tonight on kqednewsroom, pg&e warns of more shutoffs. ce also, fabook, mark zuckerberg faces scrutiny as they are beinf investigat their behaviors. climate change is taking a we will hearhow it is taking a toll on our mental health. good evening, welcome to kqed newsroom , i am cynthia. we begin with pg&e's latest round of power outages in northern california. ur >> by thay, pg&e cut off power to 180,000 customers un across 17 coes in northern

california. even as the company works to restore power to the affected customers, they are warning of a largershut off starting on saturday night amid forecasts of strong wind. they faced criticism from the governor, lawmakers, and the california public utilities commission over their handling of the first poround of r outages two weeks ago. the utility was not adequately prepared for the first round of outages, as the website crasd d repeatedly the call centers were overloaded. joining me now is the senior producer, and data journalist, lisa white commented disability rights advocate sharing the board for the center for independent living bein eley. lisa, tell me, what about the shutoffs that could start turday evening and ovthe weekend? >>ast night, pg&ewarned people throughout the bay area that they could be turning off the power again, and the shut off could be as large and last longer than the one we saw earlier in october

>> in that sense, the regulators want pg&e to take a more surgical approach po the r shutoffs. the first rounds perhaps too broad. could you tell me what type of improvements they've made? how is the mmunication going? >> we have been hearing from pg&e. the website has stayed up. we are going througpower shut off right now. people can access the website hee to get notifications. during a marathon meeting, the public utilities commission especially around communication. we heard that during the larger power shut off, there were up to 1000 peenle from diff governments throughout california, on one line trying to have answers. pg&e's word that things would be better, and they were listening to the local governments to see how it was going. >> tell me about the baseline customers for pg&e. who are they?

does pg&e have a legal oblition at all? >> one of the big concer of people have is for people in the disabilities community when the power is shut off, and those in need assistance. people that has to store breastmilk or take medicaons we have people that may have problems if it gets really hot. we are having high temperatures in some areas. all of these people need electricity. the problem with the medical baseline, it is a program to assess whether you should have a lower utility bill. it has nothinto do with whether you need electricity or not. earlier this summer, the director of safety at the california committee, said it shld never be used for emergencies. un it over and undercount who is disabled at the same time. for instance, if your landlord pays yo medical billyou cannot be part of medical

baseline. you may need your cpap machine. >> let's bring you into the conversation, two weeks ago, he sparked a debate on the eve of the first power outages, we tweeted out to the city of berkeley, s king them, what the plan to help peoplewho did not have the means or ability to evacuate? how did that happen? what was eir response? >> i innocently posethe question to the city. i did expect a really good response from the city of berkeley that has a history of great disability advocacy, and heightened awareness of disabilii issues. ally wanted to know what the city was prepared to . sponse, that basically, folks that needed to be evacuated were on their own, and needed to fure a way out, to get to electricity, or things they might need in the event of a power shut off.

if people really did not have the ability to do that, eythat hould call 91 want to be taken to an emergency room. that was a really inappropriate response. i pis really that the city had planned a bit better, and would have a space, or shelter set up for folks that could access restrooms, and charge wheelchairs, and have caretakers come and go to help them as they needed. it does not sound like that happened all. >> i spoke to a 62-year-old e is on a breathing machine 24/7. she has many medical deviats he has to keep track of. se told me, she was scared due to this mplicated nature of trying to find somewhere that was accessible that she could afford. on top of that, she had an 85-year-old caregiver, who was her mother. it was real tough time for her during the situation. r situation highlights the neto

ut a spotlight on disabled folks, and these power tages. do you think pg&e is doing enough? >> no, i don't think any of us feel that pg&e is inenough every aspect interms of the shutoffs. certainly not taking enough responsibility for people who verely impacted by the shutoffs that will continue for who knows how long. i think, to push the on responsibility the cities and expect them to deal with it, without having any culpability is not acceptable. i do know that she did not have experience having an outage. as a person with a disability, s at are your feduring a power outage? >> using myself as an example, i am someone who has caretakers that assist me with my daily needs. i use a power wheelchair. i have to have access to electricity. i don't easily

have access to transportation. that could take somewhere where i could be safe. people that have va so many mobility issues that require having access to electricity and accessible space. r with these pooutages being so unpredictable, and will they do it or will they not? it will create a lot of paos ple's lives, who ordinarily have to plan out their lives to figure out their care for the day. d >> this weekwith alameda county facing shutoffs, what you plan to do? >> fortunately, so far, my leea of beris not in the scheduled shut off zone. i am okay. i worry about my fellow berkeley residents that are in the hills and other areas that wi be impacted. i still don't know what will

happen with those folks lyat reeed to help. >> lisa, seems with the california senate, with all of these issues with lockouts, they are investigating pg&e. they are investigating e process, and the serious issues that went along with it. can you give us an update on st the ination? >> yes, we learned yesterday that the california senate will meettoand look the power shutoffs and how they are conducted in mid november. they said they want to do it quickly, because we are still in fire season. we will be in fire season until what they will look at is whether they want to legislate who will make the call to shut off the power. some people say they don't able to just shut off the power, which is how it works w. they should tell emergency responders, local and state that they will do this. they have to tell others as well. they go ead and dothat. after that, after it happens, they have to tell the regulator, and how they feel

e about it. that's reason why they are looking into this. >> when you see that, the california publiutilities commission is investigating pg&e. how is the investigation different from the california state sete. >> what the cpuc look at is exactly what happened in the moments that we heard at the meeting from the president herself, and several commissioners that they were presen while pg&e was making these decisions. for instance, the president id she was in a room about the website, where they were trying to make decisions, and there was nobody senior enough to do that at the time. her experience came up during questioning of the executives. early next week, they ll receive anincident from pg&e about damage done to the lines during the power shutoffs. they will be able to levy a fine if they think utility did something incorrectl enforcement issue and power do they have. can this change their behavior?

>> they can issue a fine aunt they have done so in the past. pg&e is a convicted felon, due to their role in the san bruno disaster that left eight people dead. also, they have a federal probation dge that is looking at all of this. pg&e has to redeliver a rt about all of this to the cpuc ne and probation judg week, where we will learn more. pg&e says that ouenges could hafor more than a decade. they are in bankruptcy otection right now, duto the liability from the fires that were linked to their mean are they opening themselves up to more liability in the future? how does that work? >> that depends on who you talk to. there is a question of, if somebody dies during a power shut off because they did not , have powo is responsible for that? i'm not sure we really know. this is something that melissa brought up. this is a question that many

californians have. who is responsible? is it pg&e? is it the local government? is it old? who make sure that we are safely shut off the power?:this is a lot to think about.k thu so much. on wednesday, facebook's ceo, mark zuckerrg faces get goal lawmakers on capitol hill before a hearing of the house financial services committee. he did defe the plan to launch digital currencythat will helpeople without bank accounts quickly and securely send money. meanwhile, 47 state attorneys general have signed onto investigating the tech giant for anti-competitive behavior. race ramps up, facebook is l under pressure to police its platform for election .interference effor this week, the company says they were removing 4 disinformation campaigns targeting voters in the united tes and abroad. joining me now is marketwatch

bureau chief and technology editor, jeremy owens, tech reporter at politico, nancy. she joins us via skype from washington, d.c. can you tell me right now, the lawmakers summon mark zuckerberg to capitol hill on wednesday. they wanted to lk to him about libra, facebook's new crypto currency. >> there are a wide range of concerns. lawmakers mentioned things like the ability the crypto currency to be used for terrorist activities, that so of things. they worry about having the crypto currency that does not have government oversight, that could be used for nefa. ous purpos that was one of the main stated objections. the real issue is, they don't trust mark zuckerberg or that feeds into the concerns about this brand-new scheme that mark zuckerberg is proposin>> facebook and mark zu claims he will not go ahead with libra without u.s. regulatoryapproval.

what is he angling at? are lawmakers buying it? >> no, one of the interesting points in his testimony, as u said, he said we will not go ahead with their currency without regulatory approval? which regulators does he need? there a basket of them in washington that might h oversight over this. what does approval look like? they don't register the nsobjectn paper to this new product? is that good enough for them? there are signs that that might be the case. is seen on paper, pretty black- and-white. he did leave himself some wiggle room to go ahead with e project anyway. >> he was grilled on other issues including facebook's defense of free speech and e defeat they were not police political speech, including ads that were false. obviously, the lawmakers have a lot of concernswhat can they do? >> that is a good question. they havyelled and

previously, right. this is not the first time that he has gone in front of a bunch politicians on capitol hill and got yelled at for everything that facebook has done. what he is trying anto do, his old strategy it seems, with the speech last week on speech and free expression at georgetown universitd this time, he is tried to angle himself differently. when this all broke, inc. cambridge analytical broke, and all these problems started happening on facebook. he apologized, profusely. he spoke about how difficult of an issue it was. he's talked about the nuance of it. now suddenly, you see a definite change. this year he stopped apologizing.ng he stopped discusthose things. now, he's out there taking a politicians a stance. he is telling people, look, you believe in free speech and expression, or you are against it. we are for free speech. you have to be on our side. with libra, the big thing was, if you don't allow us to do this coming you e allowing china to do this. he sets up as a black-and- white issue, putting facebook on the good side to try to get peoplen.n his side ag this is a political stance of,

there is a very nuanced tub to handle issue, but i will make it black-and-white and put myself on the side of od. it seems like he has a at larger sy here. you think he will continue doing that? >> yes. he will have earnings next week. hesaill do the thing. he will hit the issues again, talking only about the good. he is not talking about the bad anymore. he is talking about the good. that will be his approach from here on out. >> nancy, you are on a press call with mark zuckerberg this monday. he said they we making progress when it came to identifying and responding to disinformation campaigns. can you give us an update on that? >> yes, he laid out a range things that facebook is done to address these concerns about disinformation and election manipulation. introduced a lot of tools, mor ly at potools to detect fake accounts. a lot of the misinformation come from accounts thatare not valid to begin with. they have come a long way to

identify these accounts. he did go through a whole list of things. there is a presidential spendi tracker that they're rolling o tabs on how much campaigns are spending on facebook ads, just er get a besense of the full range of that universe. the most interesting thing on the call was that itwas him personally doing it. in the past, this would have been an election official at facebook doing it. he is taking a proactive approach. the fact that he is a public face of some of these inthe eds issues, it is showing that facebook is making atan mpt to present themselves as taking these issue seriously. he said that once or twice on thwecall. re caught on the back foot in 2016. we will not let that happen again. >> 47 attorneys geneinl have the antitrust investigation into facebook. can you tell me what they are looking for? >> it is not clear.

tightlipped. ge they talk about the fact that they are launching the investigation. they don't go into details of what it they are looking for. that is one of the things as reporters, we are trying to rert that out, as far as the nature of it. we know this is part of the probes, and the federal probes into facebook. one big thing they look for is companies that have engaged with facebook as being required by them to have a busine relationship, and what those complaints are about facebook. e >> ,our own attorney general has not signed up into this investigation. >> yes. s he has own weapon coming online in january 2020. the california consumer privacy act is becoming law on january 1 , 2020. he will havean arrow his quiver that none of the other attorneys general have. he is not publicly said why or why not he is doing this. i thinhe knows, in a few ll mnths, he have the

ability to go after facebook in a way that none of the other states do. this is unitstates version of the gdp are. th a consumer privacy act. california has their own. we did pass this as californians by valid. that comes online. he will be able teto go facebook with that, if he wants to. i think he is probablywaiting for that to come line. >> also, elizabeth warren is one of the most prominent voices, asking for facebook to be brokeup. can that happen? >> i think that would be a difficult thing for them to do. they have some evidence that they have used their position in an anti-competitive matter. i know snape has given over nformation it has ab they facebook has done to try ying to drive it out of business. doesn't solve any ofthe oblems that we actually have?

my biggest issue with facebook is the misinformation and disinformation campaigns. psey are used as hological warfare against americans on the platform. does breaking instagram apart from facebook do anything atabo no. we will face that. ng you're talabout setting a standard. this is a punitive breakup. if you cannot prove that facebook is a monopoly, and at using monopoly power, then we will be breaking up a company in a way that have not done before as a nation. we are setting a new standard that i don't know if we want to set. >> nancy, will inyou weigh on this as well? >> you mentioned elizabeth warren, being explicit about the idea that in her administration, she would pull u the trigger brthese companies, google, amazon, fag book. the interesting she is doing, she is opening a window of the past latisse of the lt pes and government retribution against these companies, so breakups are on e far end, but it becomes a mainstream, middle-of-the-road position to say, okay, we will limit the business practices of facebook. maybe facebook cannot share ta between facebook and

instagram. just having the government dictate how the coanies work in a way that they have not in the past, i don't even know, i have been reporting on this, whether the campaign things that breakup is the real way to go. the things she ishas said defined the field in a way, much more broadly to make this conversation than other candidates have in th and . >> will stay tuned on this one. ank you and jeremy. last month, on the eve of the united nations climate summit, millions of young people around the rld skip school to demand action on climate change. leading the charge was greta thunberg, 16-year-old activist from sweden, dressing world leaders at the climate summit , with anger, defiand frustration. it is not just young people who are fearful and worrieabout droughts, and mass extinctions. psychologists and therapists are increasingly seeing the

toll that climate change has on mental health. helping the patient turned despair into resilience, joining me now is our health reporter, lauric livens. for an increasing number of come the scary part of their lives. we have seen pg&e having mandatory power outages and the kincaid fire that is burning in sonoma county. one of the reactions to these retorts, and people tend turn off the news. they turn away from consuming any information. why is that? >> that is correct. itis because is suan overwhelming and scary issue. when the smoke was cloaking the bay area is time lastyear, it was a very fearful time for many people. the ways of people are managing the fearare largely a way to defend themselves. that can show up in many ways. one could be just totally ignoring it and denial, going

about business as usual. another is to distract yourself. last night, watched the great british baking show. i think people are doing similathings to that. many times, people take the le of a chilin these types of situations. this is a description that one of the therapists i spoke to gave to me. we are putting the responsibility on somebody else. we say, a politician will take care of it. a company will take care of it. also, many people are intting steaa silver bullet solution. we will develop some technology to get us out of this mess. this is some guilt we feel. we are participating in the systems. we know they are creating the problem. that is a tohard team hold in your mind. >> absolutely. in your reporting, you refer to the feelings of being overwhelmed, being anxious, feeling despondent over climate change, calling it, o- anxiety. this is a climate grav therapists and logists view of are about climate change, and how it impacts mental health?

is this a growing concern ? as we >> yes, it is. i have heard that from all therapists i have spoken to. they are seeing this more and more in practices in different ways. people come in with tension, grief, sadness, and ul partly when the reports come outt abhow dire the situation is with climate change and global warming. theyre seeing isaround the large events. they are also working with folks that have something that is not even eco-anxiety, but a ptsd from an event. maybe you've let a fire, now you have trauma that you need to work throug at therapist office a good place to do that. >> we have known about climate change for decades. why is eco-anxiety just now being recognized? whato you think the events have been that has triggered this awareness? >> because the issue is so huge , and it was so hard to understand and ap our human

minds around. it was not clear how this would hot affect e us in future. it is tough for people to look to the future and except that this would happen. e now, we seeing this more because we are feeling a more. we feel it with the smoke. we feel itwith the flooding. we feel it, when we have neighbors coming down to stay with us because they might be evacuating their homes. in this happening in our lives now. that is why, right now, we are seeing this more. people ae in a plwhere they are needing to face this. how is eco-anxiety different or similar to treating someone who might have anxiety or depression? >> it is different, because this anxiety, a clinical anxiety this one might be around something that is an irrational fear. this is based on something that is actually happening. it is scary to go outside and e worry about air you are breathing, or the air your children are breathing.

this is different on how he treated. rm ly we would manage it, because the problem will not go away. it is, how do we create people who re resilient and more able to manage the feelings they have around this issue? >>lkow should parents to kids about climate change? do >> that tails well with how we should all be addressing and managing these issues. for kids, talking to them about climate change, this is a good thing to bring up. this is actually happening. it is also helpful to keep it faisly simple, so it understandable for kids. it is very helpfulto do what i would recommend, based on what i have heard from all of these different mental health folks for adults to address this as we can learabout the problem, know it is happening, and talk about it so there is not a social stigma around it this is truly going on. we need to address our feelings. therwill be sad feelings. be

there will anxious feelings that come up. it is okay to have these feelings. we need to acknowledge them in order to move through them. we need to engear that gy to action. this is what we are seeing when kids go out on the streets. they are afraid, but they say, i don't want to put this fear into my tears only. i want to take action. that is something that adults can do as well. one thing i want to say that is really important about all of th this, becausissue is so huge, it has to be addressed as a group. one persn will feel very to isolated tryingtake on such an enormous issue. the power of a group is really important. >> t sounds like empowerment is super important. also, taking action. >> because the issue is very gent, and we cannot rn away from it, if we are expecting to go forwardan, not the fire sasons like this, we have to take action. >> thank you much, that is

kqed's health reporter. that will do it for us. as always, you can find more coverage at kqed.org. thank you for joining us.

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