Green Academy ties the line at the beach

Drive along Cabrillo this week and you will see dozens of palm trees decke out with ribbons. These ribbons symbolize the scale of sea level rise in the ice on Greenland. Like the lightblueline project, the Santa Barbara High School Green Academy effort uses public art to make a scientific statement. You can visit the green academy website here: http://www.thegreenacademy.org/sea/

Governor tells staff to prepare for warming

Not waiting for the line to get drawn in Santa Barbara, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, issued an executive order in November for State agencies to prepare reports on the impacts of sea-level rise due to climate change. Here is the text of the order: http://gov.ca.gov/executive-order/11036/

Not waiting for the Governor, The New Media Studio and the Donald Bren School at UCSB initiated its own study of the impacts of sea-level rise on the City of Santa Barbara last March. And so, by the time the State is just convening its first conference on sea-level rise, Santa Barbara is going to have an initial study completed and ready to use as a model for other cities and coastal regions in California. The City has been very helpful and cooperative with this study, and again Santa Barbara has an opportunity to take a leading position in addressing the challenges of climate change.

As lightblueline also noted, the expected sea-level rise this century is potentially up to 1.5 meters, which, using a conservative linear estimation puts the sea level up more than seven meter in 500 years.

The point of gathering information about future impacts is to assess the various responses we can make, from cutting carbon in the near term, to hardening the coastline if we fail to stop the progress of climate change. Knowing the relative costs of all the options lets us determine, in purely economic terms, the best path. In terms of keeping Santa Barbara's ocean down by the waterfront, for reasons that include economics, but also include our moral obligation to our children's childen to leave the planet like we found it, there is no substitute for reducing greenhouse gasses in the short term as a world-wide goal. This is where the Governor will soon have help from the new White House.

Obama promises to put the US on the forefront of fighting climate change

This makes local action much more proactive and much less reactive. Once we have a federal plan to limit carbon (to match the California and the Santa Barbara plans), and once the current administration handlers are not censoring their own scientists, I would guess we will be better prepared to talk about climate change and its longer-term local impacts.

Of course the only reason property values tanked in Santa Barbara was because we didn't paint the line (thanks Jerry!).

Buyer Be(una)ware

In the ever-moving target of accusations and arguments leveled at the lightblueline public education environmental art project the one that happened last was the most improbable: the idea that a temporary public art installation could change property values, up or down, in Santa Barbara.

Of course, the argument was made only in the “lowering property values” vein, although the exact same logic would have property values rising on the other side of the line (where most of Santa Barbara’s real estate happens to be). To begin with, the lightblueline project was elevated from an art project to some form of civic policy. By allowing the lightblueline to show residents a hypothetical new coastline in five hundred years, in order to help them realize that we have a lot to lose if we do not stop human-induced climate change in the coming decade, the city, or so the argument went, was announcing new rules for real estate transactions. Or, at least, the city was authorizing this line as a new vulnerability that property owners would need to figure into their plans.

Actually, all the city did was follow its own rules to allow local resident artists to display a piece of public art. The city made no policy decision/announcement at all. Residents are free to look at the art from all sides and make up their own minds how this information might require more thinking or conversations about climate change. Those who deny the science of climate change are free to laugh. Lightblueline is just as likely to help get the Mariners into the World Series than it would be in changing property values in Santa Barbara.

As NPR and the LA Times and others noted, the impact of the “property values” argument was to reinforce the perception of Santa Barbara as a city fixated on the real-estate bubble that has turned a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house into a winning lottery ticket. The notion that public education and awareness is bad for business and should be stopped leads to some seriously indefensible conclusions. If withholding environmental science information is a legitimate practice in the name of profit, then what other information should we withhold in order to keep the property values sky high? What else can we not tell the buyer so that they feel better about the deal?

The real irony is that lightblueline is working as hard as its volunteers can to save not only property values, but actual PROPERTY down by the waterfront. The whole point is to help coastal cities become more involved in the solutions to climate change so that their long-term sustainability is more secure. Realtors and property holders might be better served (in the long run) by joining lightblueline. All are welcome. I should note that a number of realtors have written me in support of lightblueline. So we will move on together.

Champion of Ignorance

When the News Press reported that the oceans would rise seven meters in “about ten years” they did two things. First, they scared their own readers, apparently by choice, and second they put these words into my mouth. I never said anything like this, and never would. So why did the News Press chose to frighten its readers and use a campaign of misinformation against the lightblueline art project?

Perhaps they read the Independent and the Daily Sound and realized that the responsible journalistic positions had already been taken. After all they waited several days to report the City Council approval of the lightblueline. But then, they chose to not attend the council meeting. They also chose not to attend the various public city arts committee meetings where the lightblueline project was scrutinized and then unanimously approved. Instead they offered up opinions about lightblueline being a pet project on some hidden inside track. Then there was the twelve thousand dollars the city put up to pay the overtime for street workers to help protect the safety of the hundreds of volunteers who would be painting the line. That’s about one percent of the City’s art budget.

Next there was the “soliciting donations” accusation. As though no other public charity in Santa Barbara had ever done this before. The “link to a private website” was another curious position. Almost all of the science education content in the US is served up by non-governmental sources. Perhaps the News Press would prefer that the city hire an “information tzar” to monitor the content of the local non-profit websites. Who knows what the Santa Barbara Museum of Art might post next? When the Historic Landmarks Commission approved the lightblueline there was some hope that the actual message of the project still might rise above the steady stream of misinformation from the News Press.

However, the News Press had no intention of fulfilling its role in the public sphere. Any self-respecting newspaper would have looked into the actual science of global warming and at least make a gesture to talk to local scientists about this. Lightblueline gave the News Press contact information for several prominent UCSB experts, none of which the paper chose to interview.

Human induced climate change is the single largest challenge that human society has posed for itself in our history on this planet. We have about ten years to mitigate the effects of global warming by cutting back on our greenhouse gas emissions. This will mean sacrifices large and small from each of us. That is the reason why lightblueline was formed: to help all of us in Santa Barbara realize what we have to lose in the long term if we don’t act together in the short term.

Lightblueline is assembling a robust educational service on its website; a place for teachers, students, and the public to learn about climate change and sea-level rise. Apparently the need for this resource is more critical than we thought. For example, the whole idea that drawing the line in Santa Barbara would affect property values is based on a profound ignorance of the facts of the project and of climate change. But now ignorance has found a champion. Surely the editors of the News Press realize that this just another distraction from the real problem. What is the position of the News Press on human-induced climate change?

A big loser here is the News Press, which just wasted the remnants of its reputation in a vendetta against a volunteer-based, educational public art project. The need to come together to work against climate change grows stronger. Education will overcome ignorance. It’s simply sad that this happened in Santa Barbara. We all lose when our mediasphere has been poisoned for private reasons.

For the record, I told the News Press that sea-level rise due to inaction to stop climate change would take centuries. The real problem is that we only have a decade to protect our future waterfront.

If you love global warming vote for me

In today's Independent, Nick Welsh notes that the six new candidates running for City Council are all motivated in part by their opposition to lightblueline. While the idea that all six of them will need to keep up the rhetoric all the way through the election is curiously encouraging--the whole point of public art is to get people talking--such a platform is more of a plank.

The City is spending zero dollars on lightblueline, a fact all of them knew before they filed. Lightblueline is a temporary art project, and will, in any case, be gone before the next council term is up. Maybe they don't like art. They could, of course, run against the Santa Barbra Museum of Art, a much more visible, durable opponent. They could argue that a science center would be a better use of the space.

But then again, by opposing lightblueline they are also running against the science of climate change. They have joined forces with what Newsweek called "the denial machine." This means they have to spend the next three months attacking the science that NASA and NOAA and the world's top science organizations, including UCSB, consider to be the best science available. That should lead to some interesting interviews, and more conversations. Perhaps the Art Museum could be turned into flat-Earth science center.

This is the year that the US Government (the Bush Administration is hosting a summit in September on reducing greenhouse gas emissions), including the House and the Senate, and the California governor and legislature, and Santa Barbara City have all adopted measures to reduce greenhouse gases in response to the threat of human-induced climate change. Stopping climate change is a long-term sustainability issue for all coastal cities. A fitting backdrop for these six, these brave contrarians, to step up and actually support climate change, or at least support the continuing lack of public awareness of climate change. And the platform-turned-plank gets longer still.

They have a strategy. They claim a few gallons of paint decorating the city streets for a few years might lead to property value changes. Of course they don't accept the logic of their own argument: if it lowers values on one side of the line it must raise values on the other side--and guess which side has much more property? This means that art will accomplish what floods, mudslides, fires, and earthquake and tsunami risk have failed to do. Such a narrow plank to stand on.

Of course they do have a so-called newspaper on their side. A newspaper that managed to misrepresent the lightblueline project from its first "news" coverage and subsequent editorial rants. Fortunately there are a lot of other sources for news in Santa Barbara. And all of these other news sources are going to be asking real questions about the candidates and their positions. So, over the next three months we can all watch them walk the plank.

NOTE: Bob Hansen would have run anyhow, art or no art.

Tracking down the elusive News Press

I need to catch up with a few of the items that have appeared in the News Press. Now that it is apparent that few if any of the letters of support for lightblueline will find a place in its editorial pages, there is a lot of careless criticism that might need some response. Of course, I'd really like to contribute to a News Press fact-based feature piece about lightblueline and the City's campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then again, I'd also like to break 80 at Sandpiper.

At the moment, one of the problems with being hounded by a blog that calls itself a newspaper is the need to track down a copy to read. Since the News Press hides its digital version behind a subscription wall, and since I don't subscribe, and since nobody I know subscribes, and since nobody who the "people I know" know subscribes (this could go on a while), I am stuck in the moral dilemma of donating quarters to the NP blog, locating cast-off copies in local coffeehouses, or biking over to the library. Problem is, I go to coffeehouses that locals frequent (Jeanines, Vices and Spices, or the Coffee Cat) and frequently the already-read newspaper baskets don't contain any NP copies either. I suppose I could meander over to Starbucks. Or maybe not. I've managed to track down some copies at the UCSB library, and so I have a general idea of what the noise is all about. And I've recently had a couple conversations with "reporters" from the NP blog, not that these have been very encouraging.

The lightblueline effort has been spinning up around town for a year now. We've had numerous meetings at the University Club, and we've been showcased in local media (the non-blog variety) for several months. We've had tables at events at City College, UCSB, and Earth Day, a couple squares at the I Madonnari festival, an exhibit at City Hall and several First Thursday receptions. We attended and were acknowledged at the marvelous series of speakers on climate change that was hosted at UCSB over the last six months. We haven't been hiding.

The lightblueline art project went through a series of publicly available reviews by the City's Arts Advisory Committee and its Visual Arts in Public Places committee. We have been pestering the City's very tolerant staff for months to learn about the right way to put a decoration on a city street. City staff graciously allowed a group of residents to come in and ask questions. They expressed all the concerns one would expect a Street Department to have: safety, aesthetics, and procedures. I cannot say they were actually enthusiastic about our proposal, but that's not their job. They are extremely professional and knowledgeable about all things "street". We look forward to working with them to get this project on the streets.

For a year then, lightblueline has been preparing to do this project in the best possible way, getting it right, knowing that Santa Barbara is very careful about how its streets look.

And during this whole time the News Press blog never approached lightblueline to learn about the project. And their continuing ignorance about the project now has a certain stubborn quality to it. It allows them to make up their own vision of the project which they can in turn excoriate. They've harangued against miles and miles of lines, when the entire lightblueline project is only 1200 linear feet of decoration. They complain about the City contributing expert staff to help keep citizen volunteers safe on the day the line is painted. They talk about the $12000 budget as if it was twelve million dollars. The News Press failed to send a single reporter to the City Council meeting, or to any of the Arts Advisory Committee meetings, or to any of the UCSB climate change talks, or even to the lightblueline website (I needed to tell the reporter our URL), and yet they clamor against the process that led to City Council approval. They object to city staff providing useful information to local residents.

The very first time the NP talked to me was a week after the July 3 City Council vote. Several days after the news of this was factually reported in the Daily Sound. The reporter asked how the City Council voted, and I couldn't help wondering a) why they hadn't walked across de la Guerra Plaza to attend the council meeting, or b) why they couldn't go to the Council website and watch the streaming video of the meeting. "The council voted six to one in favor of the project," I reported to the reporter. "Who voted against it?" she asked. You can guess who was the only Council Member interviewed for the NP blog.

The most dangerous thing the NP blog did was misreport the science about climate change and suggest that climate change could lead to a seven-meter sea-level rise in ten years. And then they took that gross factual error and reported that I said this. I've requested more than once that the NP correct this mistake, but that isn't going to happen. I suggested that they can talk to any of several top climate scientists at UCSB about global warming. UCSB has several experts in this field.

A couple things the NP blog has done, through its almost daily showcasing of this project, is send a lot of volunteers to us and helped raise the project's recognition among a cohort of residents that might not have seen our booth at Earth Day. Our community website has had over 10000 visitors in the last six months. And we haven't even begun to paint.

lightblueline: Protecting Property Values in Santa Barbara

lightblueline joins with homeowners and commercial property owners and civic leaders (the city owns a lot of property too) in proclaiming that we need to do everything we can as a city to sustain the investments we have made in the waterfront district from the threat of sea-level rise. We can help sustain this property and our beautiful coastal landscape by working together to stop human-induced climate change.

Here in Santa Barbara we've gotten used to (and sometimes a might too complacent about) our local environmental risks: wildfire, earthquake, landslide, and flood. In the last century we've seen them all. Each of these has its own geography, the hillsides burn, Mission Creek floods, La Conchita gets buried, and so landowners are generally well aware that their favorite location on the ridge or near the ocean is also a spot where something bad, at some point might just happen. Planners work with 100 year and 500 year event scenarios, and the rest of us hope that 100 year earthquake is still 50 years off (even when the last one happened 80 years ago).

Now we face a new environmental risk, an increase in vulnerability to sea-level rise due to human induced climate change. The science tells us this vulnerability will occur if we do not reduce our global greenhouse gas output. Some of this sea-level rise happens because the oceans are expanding as they warm. Some comes from the decrease in snowpack and glacier cover. But the real concern is from the polar ice sheets, where most of water that might feed the oceans is stored as ice. If we melt just 10% of this ice the oceans will rise seven meters. And if we keep on producing greenhouse gases in the same rate we do now, we will lock in at least this amount of melting through our actions in the next 10 years. IMPORTANT NOTE: the actual melting takes additional decades to centuries. Climate change does not happen overnight.

Unlike earthquakes or floods sea-level rise due to climate change is something we can prevent, but only if we act now. We have maybe 10 years left to keep the ocean down at the waterfront. The City Council has provided bold leadership to reduce carbon output within city government. Groups like the Community Environmental Council are working on local solutions: check our their Fossil Free by 33 website.

The message is clear: we can support the City's leading efforts at reducing greenhouse gases or we can sit back and let our grandchildren's grandchildren watch the oceans rise, forsaking our responsibility to property owners along the coastline.

If you are serious about property values in Santa Barbara, well, then that's another fine reason to support the City's lightblueline effort.

This is a personal blog... not a newspaper

For the past month I've seen the Santa Barbara News Press, once a respected local daily paper, now an embarrassment to the profession of journalism and to fine city of Santa Barbara, avoid both fact and reason in attacking the lightblueline project and the City Council. The paper has misquoted me and refused to correct this, and has also refused to explore the science and the policy implications that are the basis for lightblueline.

Fortunately for Santa Barbara, there are several other sources for local news: the Independent, the Daily Sound, Edhat, and even the Nexus; all of which try to get to the facts of a situation, as their profession requires.

Today the News Press is a blog masquerading as a newspaper. I've started the lightblueblog as my way of responding to the News Press and other aspects of the lightblueline project that need to the told, but that do not belong on the lightblueline website.

The bottom line is that the lightblueline project is a very simple geography lession: ten gallons of paint decorating an elevation contour. An opportunity for residents to realize how close we live to the ocean, and how vulnerable we are to any changes in sea level, long term or sudden. The fact is, not knowing about a vulnerability does nothing to prevent it. But in this case, knowing about the vulnerability we face due to climate change CAN help us participate in preventing this.

People ask me about how I can respond to the News Press. How does one respond to a blog that does not accept your comments? You start your own blog. This is mine. It's not a newspaper. But then neither is the News Press.

Stay tuned to lightblueblog for factual responses to the fantasy editorials rolling out of the News Press. And feel free to comment: you don't need to subscribe.