i would sayre roughly there ten bills touching cannabis that are on his desk that he could sign by octerst. >> david, where is the cannabis industry headed next? what are n trends you're seeing? >> we're going to see continued regulatory bite-down. it's a phase-in process that the bureau na cis control has begun. rulers are going to become stricter of the puri of

oducts on shelves. we're also going to see more choice prices start to come down as more of the industry adapts to this new e>>ironment. ll right. david downs and josh drayton, thanks to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. now to california's political dynasty. in the last 120 years,s california elected democrats has governor just five times and ree of those times they have been from the same family. first pat brown and th his son jerry 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 b i writt miriam powell. she spoke with scott shafer. >> welcome to "kq newsroom." thank you. thanks for having me. >> so this book is part history. it's part biography. why did you decide to tell the story of california through the brown f >> because i thought that the four generations of browns just

so mirror the -- the arc of that family mirrors the historye of ate of california, that it was a great vehicle for saying somefu reallamental things about the history of this place. and in turn the family was so important an shaping it.l in i mean between pat and jerry brown, they have governedsthe e 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 kind of a politician was he? >> pat was the perfect politician for that era of this criminal expansi credible expansion. how califora was formed, how it joined the union. it's anra imm story about german immigrants and irish immigrants and that oppounity to make yourself in california

as the land of opportunity. pat was just beloved, a gregarious person. >> kind of a backslapper. >> really b cieved if held just talk to everybody in the state one-on-one, he would win every single vote. how do you think california shaped him? >> you'd be hard to find someone who is as passionate about the was.e as pat brown he just believed that it was the only place on earth he would want to live. he was, a you kno 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 the natural hewor. >> gets elected in '58, re-elected in 2, beats dick nixon. then ronald reagan comes along. what happenededhat to his defeat in 1966? >> the end of that era of expansion, that sense that suwaenly bigger not better, that the state was kind of out of the riots in watts.

the student rebellion on the campus o berkeley. ronald reagan's campaign slogan was clean uphe mess at berkeley. >> the free speech movement. >> people were tired of pat brown, and they abo ready for someone who was a good tv personality also, which is not something that pat brown was . l j jerry brown was in the seminary,uit seminary. how did that shape him as he did get into politics? >> i think the jesuit pie of jerry brown is a key part of his personality, his ilosophy. 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 course is against the death penalty, which seemed to get the mily, bo pat and his sister in trouble over the years. he gets elected as a reformer to the goernor's office in 1974

during the watergate era. and he turns riht arou and runs for president, and then does it again in 1980. how did that go over withte s? >> i think 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 successful, not as popular. kind of a sen that he was bored with the governorship and -- >> and verunfocused. >> he is the first of that post-watergateio gener 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 ieato the yrs of wilderness as you describe it. what did he learn in japan and studying buddhism and working for threet weeks mother teresa as you write. >> jerry brown has such that

fierce intensity of intellect where when he focuses on something, he focus on it very directly. even the threeh weeks wother teresa was an important impact on him. i think that whole period in the wilderness, he is exploring things and learning things about himself and the world but looking for a way back into ch politics, wh ultimately he fina finds in oakland. >> he gets elected and re-elected. thenhe becomes attorney general. he's governor of course in his last months. he has obviously embracedthe environment and climate change as his issue. why do you think he's donethat? what is it about his life up to now? >> he has talked in times about is core environment is t issue that really reminds him of his jesuit training, that there are things pure and absolute bout the environment and immutable and important. it's not like deciding about whether you're going to buyca a secon it's about saving the world. valuesally sort of core and a consistent theme throughout his administration.

he has changed his positions on some things butn not really environmental issues. >> interesting this week to hear him being criticized by someen envirolists for being not against oil enough. >> right. >> yeah. so how do you think, you know, of course it's hard to say what his legacy will be, but the brown family. how will they be remembered? >> i don't think you will find a amily that has hadhe kind of impact on california that the browns have had orha will e. again, here's jerry brun, brown what more california story can you have than someone who comes back after being out of the public eye for so long and is able to reinvent himself and come back and even undo andix things he did the first time around he did as governor.r >>nd criminal justice. >> it's sort of an ultimate california story. >> you had a chance to spend a fair amount of time with him in writing this book. what's youruess as to what he does next. >> i think he will go to the ranch that his great-grandfather settled on in the 1800s, which nd views as very much the

ancestral home an important, almost spiritual place. i think that he will try to be a force on climate change and on nuclear proliferation in ways that he has been and continues to be an international voice on thoseissues. >> the book is called "the browns of 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 thuy vu. thank you for joining us. ♪

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