Protect the Clean Power Plan - a mother's story

Today I joined hundreds of people in publicly testifying at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing. The EPA, under the leadership of fossil fuel industry shill Scott Pruitt, is proposing to repeal the Clean Power Plan - without a replacement. As one woman put it, "repealing the CPP without a replacement is like moving out of your house without having a new place to move into." 

I was invited to testify by Moms Clean Air Force - who advised me to tell a personal story about how climate change and air quality affected me. So I shared a story about how Elliot was trapped by the Sonoma fires last fall. Even the former Charles Koch Institute guy seemed moved. Here is my three minute testimony:

Vanessa Warheit testifies at the 2/28/18 EPA Listening Session in San Francisco, on EPA's proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan.

Lisa Hoyos' 12-year old son was the last to speak in the afternoon's session. “I shouldn’t be here," he said, "I should be in school, or studying for my math test. I’m here because I’m afraid of what my future is going to be. The fact that the EPA, who are supposed to protect our environment, are talking about repealing a rule to protect our air - I can’t wrap my brain around it. I want to have a future where I don’t have to worry about this. Where my kids - if I have kids - don’t have to worry about this."

He spoke without notes, looking all three EPA administrators in the eye. He told them about his fears for the future. "When you think about all this testimony later," he concluded, "I want you to remember my face: the face of the future generation.”

12-year old citizen testifying to the EPA on proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan.

Transport Decarbonization Alliance launched at One Planet Summit

Very good news - last week’s One Planet Summit in Paris included the announcement of a new international alliance aimed at decarbonizing transportation globally. 

 “The attention that transport received and the commitments for climate action in transport that were made during the One Planet Summit are unprecedented. After the One Planet Summit, the transport sector is better positioned in climate change mitigation and adaptation than ever before.”

http://www.ppmc-transport.org/transport-at-one-planet-summit-countries-cities-and-non-governmental-actors-actively-support-the-ppmc-transport-decarbonization-alliance/

The EPA: It Isn't Just for Clean Air Anymore

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently taking comments on its proposal to repeal, replace, or modify environmental protections “to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens.” The proposal is almost nonsensical in its vagueness, and could apply to any EPA regulations.

The EPA is a public health agency, created by a Republican president to ensure the health and safety of our nation. I urge everyone who breathes air, drinks water, or relies on a stable climate to submit a comment - because your future is at stake. You can find information about how to make a comment, with a link to the comments input page, here: www.indivisibleberkeley.org/epa

This is what I submitted:

I oppose any arbitrary efforts to remove common-sense environmental protections. I support the protection, which the EPA provides in the form of regulations, of human health and the environment that sustains all of us.

EPA regulations are based on sound, peer-reviewed science. They were crafted specifically to protect human beings and the environment we rely on. Any future changes to EPA regulations must therefore address the degree to which regulatory changes would increase adverse outcomes for humans and the environment (e.g., increased 'spare the air' days, increased numbers of cancers and other illnesses, adverse effects on endangered species, etc.). 

I have witnessed, here in my home state of California, the positive changes in air quality that are a direct result of environmental regulation. When I was a kid, there were often days when the air was a filthy brown color. Today, even though my state has doubled in population, the skies are much cleaner. Yet we still have high asthma rates. If anything, we need *more* protections for our air and water! 

Improvements in air and water quality improve not only our health and well-being but also our economy. From 1990 - 2012, pollution in the US decreased dramatically, while our GDP doubled. The EPA conservatively estimates that the regulatory benefits of the Clean Air Act exceed its costs by a ratio of 25 to 1. Where else can you get that kind of return? Any proposed elimination of regulations that protect our air and water must therefore also address the costs of the associated health impacts on workers - and their families - such as increased healthcare costs, days missed from work, and lives lost.

Furthermore, the EPA's Clean Power Plan is the single biggest policy lever currently in place to limit our nation's greenhouse gas emissions. We need stringent regulations on carbon pollution to keep our pledge to the other nations of the world - and to our children - that we are doing everything we can to ensure a livable planet for their future. Right now it is a scientific fact that we are on a collision course with a destabilized climate - something the Department of Defense calls a 'threat multiplier'. We are already feeling the effects of climate change, stronger and faster than scientists originally predicted: the ice caps are melting, the seas are rising, the storms are getting stronger, more wildfires are burning, and the droughts and floods are happening with increasing and depressing regularity. We simply don't have time to yank away regulations, willy-nilly, just so a few companies can make some more money by polluting for free. If we value our children's future, we need to be building a clean energy economy, and we need to be doing it at breakneck speed. In order to do that, we must have a strong EPA that protects our air from carbon pollution and holds polluters accountable.

Lastly, the request for comments does not list or provide reference information to the specific regulations that might be covered by the request. The request should therefore be re-issued with a list of potentially affected regulations, and an extended deadline so that the public can provide properly informed comments.

On a personal note, I am worried about the repeal, replacement, or modification of environmental protections because I am terrified about what kind of world I am leaving to my son. As someone born in the late 60s, I grew up witnessing a country that felt like it was getting better - with the skies getting cleaner, and the future getting brighter. If you want to make America great again, the last thing you should be doing is tearing away at the EPA's protections of our air, our water, and our climate. The EPA is, quite frankly, one of the best things about the USA.

I drink water every day, as does everyone in my family. Every time I turn on my tap, I'm grateful that I live in a country that protects my right to clean, potable water. My family also breathes air, and I am grateful that the government makes sure it's clean and safe. We live in a city near the ocean, whose many services all depend on a stable climate and a stable coastline. If you start ripping out the protections provided by the EPA, all of that is at risk - and as a mother I cannot sit by and watch that happen.

So I am begging you: DON'T REPEAL OR REPLACE ANY EPA REGULATIONS. There are a thousand other better things you can do with your time.

Thank you.

Vanessa Warheit

Horse v. CO2 Poop

In 1898, the world’s first international urban-planning conference was brought to a standstill because of a seemingly insurmountable crisis: studies were showing that New York City - like other major urban centers around the world - would be under 3 stories of horse manure within 30 years. 

Horse manure clogging city streets in 19th century cities

The advent of the streetcar and the automobile, of course, quickly solved that problem. But the advent of the internal combustion engine clearly brought us a new, larger problem: atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution. What would that pollution look like if it was - like horse manure - visible? (Not to mention smellable?)

To answer this question, I got an atmospheric scientist to help me do a back-of the-envelope calculation. We assumed that streets take up 1/3 of San Francisco's 47 sq miles, and we used San Francisco's CO2 emissions only (12.5 tons per person per year – which is far less than the US average of 20 tons per person per year). We used a rough population estimate of 1 million. And here's what we found:

The streets of San Francisco will be 538 feet deep in CO2 poop within one year. That's two thirds of the way up the Transamerica Pyramid. By 2020, we'll have buried the Transamerica Pyramid almost four times. I'll let you calculate what 35 more years of this madness might look like - but I don't think you need to. The upshot is that humanity has never been in poop this deep. 

“My Name is Vanessa, and I Am an Optimist...”

In digging through some old files, I found a speech from a vigil organized by 350 Silicon Valley, commemorating the 1st anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. I wrote this almost three years ago, but it still resonates.

Hi everyone. This is going to sound a little like the beginning of an AA meeting - but my name is Vanessa, and I am an optimist.

I’m a filmmaker, I’m a mother, and I’m co-chair of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. I’m also a presenter with the Climate Reality Leadership Corps - and it’s often hard to reconcile that particular job with optimism: every time I give a Climate Reality presentation, I’m reminded of the magnitude of the climate crisis, and the diminishing amount of time we have to turn this ship around. I am sometimes overwhelmed by how much we need to do, and how much is at stake.

But I am an optimist, and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, I’m not someone who likes to run away from problems. I’ve always found that facing a challenge tends to work out better than pretending the problem will go away on its own. But more than that - I see climate change not only as the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, but also as an enormous opportunity to make things better.

The author and activist Naomi Klein wrote a piece for the Nation magazine a couple of years ago, called “Capitalism vs. the Climate”. In it, she wrote that: “...climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books.”

Those words have stayed with me. Climate change supercharges the change we so desperately need, on so many fronts. It supercharges the case for clean energy - and in my optimism, I imagine a future in which that clean energy is so prevalent that we no longer blow the tops off mountains in Appalachia, and instead start planting them with trees. In this future, we no longer poison our water with fracking wells in our neighborhoods. We no longer bleed oil into the rainforests and onto our fragile coastlines. We do not have to choose between power and clean air, jobs and clean water. I see a future in which we do not pay for lighting our cities with the lungs of our children.

Climate change supercharges our need for better transportation too, and transit-based urban planning - and I can see a future in which we spend less time trapped in our cars, and more time out on our bikes, in our communities, and with our families.

Climate change supercharges our need for healthier agriculture - and I see a future in which the fields that feed us are no longer empty toxic blankets, barren of all but a single species, but instead exhuberant fields of life, providing not only carbon sinks and oxygen but fresh food - as my grandmother used to say at every meal - “to nourish our bodies, and feed our souls on the bread of life.”

And Climate change supercharges our need for disaster-resilient communities, where we know our neighbors, and feel a common purpose with them, where we forge friendships and connections that make us all safer and more at peace in our own homes.

I am optimistic because everywhere, with the power of this supercharged timeline, groups are forming - and local resilience is becoming a movement of its own. And this movement brings with it much more than the ability to survive when disaster strikes.

Through my work, and the magic of Twitter, I’ve discovered people doing amazing things in the unlikeliest of places. There are green bike lane systems going into cities like Chicago, and Memphis, and Washington, DC. There are bikeshare programs in New York, and San Francisco, and right here in Palo Alto. Community gardens are taking over vacant lots in Denver, locally-owned wind farms are bringing revenue to farmers in Minnesota, and independent local grocery stores are rising out of food deserts in places like West Oakland and Philadelphia.

And I am optimistic because California, yesterday, joined Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia in signing the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy. 53 million people, living in what would be the world’s fifth-largest economy, will now be participating in what they are calling a far-reaching strategic alignment to combat climate change and promote clean energy. Yes, we still have a long way to go - but this is good news, and we are going in the right direction.

To use a permaculture term, there is a micorrhyzal movement happening - micorrhyzae is a symbiotic relationship, between a fungus and a plant - and most of it happens underground. It’s under everything, even if you can’t see it, it’s there working in mysterious ways, nourishing everything. We are building that movement, we are building that network, and every single one of us matters.

I am optimistic, because I recently learned that research shows that each of us has huge social influence - way more than just the people we meet. There is a tremendous contagion that happens - because we are fundamentally social animals, and we learn from each other - so whether it’s smoking, or obesity, or happiness, or climate action - your influence goes through 3 degrees of separation, and you might inspire as many as 1,000 other people to action. Every time you get on your bike, or drive an EV, or ride the bus, or walk instead of drive, you are changing social norms. Every time you think to yourself, why bother - it won’t make a difference - I’m just one person - think again. It does make a difference. We are making a difference. We just need to keep going.

Now the big question people always have is, what - or what ELSE - can I DO?

Well, there are many things you can do. You can drive less. You can fly less. You can buy your food locally. You can grow your own food. You can hang your clothes to dry. You can install solar on your roof. You can insulate your house. You can start a book club or a game night or a gardening club in your neighborhood. You can - if you haven’t already - join 350.org or Citizens Climate Lobby or OFA or Go Fossil Free or the Sierra Club or one of the many groups sponsored by Acterra. You can - and you should - contact your elected officials and make your voice heard. You can join the Transition movement, or the divestment movement. Find other people who are doing this work and lend a hand. Every single one of you counts.

And if you’re still looking for something to do, I’ll leave you with a simple, specific thing you can do. You can help me. See, I’m a filmmaker - and my latest project is a short video for kids, about carbon dioxide pollution and where it comes from. It’s called Worse Than Poop - or the pooping cars movie - and I’m making it with my son, Elliot. Elliot? Do you want to tell them how the film starts?

Elliot: “Did you know that for every gallon of gas that we burn, it creates 19 pounds of CO2? And that’s bad - because CO2 is heating up our planet - which is REALLY bad. So if you think about it - CO2 is actually worse than poop.”

With Elliot as the narrator, our film will use animation to show the CO2 that comes out of a car as an equivalent amount of poop. So it will be funny - right? a pooping car is funny - and when people laugh, the barriers come down and they start paying attention. But beyond making people laugh, we’re going to do something devious with this film: we’re going to change how people - how kids - look at cars, and most importantly, we’re going to show them that future I just told you about - the one where kids breathe clean air, and we eat real food, and we know our neighbors, and we really care for each other and our communities.

So if you want to do something, right now, tonight - you can go to worsethanpoop.com, and take the Poopie Pledge to support our project, and spread the word.

And you can decide to be an optimist. To choose action over inaction. To choose hope over despair. Because no matter how big the problem, every one of you can make a difference. Every one of us can make a difference. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You may never know the difference you’ve made, but don’t let that stop you. Each of us is a tiny point of light in the darkness. But together, we are a sea of flame. Together, nothing can stop us.

Thank you.

Ridin' the Rails with Elliot

It's spring break - and I'm taking Elliot to Vancouver on the train. We boarded the Amtrak in Emeryville, and headed up to Seattle in a cosy 'roomette' sleeper. We actually spent most of our time in the lounge car, and the dining car, but we also made some time to practice the guitar! 

Stretching our legs at the Portland Amtrak station.

We took the train in part because it's way less carbon intensive than flying. Amtrak isn't Deutsche Bahn - or even India Rail - but even with its shortcomings (principal among them being that Amtrak often runs late because freight trains take priority on corporate-owned American rails), I still love riding Amtrak. Train travel is just more relaxing and more enjoyable than flying. You see stunningly beautiful parts of the country you'd never see otherwise, and you meet some really nice & interesting people. (At lunch, for instance, we met a fellow who works in Idaho selling goods to the folks working in the oil industry. But it turns out he also runs an export business selling used goods to Senegal and to Dubai - and he's hoping to open a refrigeration plant in Senegal to help expand their fishing markets. When I mentioned the possibility of creating a solar-powered microgrid to power it, he got very excited.) 

Disembarking at the stunning, recently-renovated King Street Station in Seattle - a spectacular turn-of-the-century palace of dazzling white marble, polished wood and brass

On Tour with Wild & Scenic

The Wild & Scenic Film Festival is now touring around the country. Worse Than Poop! plays tonight in El Segundo, CA, and on April 10 in Staunton, Virginia.

'Til the Wellheads Run Dry

I've been down with the flu this week - and one day I woke from a nap with the lyrics for a new parody of Don McLean's American Pie running through my head. Elliot and I had recently been watching Weird Al's excellent parody, "The Saga Begins" - but my parody lyrics were directly connected to climate change. And politics.

After a day of writing, and another day or two of tweaking (plus some input from Elliot and a few friends), I debuted the song last night at a friend's karaoke party. It was a big hit, and by the end everyone was singing along with the chorus. So here it is - try it out and see what you think! 

I'm working on making a good recording of it - but in the meantime you can listen to a poorly-recorded version (with cheesy karaoke backup) here.

You can download the lyrics with guitar chords here, and the piano music is available here and here. 

'Til the Wellheads Run Dry
Music by Don McLean, Words by Vanessa Warheit

A long, long time ago, 
something magic happened, 
when James Watt built a steam machine

And with it brought us fossil fuels
to rev up all our power tools
and build a brand new world - it was a dream

But like all dreams, it couldn’t last
The air pollution grew too fast
And now the climate’s changing
It’s time for rearranging

Cause physics doesn’t care at all
The ice keeps melting, while we stall
7 billion on one blue ball
We all will need to try

So bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Well the good news is, we’ve got all we need
The power’s there - but, so’s the greed
We need a revolution soon
Cause the money’s gone to a chosen few
And they don’t think like me & you
‘bout the future, no, that’s not the way of wall street…

But we’ve got a big election soon
Will it save us all, or spell our doom
The choice seems pretty clear…
Feel the Bern, or feed the fear… ooh!

We need a new supreme court justice too
The last one’s gone, it’s really true,
Let’s send up a prayer or two
I think, it’s worth a try. Cause I’m still singing.. 

Bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Now the reasons, well I must have missed ‘em,
For rippin out our life-support systems
‘Cause, that’s not how it needs to be…

We’ve got geothermal and lots of solar
To keep us cosy in the next big polar
vortex - brr - and don’t forget the wind… 

‘Cause we’ve seen how strong that wind can blow,
And storage - yeah, there’s still a ways to go - 
But financing is the key-
Can we end the oil subsidy? ooh -

‘Cause with a methane plume over LA
A melting Arctic and a rising bay
I’m worried my kid might not be OK
Unless, we start to try….
So let’s start singing

Bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

From Rio to Paris, they still keep meeting
To discuss the Mauna Loa readings,
400 parts & rising fast….

Fossil fuels have been a blast
But pretty soon, the die will be cast
I’m afraid our... generation... is the last

To take a stand and make things right
To ensure our future’s bright
We know what we need to do
Oh, and I think that you do too

We need more public transit, and high-speed trains,
Electric cars, and safe bike lanes
We could even fly in solar airplanes
But only if we try…
That’s why I’m singing

Bye bye to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Oh we are one human race,
On one little planet, alone in space
You’d think that we could find a way…

So bring on tiny houses, and safer streets
Healthy forests, and pastured meats,
And veggie meals, each & every day…

And if you’re waiting for the billionaires
Remember you are the one who cares
And nobody else but you
Can do that thing you do

So bring on your passion, Bring on your dreams
Together, we can do anything
The time is now, the train is leaving
C’mon, we’ve got to try.
And we’re all singing

Bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
'Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

I met a girl who had a dream
She saw a future, safe and clean
So I asked her, can you see the way?

Take a look around, she said
All those plans inside your head
Make them real, make them see the light of day.

Go out there and tell your friends
It’s not too late to change the end
You could all stand up now or
never know your power

So folks I hope you’ll follow me
And be the change you want to see
We haven’t got a Planet B
We’ve got to stand and fight.

So bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we’ve gotta keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
'Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die.

Media Lounge Interview

Watch Elliot knock it out of the park in our interview at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival's Media Lounge

An Open Letter to the Silicon Valley Business Times

The past week has held some serious surprises - among them the US Supreme Court's decision to stay enforcement of the Clean Power Plan, and the subsequent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But a smaller surprise - at least to me - was an article in the Silicon Valley Business Journal, about how businesses were thrilled about the SCOTUS decision.

Now, maybe I'm just naive - but I find it odd that the main business newspaper of Silicon Valley would be saying stuff like this:

“The National Federation of Independent Business said the rule would result in “substantially higher energy costs” for small businesses as well. The court’s stay “gave small businesses and the states some breathing room until it can decide the matter.”

Funny - I thought businesses were actually pretty pleased with the Clean Power Plan, as it finally gave them some certainty about how the government was going to start dealing our massive and mounting carbon problem. Staying its enforcement just throws the American business environment back into murky waters. Who was this National Federation of Independent Business, anyway?

Turns out - and I know, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am - they're a shill for Koch Industries and their cronies, as were most of the others interviewed for the article. 

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SILICON VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL

I was surprised to read your Feb. 10, 2016 article on the recent Supreme Court stay against enforcing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (“Business groups pleased Supreme Court put EPA's power plant rule on hold”). To read the article, it would seem the entire business community is lined up in opposition to the Clean Power Plan. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. 

Last July, no less than 365 leading companies and investors sent a public letter of support for the Clean Power Plan - including industry giants such as General Mills, Mars Inc., Nestle, Staples, Unilever and VF Corporation. “Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality,” they wrote - a reality that includes some statistics conspicuously missing from your February article, such as:

• The average price of a commercial PV system dropped nearly 30% from 2012-2015, and continues to fall precipitously
• Electricity generated by large wind farms is now cost-competitive in many places with coal and natural gas
• 60% of Americans support the Clean Power Plan

The article is not only inaccurate, it underestimates (if not outright insults) the American business community. Are we really so short-sighted as to ignore the fact that power plants account for nearly 40 percent of US carbon pollution? Are we really so immoral as to ignore the fact that this pollution contributes to life-threatening illnesses, like childhood asthma, that cost us billions of dollars in healthcare costs and thousands of lives each year?

Experts say the Clean Power Plan is the single biggest step the US has ever taken to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change (and all the problems that come with it). As a small business owner, a mother, and a concerned citizen of Silicon Valley, I am pleased to know that the business community does in fact care about the world we live in, and sees the financial benefits of moving away from the dirty, destructive fuels we no longer need for economic growth. Despite the recent misguided decision by the Supreme Court, I hope you will share with your readers that there are, in fact, many in the business community working hard to ensure a safe and secure future for our children.

Youth Screenings, M-F

We started and ended last week with youth screenings. On Monday, we drove to San Rafael, where the Mill Valley Film Festival's Environmental Youth Forum was screening Worse Than Poop! 

Vanessa and Elliot onstage with "Racing with Copepods" Producer Barbara McVeigh

On Friday, we attended a screening as part of Los Altos High School's annual "History Week" - which had an environmental theme this year.

Vanessa and Elliot answer questions at a Los Altos High School screening of Worse Than Poop!

As you might imagine, the elementary and middle school audience on Monday was a bit more engaged than the high school students - most of whom agreed that the film was most appropriate for a k-8 audience. Still, when I asked the high school students if they thought it might be appropriate for 9th and 10th graders, a few shyly raised their hands. And the parent volunteer who introduced us (a middle-aged surgeon) spared no effort in finding scatological references for his introduction ("I think you'll find it's a moving experience", etc.).... Proof, yet again, that you're never too old for poop jokes.

Kids Jury Award for Best Film!

We're back from a full weekend at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival - and we took home the Kids Jury Award for Best Film! 

Our film screened in Grass Valley's huge, historic Del Oro cinema, as part of a program of kids films that started at 9:30am. I was worried we'd have a really small audience - but the giant hall was packed!

It was, in fact - hands down - the best audience we've had yet (at least, for screenings that we've attended). 

Elliot on the giant screen... 

and eating popcorn, at the Del Oro Theater in Grass Valley, CA.

Answering audience questions onstage at the Del Oro Theater, at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival

In the lobby of the Del Oro Theater, with fans of Worse Than Poop!

Televised interview with Elisa Parker on KVMR at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival

The festival generously gave us film passes, so we were able to wander from venue to venue, seeing a lot of great films. Elliot's favorite was a student-made short called Distress Call. My favorite was a program on ecological soundscapes - including the jaw-dropping Dutch short The Art of Flying and the fantastic NRDC-funded film Sonic Sea. (I thought I knew about all the ways humans were harming the natural environment - but this film explores how human activity disrupts the sonic environment of undersea mammals in disastrous ways, something I knew almost nothing about.)

Chris from SYRCL gets us ready for a rainy exploration of the local soundscape at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival

After the soundscapes program, we participated in a nature walk to explore the soundscape of our local environment. It was pouring rain - but it felt good to be outside, and it was fascinating to try using my ears instead of my eyes to orient myself.

Recording the sound of raindrops on puddles 

After the hike, we came back the warm and dry National Hotel, where we enjoyed a presentation on sound editing using Adobe Audition. There has been a revolution, just in the past five years, in our ability to isolate recorded sounds. This demo used sounds recorded in the field by Bernie Krause , subject of the film Nature's Orchestra. 

Elliot and his dad learn about sound editing on Adobe Audition

Happy & exhausted Elliot at festival headquarters

Holding our prize: Kids Jury Award for Best Film, 2016 Wild & Scenic Film Festival

Wild & Scenic - here we come!

Elliot and I are headed to the Wild & Scenic Film Festival  - one of the pre-eminent environmental film festivals - this afternoon. Worse Than Poop! will be screening tomorrow morning as part of the "Wild Child" children's program, alongside some fantastic-looking kids' films about plastic pollution, sharks, earthworms, and other creepy crawlies. Tune in to the live broadcast to hear our interview on KVMR FM 89.5. (Broadcast starts at 5:30pm tonight - our interview is scheduled for Saturday at 4pm).

The weather is supposed to be miserable (100% chance of rain, with a high of 49 degrees F) - but I can't complain about the rain, and I'm looking forward to seeing some great films. (Tonight we're excited to see Racing Extinction.) I'm also looking forward to having interesting conversations with other environmental filmmakers, and with representatives from some great environmental organizations like EarthJustice and Friends of the River. I'll post more (here, and on our Facebook page) about our experiences at the festival over the weekend.

A Modest Proposal

A friend called me this afternoon, to ask if I'd come down to City Hall to talk about parking. Evidently, our City Council is considering - seriously considering - spending $13m to build a new parking garage in our already car-choked downtown. When I told Elliot's dad about why I'd be at City Hall this evening, he gave me a great idea. "Why don't you tell them you actually want them to build FOUR new parking garages? Just to show them how ridiculous this is," he suggested. 

Vanessa presenting her modest proposal for parking in downtown Palo Alto

And so, my Modest Proposal was born. After re-reading Jonathan Swift's brilliant 1729 pamphlet on solving Ireland's poverty problem, I spent some time crafting a similarly-structured argument for solving Palo Alto's parking problem. You can watch my performance (and its confused reception in the council chambers) in the video my friend filmed with my phone - but she stopped filming when the mayor told me my time was up. (I ignored her and kept on talking, so I could make my last and most important point.) The funniest thing (or maybe the saddest thing) was that quite a few people seemed to think I was serious - including a reporter, who asked me as we were leaving if she could contact me for more details about my 'double decker road idea'.

The entire text is below. Read, and enjoy.

A Modest Proposal

Good evening dear council members. My name is Vanessa Warheit - I’m a Palo Alto resident, mother of a child in the Palo Alto Unified School District, and the owner of a car registered here in Palo Alto. In light of tonight’s discussion on parking in our downtown, I wanted to make a modest proposal.

Clearly, the streets of Palo Alto are too congested. It takes way too long to find parking. This is bad for local businesses - which is clear from the number of local establishments that I remember from my childhood, which have long since gone out of business. Our region is growing, and we need to better support the long-term growth of our downtown. We also need to keep all these cars from spilling over into the residential neighborhoods that surround it.

But I believe the proposal to build a new parking garage downtown isn’t the answer to these problems. For one thing, it only adds 214 additional parking spaces to our downtown - not near enough for the projected growth in this area. With 17,000 more jobs and 13,000 additional residents projected in the next 20 years, we can expect even more cars on our streets. The proposed garage is also all the way over on Hamilton Street - requiring people patronizing businesses on University, or Lytton, or any of downtown’s side streets, to walk one - or more - blocks to their destination. 

What I am proposing is a project to bring free parking right in front of every single business, double our existing capacity, and maximize the use of our existing facilities. 

I have been assured by a well-known transportation official in Los Angeles that creating a double-decker road system provides the kind of free, convenient access to local businesses that we need here in Palo Alto. I would like to therefore submit for consideration a common-sense idea that is in alignment with policies T-45 (provide sufficient parking to address long-range needs) and T-47 (protect residential areas from parking impacts of nearby business districts).

I propose to make University Avenue, Hamilton Avenue, and Lytton Street double decker streets - with diagonal parking along each side at both the ground floor and the second floor - allowing easy access to establishments regardless of their vertical location within a building. Building the second story of roadways would also require eliminating the trees from our downtown, and narrowing our sidewalks - which would make walking from car to business even easier, reduce tree maintenance costs, and add an additional 50% to the number of available parking spaces.

My proposal would put our city on the map - and not only as the city with the most convenient parking in the Bay Area. Cities like Beijing and New Delhi, which have seen a significant rise in their parking, have shown 7.3% and 7.4% levels of GDP growth - compared to a paltry 3.8% here in the US. Not only has this growth increased per capita income in these cities, but the record-setting levels of air pollution generated by this growth over the past few years has also gained them significant media attention. Imagine what Palo Alto could do with that added revenue, and all that press coverage!

I can’t think of any objection that could be raised against this proposal - unless it might be that constructing such a system of freely-accessible parking might cost more than the city has in its budget. But to that I would simply suggest that increasing the speed limit to 35 mph could put this project squarely into the realm of CalTrans, and thereby qualify it for available State highway improvement funds. 

So let’s stop considering these other suggestions - ideas about analyzing different transportation demand strategies, or providing meaningful transit options, or exploring emerging technologies like self-driving cars and transportation as a service. Things like looking at expanding our bike share options, or expanding mode shift, or looking at what kinds of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure $13m might buy the city. Let’s not have any more talk of these ideas until we have at least the faintest glimmer of hope that there might some day be a hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. 

For me, after so many years of offering up vain, idle, visionary ideas like these, and really despairing of any success in addressing our parking woes, I felt incredibly lucky to come upon this proposal - which I hope you will join me in embracing. It is so in line with the American way, with Palo Alto’s vision for growth, with our need for car-based mobility and complete and total independence - and, I might add, with the auto industry’s need to sell cars to each and every one of us - that I feel confident this is the best way forward for our city. 

But if someone has a better idea, I’d like to hear it. Just keep in mind, it will need to deal with 13,000 more people, and 17,000 more jobs, within the next 20 years.

Thank you.

UNAFF Screening, Panel... and Award!

Last week, Worse Than Poop! won the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film at the United Nations Association Film Festival. We are so honored!

Vanessa and Elliot take home the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the 2015 UNAFF.

Held for the past 18 years at Stanford University, the UNAFF seeks to draw attention to the UN's Millenium Development Goals and, going forward, the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals. 

Elliot answers a question from the audience at the 2015 UNAFF.

Our film was scheduled on the last day of the festival, in a section addressing climate change. The other films included DamNation and Antarctic Edge, and afterwards Elliot and I sat on a panel and answered audience questions with filmmakers Matt Stoeker and Dena Seidel.