Category: Environment

By Darell Dickey

Polluted air makes me sick.

Every year when the cold settles in I am precluded from working in my yard and taking walks. I cannot participate in outdoor activities due to the air pollution produced from fires lit by Davis residents.

The EPA informs us that burning organic matter releases numerous toxic air pollutants including benzene, formaldehyde, hydrocarbons, and of course fine particles. Smoke can trigger asthma attacks as well as heart attacks, stroke, and heart failure. In my case the smoke from fireplace burning aggravates my autoimmune disease and advances my heart disease. Though many people in Davis suffer serious health risks associated with air pollution, and though the city has declared a Climate Emergency, the City of Davis has no firm rules against fireplace burning.

Instead of treating the toxic smoke appropriately as a health hazard, the City of Davis defines it as a “nuisance,” the same as an over-grown yard or another unsightly condition. And the smoke is considered a nuisance only under limited conditions.

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By Marlen Garcia, Anuj Vaidya, and Juliette Beck

Yolo County has a lot at stake in how we address the climate crisis. In September 2020, the Board of Supervisors passed a visionary resolution calling for a Just Transition approach to climate action and community resilience planning.  Just Transition is a critical policy framework for ensuring that historically marginalized communities are centered and empowered to actively participate in the development of climate solutions. It is deeply relevant to Yolo County, which has the deepest levels of inequality in California. 

Unfortunately, Yolo County’s recent choice of a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) consultant team that did not include a Just Transition approach in their proposal is squandering a critical opportunity to address worsening socio-economic disparities.  As members of a team that also submitted a proposal, we are intimately familiar with the process and motivated to share our concerns by a sense of moral obligation to our community and future generations.

Yolo County’s houseless, BIPOC, rural communities, outdoor workers, and youth are already being hit first and worst by climate breakdown. Summer temperatures in Woodland and West Sacramento average ten degrees hotter than in greenbelt-lined Davis; air pollution has worsened along the 1-80 corridor; eviction rates have increased by 57% since last year. Alarmingly, multinational companies are mining groundwater to feed thousands of acres of perennial orchards, while small, family farms and the wetlands at the Patwin-Wintun Tending and Gathering Garden in the heart of Yolo County have gone dry.

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(From press release) Youth leaders from Yolo County led a colorful all-ages march today in central Davis to protest the city’s failure to address the climate emergency. The marchers made their way from the library to central park and the city hall, mirroring thousands of actions across the world on September 23 organized by the #FridaysforFuture movement.

The young marchers denounced the city council and administration for their failure to listen to the demands of young people and for not giving them a seat at the table in the planning and delivery of the city’s new Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.

“We young people are the most impacted by climate change and yet our demands for action and change have consistently fallen on deaf ears in the City of Davis,” said Eliot Larson, coordinator of Fridays for Future Davis.

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