tonight on kqed news so, how california is responding to governor newsom that it orders to begin reopening the state. and the buzz around san francisco at the school board decides to rename 44 schools in the name of social justice. alsotahoe with no snow for skiing? we talk with a climate change expert about a stunning new prediction and what the tahoe conservancy says they are doing to preserve the reason. plus a look at california's coastline at this week's take on something beautiful. welcome. i'm priya david clements. the we began with a case of whiplash in california as governor gavin newsom unexpectedly reversed course and lifted the strict statewide stay-at-home order. once again we can find outdoors

and gather with a few friends and even get a manicure. governor newsom's reopening announcement at a press conference monday took manyby surprise. still it is will conduce to the thousands of restaurants and small businesses that have been struggling to stay afloat. rates are trending in positive directions. meanwhile, the states were lot of the coronavirus vaccine continues to be somewhat rocky. switching to prioritizing age over occupation has significant implications for california's goal of equitable vaccine distribution. big political stories, i'm joined by joe carroll foley, thank you both for joining us. governor ducey's decision to reopen california took us all by surprise. what was behind the set of turnaround?

>> i think some of it was obviously political pressure. he has been getting and coming from all sides. so much concern among small businesses and others who are struggling. and the dampers are going down, we have seen that spike that hit a peak nationally in early january, it does seem to be subsiding. hospitals are no longer thinking about things like freshening care. i would guess it is a combination of the data and the political pressure. and the fact that as we make it into it, he is now facing the possibility of the recall and i think is watching his back around these things. >> there was a lot of pressure from the restaurant association, and from a lawsuit that was just filed by one country restaurants that we talked about last week. are those also playing into this decision? spectre, all of these things are playing into the decision. californians are economic hurting. so many people are out of work, the and deployment rate is about 10% which is double what

it was a year ago. i think the politics, are going to hurt him because a lot of legislators were caught by surprise by this. other people said they found out from the governor's press release. if newsom is going to be facing a recall and it looks increasingly like he may, he is going to need all of the democrats behind. it doesn't want to be picking up anybody right now. >> we are looking at a recall effort that is gathering steam against governor newsom. let's talk about some of the potential republican challengers who are out there. we have kevin stocker, what can you tell us about them? >> he is a silicon valley tech executive, i think very much of the pain of previous folks we have seen run for office. you will remember, the child should jerry brown, carly the

arena, this is not an unusual thing. to see someone step in and say i do well in business, i can take that into government. he had interesting ideas about for two as a reporter digging into like the idea that we can eliminate the state income tax and still increase school funding. a little confusing to me. but we will see. and then faulkner, sandy colbert, a more moderate republican. historically tried to distance himself from trump is expected regardless of this recall challenge him in 2022. the dampers are not on the republican side. every copy actually be a better opportunity for them than an actual normal election. >> republicans have been locked out of the california governor's office for a very long time. do you think there is a chance of changing? >> with the republicans, but they don't have, is a guy named arnold shorts and a. someone with 100% technician who can

self fund his campaign to a certain extent. after that you can say newsom is terrible but, who are we going to replace them with? if you look back at the recall in 2003, which works in a was elected, that was a two-month long process. you need to have someone who can have name recognition who can explain whatthey are about who they are in a very you just print. this is going to be, it's not going to be a couple of people running. there will be hundreds and hundreds of people running because the bar so low. it is going to be a circus. stand out you are going to be someone with name recognition or someone who has the money to gain some name recognition. >> one of the other criticisms was that newsom had not been releasing coronavirus data. the state did release that data . i am hopeful analysts are pouring through that. and we will see more information about what it also has. bottom line, does this sudden

reopening help or hurt gavin newsom politically? >> i think all of this depends on what happens in the next few months. we are in a situation by the summer where most californians are vaccinated, schools are on track to reopen fully in the fall, the economy is coming back, i do not think this recall has a great chance. i think a lot of the tensions we are seeing between the democrats and legislature and do some are not as serious as folks on the other side might help. i think a lot of this people were annoyed by him but maybe are not yet ready to say run against him the way we saw in the recall against davis. i really do think how he handles coming months will be important. i also think it is important to note that even with all this criticism, even with, to be fair the really challenging hand newsom has been dealt, we need to announce this is been a year like no other. jerry brown is in colusa probably breathing a sigh of

relief. his numbers in terms of popularity and support are way higher than gray davis is work. and in general, i think some people are bad but i think a lot of the things are situational and related to the >> anything else you want to add? >> we are going to have a big a poll this week coming out that will talk about newsom's popularity, his approval rating, that will go a long way toward seeing how this willgo. >> let's talk about a new secretary of state, shirley weber. what can you tell us about her? >> she is a member of the legislature, she is a longtime advocate for racial justice. she was behind but of the ballot measures this year. she has been very popular because, if other people were hoping a black womawould be dominated to replace kamala harris. he dominated her to fill this position. he nominated her.

many advocates for black women were saying wait a minute, we needed to replace kamala harris, there are no black women in the senate. there's only 24 of 140 some women who are in congress are black women. there is still pressure on him. to name someone to the attorney general position. >> any thinking what to add about shirley weber, please do but i want to move on to the ag office. and the jockeying that may be going on for the attorney general position that was vacated by javier who want to join the bided administration. >> i will to say, shirley weber, is a remarkable woman. the daughter of sharecroppers, her dad actually the south coast he was being hunted down by white farmers who got lucky

and not given them enough of his crop. she went on to get a phd, she was a professor for a long time. just an incredible story. we had her on our podcast last year. to listen to it. she is really indicative of the type of person who, has been able to rise above where she started in an enormous way and her daughter is now thinking about running for the seat. in terms of ag, i think joe is an important thing. there is this question of identity politics. i think there is good reason for us, kamala harris levison at least not a single black woman in that chamber. i do think that newsom, there's a lot of people who would like to see a woman appointed as ag, a woman of color. i'm hearing that the finalists include sacramento mayor darrell steinberg who of course is run for office many times. that is a big concern. you need someone who can win if you are going to put them in there. i know is simply meant local,

there's a lot of people pushing for his appointment. we are just going to have to see what kind of considerations newsom makes. i would imagine with the recall, he would like somebody in that job he can trust. i do know that i speaker pelosi is pushing hard for adam schiff. another white guy. from los angeles. he holds a lot of sway. >> i can see you have something to share. >> i don't think what i hear from adam schiff's people he is not interested in that job. he does not want to come back to that job. he feels like he has a better position in washington. i would think that, i put my money on >> for a couple of reasons. one of them being he is a favorite organized labor. and newsom, is going to need the help of organized labor helping him in this recall. if indeed it is there, he may want to tap trenton for that

reason. and he would be the first latino attorney general. >> you mention your podcast, political breakdown. joe you had a special guest on your podcast this week. tell us about senator alex padilla. what surprised you? >> not known as a dynamic personality, he is a very measured type of individual. he is a trained scientist. he went to mit, he was an aerospace engineer. he worked as a software programmer for a well. but he got very emotional on the podcast. the first person to break down emotionally, and cry a little bit on the podcast because when he talked about parents, they are mexican immigrants. he has lived there experience like no other member of the senate. he talked about waiting in line for them as they got their green card application, renewing their green cards.

and he talked about his dad, and his dad, how he was a line cook for many years and how he lost his job. and so, she is going to be representing their story. and the stories of many other immigrants in california. like no other person could. kamalaarris of course her parents were also immigrants. they were academics. they were phd students. a different type of immigrant. and i thought it was an interesting, a different side of alex padilla. i think people get to know him a bit better on that. >> i don't know if you will cry next week but he is scheduled to be here. if you want to see more of our newest state senator come back to kqed newsroom next week. we have a bit of time to finish up a san francisco only story. 44 schools have been renamed and it was a political process. is about social justice. can you tell us how this renaming is having a followed across california and across

the nation? >> the new york times said liberals versus liberals. that's always what it is in san francisco. to your point, this is, a time duration mezcals names of people who were slaveowners, the school district or miles, they did horrible things to native americans. it included people like dianne feinstein, i think the biggest controversy here, not national, is just the fact that they are doing this well schools are still close, while all of us who are parents are still trying struggling to teach our kids. i think they would say we can walk and chew gum at the same time. most of us who have kids in schools with a so is that you can do that. >> because you only do one of those two right now and schools are still shut. thank you both for your time. >> thank you. >> thank you. it has been a wet week with rain around the bay area. and snow falling in the lake

tahoe region. but at the operation serous storm conference, a gathering of climate scientists and meteorologiststhat took place and felt like i hope this week, there was a bleak prediction. that climate change could mean the snowy mountains and ski slopes could be gone in several decades. joining us by skype are two experts who presented at the conference, climate scientist dr. daniel swing with ucla's institute of the environment, and sustainability joins us from boulder colorado. and acting deputy director of the california tahoe conservancy, joining us from south lake tahoe, both joining us by skype. thank you. you are in tahoe right now, how much snow did you get? >> i'm right here at the lake level, about four feet. it's over the guardrail on my deck and i sprints around the lake, even more. is quite a bit of variation in the mountaintops versus. >> there is a prediction that with current projections we are looking at a future the may not have so much snow in tahoe.

can you tell us about where that research came from? >> the research came from a group of scientists including the university of california at davis that looked at climate model projections. that projection is under the most intense greenhouse gas emissions scenario and it found that snow would not regularly occur at 9500 feet or about. which would affect a lot of the resource. of course, if we don't do anything about climate change, it does require that, yeah. >> with current projections, with the don't want to to have, how solid is this data and what does that time i look my? >> we know that already the snowpack in the sierra and throughout the american west has started to decline. as a result of the warming that is already a. because we do expect there to be significant in the future, even if we take aggressive climate mitigation measures, there is going to be a further loss of snowpack. and under medium or high warming scenarios, which could still happen depending on what

we choose to do over the next few decades. that loss of snowpack could be quite profound. at certain elevations, it could be that the typical condition and winter is raining rather than snowing. up at 5000 or 6000 or even 7000 feet where snow fell quite regularly during the historical period. >> what does this production mean for tahoe? >> it means, we need to invest now in changing for the future and adapting to the resorts. if those productions cometrue, you will see green slopes in the winter instead of white slopes and it eventually a lake and burn-scarred and the force. it could be significant but we are also having a lot of partnerships to start getting a handle on these issues. >> and looking forward to the part of the discussion when we get to solutions. for now, let's talk about some continuing problems with this increasing warming. and the reduced snowpack,

daniel, let's talk about how that is going to impact our water availability in california and potential flooding. >> the water systems are really strongly conditioned on the presence of a pretty robust snowpack. most of her major reservoirs trade watersheds that receive their precipitation historically as no. why that matters is the precipitation falls as snow does not melt a meal. usually does not melt in the winter. it wait until spring or even summer. at higher elevations. to melt. reservoir system is contingent on that gradual snow melt throughout the dry season. whiccalifornia has such a profound summer dry season just about every year it is convenient to have this time- released water storage. essentially coming out of that snowpack as we have historically. as with news that snowpack in the warming climate that time- released water storage becomes less reliable and less able to replenish our reservoirs during the dry season. it means we have less

>> and less drought and dry season resilience. if welose that snowpack. and then of course there are implications far beyond california's urban water systems. also, the ecology of california. if you are a tree in the fost you don't benefit from water by the reservoir. if you are losing that snowpack rlier in the year, it is melting earlier, itis not wishing the soil moisture out there on the landscape during fire season. and that is one of the reasons, especially in the mountains, why we see an increase in wildfires severity. >> you have also spoken about concerns with flooding in the future. and in particular, what the people who put together great california earthquake shakeout program call the other big one. can you tell me about that? >> one of the big concerns any warming climate, even though we focus on water scarcity and drought and whopper, understandably, the other side of the coin is the increased risk of flood as we see more

intense storms, and as we talked about, a greater fraction of precipitation occurring as rain rather than snow. which was off immediately into rivers, lakes and streams and causes higher flood pulses. any warming climate we sort have this double whammy where there may be more precipitation overall during individual storm events, and also a greater fraction of that precipitation immediately turning into potential floodwater. both of those are pretty important contributors to future flood risk. >> one of your major projects is the upper truckee marsh restoration. what is the connection between that project and climate change? >> the upper truckee river and the marsh of the most important watersheds for the lake tahoe basin. when we think about the lakes it is important to filter nutrients and also to ensure that we have a healthy ecosystem . a lot of that restoration work is moving historical development in terms of climate change, that means there groundwater systems that will be more resilient, it means that we will have areas for

sensitive plants and birds to persist even under climate change and basically have much more resilient ecosystems for some of these changes. >> is only january, we've already seen wildfires in california. should we expect this going forward? >> the good news is i don't think wildfires are necessarily a regular occurrence. they may become more possible than they were historically simply because have warmer and drier starts to the rainy season. so that paris isn't me persist longer and what was historically wet season and into winter. is also potentially a silver lining. it made me there are more opportunities to do prescribed fire treatments in high risk fire zones. if we maintain those dry conditions in some years into the winter. that is one potential over aligning to the extension of the end of fire season into early winter.

>> how has the tahoe region, how is it preparing for increased wildres? >> we are doing an extraordinary amount. the past 15 or so years, there was a large partnership in 2007 where we actively manage the fuels and while but urban interface around neighborhoods and take a much longer landscape approach to doing much more efficient restoration that reduces fire danger including prescribed burning. quite a variety of partnerships given the amount of property at stake. and public health and safety as well. >> i want to talk about the change in seasonality. it seems like our seasons are really going to be shifting. can you talk us through how that changes going to look? >> something we have seen already, but are becoming warmer, drier summers. our summers are already dry precipitation wise. it doesn't rain often. most viewers are well aware. but that shoulder season the

autumn is really important. at some point in autumn typically you see precipitation that eventually spreads himself. and that largely dictates the end of fire season. the end of the long dry summer. what we are seeing recently is that the long dry summer is becoming even longer. extending into the auto. we are seeing less precipitation in autumn, much warmer temperatures in summer and autumn, and the that result is a longer fire season, a more intense fire season, and a shorter but potentially sharper rainy season. we are sort of constraining the month during which wereceive precipitation to an even narrower window than we were used to historically. we started to the early signs of this in the real world and it is consistent with what climate projections show. for the future california. less precipitation in the shoulder season, warmer all year round, with a shorter but sharper rainseason in the core winter months.

>>'s or any piece of that that you are most concerned about? are there months coming at you think, oh, boy, february's will be tough, we are going to be worrying about wildfire or the we ever have. which piece of all of this do you worry about the most? >> probably the lake itself. certainly nervous throughout the fire season and it is come much longer than usual and we have smoke impacts from outside the basin and inside. and people seeking refuge in tahoe for clean air. but the lake itself, that keeps tahoe blue, the reason people come to this largest out finally, that is impacted by these longer summers and the warming winter temperatures. historically, the hot, what water on the top of the lake would descend during the winter and mix and that's an important ecological process. for the lake to have a clarity. so we are doing everything we can to partnerships and storm water measures and biological studies to figure out everything we can do to keep tahoe blue. >> i'm sure sometimes it can

feel like you are a passenger of doom and. do you have some words of hope? what can people doto prevent this outcome? >> as a climate scientist often the dues we deliver is mo often than not, bad news. rather than good is. i do think there are some important silver linings. really the overarching message that i want to the folks with is that even in the face of increasingly extreme climate conditions, that does not mean that increasing climate disasters are inevitable. hopefully the goal is that we can decouple some of these physical extremes from the negative impacts. and a couple of specific examples, with respect to wildfires, one of those promising management tools we have in a lot of regions is, believe it or not, fighting fire with fire. using prescribed or managed burns to reduce the risk of fire by bringing fire regimes closer to their natural pattern

of more frequent low to medium intensity birth. from a flood management perspective, you might even be able to find a similar approach. except that in this case you might fight blood with drought and strout with flood. by that i become of you may be able to reduce the risk of blood that occur, by recharging our groundwater with those floodwaters, redirect those floodwaters into areas that are strategically selected to help us out with recharging are underwater aquifers. >> are there specific behavioral changes you would like to see in people when they come to tahoe? >> the one thing i would say is, treat it like your front yard. tahoe is the crown jewel of the sierra nevada, we 24 million annual visitors, about $6 billion ration economy, and if you think about it there are ways that we can stem the worst impacts of climate change and avoid tahoe being left today. sometimes people come here and

be be treated like more urban of an area where there a■re not services to keep it clean. is up to everyone who comes here to look tahoe as much as the residence do help us all keep that clean air for everyone to enjoy. >> thank you for your time. >> thanks again for having me. moving from the mountains to the ocean, california's coastline stretches for hundreds of miles along the western edge of the united states. videographer jim mckee captured just a portion of its splendor for this week's look at something beautiful. ♪

♪ ♪ you can reach me on twitter at and you can find more by news coverage at kqed.org/ kqed dues are. from all of us here at kqed, thank you for joining us. good night.

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