Davisite logo
Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Category: Environment

  • Making Biking Convenient

    Is making driving worse our Bike-rack-1 only alternative?

    By Roberta Millstein

    When I read the Davis Enterprise op-ed on roads, driving, and biking last month (“Infrastructure, what is it good for?”), I was sympathetic.  After all, it does seem to make sense to call out the “operative principle” that “if only we make driving (or parking) inconvenient enough, then people will drive less, or slower, or somewhere else.”  Indeed, as the op-ed says, we surely don’t want to rejigger our roads and our parking spaces only to increase car traffic and cars idling if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions.

    But now I am not so sure.

    (more…)

  • UC Temporarily Suspends Glyphosate-based Herbicides

    IMG-4152

    By Nancy Price

    On May 14th, 2019 Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California, sent a remarkable letter to the Chancellors of all UC campuses, the Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the CEOs of all  the UC Medical centers announcing the “temporary suspension of the use of glyphosate-based herbicides.”

    Napolitano cited “concerns about possible human health and ecological hazards, as well as potential legal and reputational risks associated with this category of herbicides.”

    This may be a response to the mounting scientific research linking glyphosate to cancer, or it could just be that the UC system is worried about being named as a defendant in a glyphosate lawsuit like the three Monsanto/Bayer have lost over the last two years. The most recent lawsuit found Bayer responsible for damages of 2 billion dollars.

    (more…)

  • Local Environmental Heros Honored by Sierra Club

    Sierraclub
    (From Press release) This year, environmentalists from the local Sierra Club Yolano Group's area (primarily Yolo County) received 4 of the 6 individual awards given for all of Northern California at the Sierra Club’s Mother Lode Chapter Annual Awards Banquet in Sacramento on May 18. One additional special award for meritorious service was given to a local environmentalist by the Yolano Group.

    The Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club covers almost all of Northern California from Yosemite to the Oregon border and the Inner Coast Range to the Nevada state line. The Sierra Club is the nation's largest and oldest environmental group and has almost 1,500 members in Yolo Co. and 3.5 million members nationwide.

    Following are the local environmental heroes receiving the awards at the gala event and a brief description of why they were recognized.

    (more…)

  • Davis Hosts Green New Deal Town Hall as Part of Nationwide Mobilization

    WHAT:
    Community members from Davis and surrounding areas will meet at the UC Davis Art Annex to discuss the ​Green New Deal and how to best address the climate emergency on Saturday, May 25th, from 10am-12pm. The event is one of more than 250 town halls for the Green New Deal taking place all over the country. It hopes to stimulate conversation and action on climate justice in the region.
    WHEN:
    Saturday May 25, 10 AM – 12 PM
    WHERE:
    UC Davis Art Annex 107
    WHO:
    ● Sunrise Movement ● Yolo County Progressives ● Sierra Club (Yolano Group) ● UPTE – University Professional and Technical Employees ● YDSA – Young Democratic Socialists of America at UC Davis

    (more…)

  • Concern about tree pruning in middle of nesting season

    By Pam Nieberg 

    Please contact the City Council, City Manager, City Wildlife Resource Specialist and whomever else you wish regarding the city tree pruning that is going on right now.  Someone in the city contracted for the pruning of city trees now, in the middle of nesting season for virtually every bird species, including the legally protected Swainsons Hawk.  Who in their right mind would do that?

    When I received a notice of the pruning, I contacted the city to ask that it stop, giving the reasons stated above.  Unfortunately, a number of the city trees in my neighborhood, including a number of Canary Island Pines which Swainson's hawks love, were heavily pruned despite efforts to prevent it. 

    Normally, this time of year, I hear the Swainson's hawks vocalizing all over the neighborhood, every day, all day. Yesterday and today after the pruning–complete silence.

    (more…)

  • Traffic Fiascos: Who’s Responsible?

    By Glen Holstein

    Lately Davis has been lurching from one fiasco, paid parking, to another, Mace gridlock, like a drunk staggering home from a dive bar.  Kudos to the Davis Enterprise for connecting the dots that these and many other fiascos are related elements of a campaign that’s strangling vehicle traffic while increasing greenhouse gas release and reducing safety.  And kudos to Ellie Fairclough for pointing out the similarity between the Mace and Paradise fiascos.  As at Mace, the exit road from Paradise was reduced from four to two lanes and traffic “calmed” so much that 88 people were incinerated trying to escape the Camp Fire.

    And in the paid parking fiasco parking enforcement staff were cheerleaded so much that they started behaving more like an occupying army than public servants.  Recently when a downtown business owner tried going to lunch she was forcibly detained by a parking enforcer who yelled “You can’t leave – I haven’t written you a ticket yet.”

    (more…)

  • Faulty Logic and Catch-22s in the Proposed Removal of Endangered Species Protections for the Gray Wolf

    Canis-lupus

    Photo by John & Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS

    On June 13, 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed removing the gray wolf, Canis lupus, from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.  At that time, I wrote an article and submitted an official comment, arguing that the 2013 Proposed Rule was capricious, arbitrary, and inconsistent. 

    Now, almost six years later, the FWS proposes to “delist” Canis lupus again.  However, the logic underlying the 2019 Proposed Rule is no better than the logic underlying 2013 Proposed Rule.  Comparing the two a bit, focusing on the wolves in the Pacific Northwest (western Washington and western Oregon) and California, will make that evident.

    (more…)

  • Davis’s Great Burger Battle Is Over – What Now?

    GStreetWunderbarBurger

    Would you like to see G Street Wunderbar offer this burger again?

    The great COOL Cuisine Burger Battle is over, and by all accounts it was a grand success, both in terms of number of burger consumed and people's delight in the various burger offerings. But what's next for Davis's vegan food scene?  Surely there is more to come from COOL Cuisine, once founder Anya McCann recovers from the herculean effort it took to pull this off. 

    In the meantime, though, is there anything that you and I can do?  Yes, I believe there is.  But before we get to that, let's review.

    (more…)

  • A “Revolution of Values” is needed to realize the promise of Earth Day

    MLK at Riverside Church

    By Nancy Price

    The Founding of Earth Day 

    During the 1960s, the concerns of environmental and anti-war activists began to converge as they’d had enough of corporate environmental disasters, epitomized by Love Canal (1953) and wide-spread harm to nature from indiscriminate use of DDT and chemicals that Rachel Carson revealed in Silent Spring (1962). There were also the assassinations of President Kennedy, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, and the increasing violence of the War in Vietnam and at home – the tragic My Lai Massacre (March 1967), police brutality at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the widening carpet bombing, extensive use of Agent Orange, and move into Cambodia.

    Finally, in 1969, two iconic disasters galvanized the public and legislators into action: in Ohio, the alarming fire on the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland, long polluted by industrial waste and sewage; and in California, the huge Santa Barbara Channel oil spill, at that time the largest oil “blowout” in U.S. waters that covered 30 miles of pristine sandy beaches and greatly impacted marine life.

    It was no surprise that after Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson proposed Earth Day for April 22, 1970, 20 million people turned out to peacefully demonstrate. Anti-war protests continued, however, to escalate at university and college campuses and tragically, less than a month after Earth Day, four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio (May 4, 1970).

    (more…)

  • VCE community energy advisers offer expertise, provide access

    VCEAC

    Members of the Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee are, from left, Lorenzo Kristov; Gerry Braun, chair; Marsha Baird, secretary; Christine Casey; Mark Aulman; and Christine Shewmaker, vice chair. Not pictured are Yvonne Hunter and David Springer. (Courtesy photo)

    (From Press Release) Greener energy, customer choice, local control, access — they’re the hallmarks of Valley Clean Energy (VCE), a public electricity program launched locally last June. VCE serves residential and business customers in Davis, Woodland and unincorporated Yolo County.

    The highly skilled staff members, a board of directors made up of local elected officials and an advisory committee of experts from the three jurisdictions are transforming the idea of community choice energy into a reality.

    “The Community Advisory Committee is a really powerful group with quite a diverse mix of backgrounds,” says Davis City Councilman Lucas Frerichs, a member and past chair of the VCE board.

    The members’ breadth and depth of knowledge makes for a “stellar” bunch, adds Yvonne Hunter, a longtime Davis resident who is one of the CAC’s nine volunteer members. Before her retirement from the League of California Cities, Hunter served as the lead lobbyist for state legislation that authorized cities and counties to create Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) electricity providers.

    (more…)