Some folks got pissed at me about this tweet because San Francisco won't literally look like Atlantis.

It's true, the San Francisco Archipelago is still just a dystopian fantasy world invented by @burritojustice (see burritojustice.com/2012/03/20/san…)

But let's talk reality a sec.
By 2050 we are virtually certain to see around ~ 3 feet of sea level rise. Sounds fine, right? You've got a cool condo in the Castro, elevation 200 feet. No problem.

Must be nice. Here's 101 in Mill Valley with 3 feet of sea level rise. The red part is underwater: Image
Here's Larkspur/Corte Madera: Image
Here's San Rafael: Image
Here's 680 by the Coliseum: Image
Here's 101 past SFO: Image
Here's ... well, 101 down most of the Peninsula: Image
And of course, the sea level rise sleeper beach town, Stockton, California.

These amounts of coastal/waterway inundation are basically locked in by mid-century. We already can't stop this from happening. Image
So, keep doing all that great work watching out for "the working class" who simply must drive cars to work in San Francisco from ...

Marin City (underwater), San Rafael (underwater), Stockton (underwater), Vallejo (underwater), East Palo Alto (underwater), Coliseum (etc.)
I get it, it's not your problem, you'd rather just let those damn kids figure it out.

It would be great if you would just say that.

(all maps available from coastal.climatecentral.org/map/14/-122.11…)

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More from @mateosfo

3 Nov
I missed this while I was in the desert, but ... we've reached the end of the USA.

Short thread about this news.

For decades, Republicans have been clear that their primary goal in taking over the Supreme Court was to end US environmental law. reuters.com/world/us/us-su…
(the Taliban-wing of the GOP also savored the court because, for them, The Handmaid's Tale is a vision, not a parable)

But the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act have always been the main kills in Republican crosshairs.

Both Acts rest on an interpretation of the commerce clause.
Under this interpretation, since pollution doesn't honor state lines, it can be regulated by Federal law.

@benjaminwittes wrote about this many years ago (also, fascinating to see how utterly wrong Wittes was about civil and reproductive rights): theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 9 tweets
3 Nov
Good news!! Electric vehicles are now 11% of new car sales in California!!

Bad news!! 45% of new car sales in California are trucks/SUVs that get less than 27 mpg!!

One step forward, five steps back.

On the bright side, zero progress is at least visible in the ~ near-future.
I’ve gotten so cynical about “clean cars” that I’m actually excited about the date, sometime in the late 2030s, when we reach zero progress. at least we know the backsliding will probably end in (some of) our lifetimes.

thanks, car industry, for the dose of hope?
(lest ye get your hopes up, this is California we’re talking about. In the rest of the US it’s monster trucks all the way down. We will pump $30 trillion into inefficient, oil-burning vehicles before EVs hit 50% of sales.)
Read 4 tweets
6 Oct
California is the largest consumer of oil in the United States.

Penalizing the oil industry for oil spills is good, since they're not supposed to do that.

But, we can be assured they will always spill the oil, because ... they're the oil industry. That's what they do.
One thing that's interesting about the politics of oil spills is, everyone rushes to talk about how they're going to fine the oil industry, crack down etc.

But nobody talks about the fines in context. So, I shall do so!!

For perspective: Let's take British Petroleum.
BP paid the largest fine ever levied against an oil company for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. That fine: $60 billion.

Sounds like a lot of money, right?

Well, it's about a third of their *annual* revenue from the sale of gasoline. Yes, it packed a punch; but, they covered it.
Read 8 tweets
6 Oct
About 35% of gasoline used by California drivers comes from California, including offshore.

And like rest of US, most cars sold in California are inefficient gasoline trucks & SUVs.

Californians say we don’t want our beaches covered in oil. But we pay to cover them in oil.
If I were a driver who also liked beaches not covered in oil, I would stop paying the car/oil industry to cover my beaches in oil.

Then, the car/oil industry wouldn’t have the money they need to cover our beaches in oil, and would have to stop putting oil on our beaches.
Some people think you can have oil and also have beaches that are not covered in it, but this is not the case. Oil always spills, because the humans who drill for oil always spill it.

And then there’s what happens after you burn it.
Read 5 tweets
5 Oct
I think what’s lost in discourse about “autonomous vehicles” is, in spite of our *conscious choice* to allow drivers to kill and maim millions each year, humans are actually exceptionally *good* at driving cars because our brains are straight up miracles of processing power.
I don’t believe anyone who claims any AV will ever - in any future - match the processing speed, reflexes, object sorting, audio/visual cue analysis etc. of a human brain. Maybe in a model.

But the problem isn’t that humans suck at driving. It’s that we suck at caring.
If we *cared* about safe streets, *we would already have safe streets.*

If we valued human life enough to prevent drivers from killing and maiming millions, *it would already have stopped.*

We don’t need AVs for that. But AVs are not designed to save human lives.
Read 4 tweets
4 Oct
In 1975, Congress passed fuel economy regulations that required all new cars to get 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985. In 1985, the Congressional Budget Office reviewed those standards, and found that existing engine technologies would allow the standards to reach 40 mpg by 1995.
Then in 1991, carmakers inserted an exemption from fuel economy standards in revisions to the Clean Air Act. The exemptions said trucks and SUVs would only have to hit 25 mpg.

So, carmakers started focusing on making trucks & SUVs. Now, 75% of new car sales are trucks & SUVs.
And the fuel economy of those trucks and SUVs?

... 25.7 miles per gallon.

So, after 45 years of fuel-saving technology development, the U.S. car fleet is transitioning from cars that got 27.5 mpg in 1985 to ...

... cars that get 25.7 mpg in 2021.
Read 4 tweets

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