 my pleasure to introduce Dr. Catherine Hayhoe. And as I mentioned, she flew in, I mean she got here, I think she landed like at four or something, and then she's flying out right after, actually before or after this. She's going to have to skedaddle like at like 6.30 or something. So what I'm going to say is when we get into the questions, those who've got very pressing Catherine Hayhoe questions, those might rise to the top. So Catherine is a professor in the public administration program at Texas Tech University and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, which is part of the Department of the Interior's South Central Climate Science Center. Her research focuses on developing and applying high resolution climate projections to evaluate the future impacts of climate change on human society and the natural environment. She has published over 125 peer reviewed abstracts and publications and served as lead author on key reports for the U.S. global change research program and the National Academy of Sciences, including the second, third and fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment. And most recently the 2017 Climate Science Special Report that just came out about she is chair of the Earth Science Women's Network Advisory Council and in 2017 was named one of Fortune's 50 World's Greatest Leaders. So please welcome Dr. Catherine Hayhoe. Thank you. It's great to be here with everybody. This is awesome. Isn't it exciting? Yes. So I don't know if you I don't know if you get this, but I get this, especially living in Texas. When you go somewhere else, people kind of roll their eyes a little bit and say Texas. Nobody's doing anything about climate change in Texas, are they? And I say yes they are. And San Antonio is now one of those leaders. Yeah. I think that's something to be really proud of. And it's definitely a story that I'm gonna be taking where I go telling people about this because the reality is, is that Texas is unique. We are uniquely vulnerable to a changing climate, but we are also uniquely positioned to fix this thing. So that's what we're gonna be talking about a little bit today. Why do we care about this and what can we do? We know that our normal climate looks like this. It can be wet and dry. It can be hot and cold. And if we live in Texas, it looks like this. Have you ever had the experience where you go into a movie theater and it's 95 degrees out and you leave and it's 55 and sleething almost anybody? Yeah, exactly. You don't like the weather, you just wait. It'll change. We know here in Texas, when we just look at the last few years, we have seen record-breaking droughts. You remember the droughts? Yeah. We have seen crazy wildfires. We have seen dust storms so big that they get fancy names. Haboobs. This is the Texas Tech Stadium. And then a year later, this is the same Texas Tech Stadium. We get crazy floods. No, this is not Houston. This is Lubbock. Yeah, that's the six-lane freeway that goes past the football stadium and those are the undergraduates floating away. And then, of course, we get even more devastating completely off the charts record-breaking floods like we saw this past year in Houston. And guess what? When you look at the drought map, this is today, we're back in drought. Yeah, it's a La Nina winter, which is usually a dry winter and 72% of the state is already back in drought. So, Texas has the craziest ups and downs you will ever see. And people are justified in asking, well, why on earth does climate change matter? It matters because this up-and-down, up-and-down pattern that is so amplified here in Texas of wet, dry, wet, dry and hot, cold, hot, cold. This pattern is built on an assumption that we don't often take out and look at very closely. And that is the assumption that even though things vary significantly from day to day, week to week, even year to year, over the long term, over 20 to 30 years, over the long term, the time scales over which we do most of our planning, our water planning, building our transportation infrastructure and our building codes, our energy planning. Over the long term, we assume that it all averages out, number one. And number two, we assume that the worst events in the past are a predictor of how bad it's going to be in the future, right? Yeah, that's good. I heard a couple of people over here saying no. That is correct, because you know how many 500 year floods Houston has had in the last three years? Three. That's right. That is not a 500 year flood. That's a one year flood now. The past is not a perfect predictor for the future. What types of things depend on this assumption? Our building codes, how we build our buildings, what type of crops we grow and where, where our flood zones are and even our water plan. It assumes that where we've been in the past is a good predictor of the future, but what happens if things are changing? And even worse, what happens if not just the average is changing? What happens if the variability is changing? The best metaphor, the best mental picture that I have for the situation that we're in today is one that you get when you're driving along the road in West Texas. If you're driving along the road in West Texas, you know that it is so flat that for some parts, for example, of I-27, you could be driving up I-27, not just staying on the road, but even staying in your lane if you were looking in your rearview mirror. Why? Because it is so straight that where you will be in the future is perfectly predicted from where you were in the past. No. Do not try it. And if you don't say that I said to try it because I'm not. Because if you are going up I-27 on that dead straight road just before you get to Plainview, Texas, there's a giant curve on the road. And not just a giant curve, there's a row of concrete grain silos on that curve. What happens if you are driving down the road looking in your rearview mirror backwards at the past assuming that's a perfect predictor for the future? What happens? Okay, if you don't know the answer, they're going to be collecting your driver's license at the door. You are going to run off the road. You're going to end up where you don't want to be. And so planning for the future based on the past is like driving down the road looking in the rearview mirror. It works great when the road is straight and when climate is stable. But today we are already on the curve. Climate is already changing and the wheels of the collective bus that you and I and every person in Texas is riding in, the wheels of our buses are already on the rumble strip. And we are actually hearing the noise of the rumble strip when we see the increasing risk of what used to be entirely natural disasters now exacerbated by a changing climate. How do we know that we're already on the curve? Well, when we look around Texas, we see that we're not looking at change in weather from day to day. That's like a single tree, whether it's what happens in a certain place at a certain time. We're looking at the forest, we're looking at the changes that we see over 20 to 30 years or more. And when we look at these changes, what we see is that yes, every season in Texas is getting warmer and has been getting warmer since the 1950s. For many, not all, but for many parts in Texas, our heavy precipitation events are increasing. We've always had droughts, that's a normal part of life, but the droughts get stronger, the hotter it is and they last longer. And don't even get started on hurricanes. We know that sea levels rising, amplifying the risks of coastal flooding. We know that hurricanes get almost all of their all of their energy from warm ocean water and the oceans are warming. And we know that the amount of precipitation associated with storms, including hurricanes is increasing, becoming more severe. Here in San Antonio, this is San Antonio. In San Antonio, winter has been warming at 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. So if you've lived here for two years, that's almost one and a half degrees or 20 years, that's one and a half degrees. Summer has been warming about half a degree per decade. But it isn't just the changes and the averages. We care about a change in climate because it's making our heat waves stronger and more frequent. And here in San Antonio, if we look at the days per year over 80 degrees, over 90 degrees and over 100 degrees, they are all ticking up. That is right here where you live. Heavy precipitation is also getting more frequent. Why? Because the warmer it is, the more water evaporates and all of that water is sitting up there in the atmosphere waiting for a storm to come along, sweep it up and dump it on us. The biggest increases are up in the northeast and the Midwest, but we're seeing significant increases in many parts of Texas, especially in the southeast. What do we see here in San Antonio? What's really interesting is when we look at our historical records, our precipitation, the amount of rainfall we get year to year, it's getting more variable. If you look at the 1960s to the 1980s versus the 1980s till now, you can see that it's starting to go up and down and up and down and up and down. And when you look at the heavy precipitation, this is the wettest five days of the year, you can see that the ups and downs have gotten even more extreme. The way I think of the impacts of climate change on Texas are, you have this natural pattern of up and down and up and down and it's being stretched. That's why we care because it takes the risks we already face today and it exacerbates them. Now, Texas is already at risk from all kinds of natural risks. Right? We get, if you're only talking about weather and climate, we're not talking about anything else, just weather and climate. We get tornadoes, dust storms, heboobs, not earthquakes because they're geologic, weather and climate only, but we got a few more to go. We have, let's see, hail storms, blizzards, sleet, ice storms, heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall events, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, what am I missing? No, not earthquakes, they're geologic. Not volcanic eruptions either, we don't have those. Lightning storms, severe lightning storms, did I mention hail? We get everything here in Texas already. And if the reason why we care about a changing climate is because it takes the risks we face today and it exacerbates them, it is no surprise that out of every state in the entire country, Texas is number one in terms of the most weather and climate disasters that have cost over a billion dollars worth of damage each since 1980. We are at 94 events and counting. Why? Because we already get it all naturally. Pretty much the only thing we don't get is like glacial lake outburst floods. We have to have some more topography to get those. And that's why we are also uniquely vulnerable to a changing climate because we are already naturally exposed to all of these risks. So how do we prepare for an uncertain future? We're on a curve. And we can't see the curve 100% clearly because it's in the future. We can see the past quite clearly. We know we're on the curve we can sort of make out the curves if I'm looking at it without my glasses on. But there's some uncertainty in the future because it hasn't happened yet. How do we account for this when we're planning for a changing climate when we're building resilience, when we're turning that steering wheel and making sure that we're negotiating the curve together? Where we start is with what we know. How has San Antonio already been affected by weather and climate risks in the past? We know what drought looks like. We know what heat waves look like. We know what heavy precipitation and flooding looks like. We know what impacts they have already had on the city. We know this is just this past year alone. It isn't even to the end of the year. What types of events we get? There's hail storms. There's flooding. There's severe weather. There's tornadoes. There wasn't drought this year, but there could be drought next year. We know what these risks look like. And for some purposes, the first thing we can do is just build the resilience to the risks we already face today. Let me give you an example. More Oklahoma. What comes to mind when you hear that unless you have relatives living there? Tornadoes. You know how many tornadoes have gone through more Oklahoma? We are studying how climate change is interacting with all kinds of weather phenomena, but tornadoes are one of the hardest ones to pin down because they happen over such small spatial scales for just a few minutes up to maybe an hour. The longest tornado ever was, I think, about three hours long. That was the longest ever. Tornadoes are really difficult to understand how they're going to change in a changing climate, but we know they're not going away. Are they? If you live in more Oklahoma, it just makes all the sense in the world, for example, to build resilience to the risks that already exist because they're not going away. Other things, though, we know that the trend is there. We know, for example, in San Antonio that precipitation is getting more variable and that high temperature days are ticking up. So given that trend, how can we build resilience into our infrastructure, our water, our health, our natural ecosystems, our parks, our schools, our energy supply? How can we build that resilience to a trend that we know is already happening today? But then for some cases, we need more information. For example, if we're a city that's replacing its storm sewer system, we need to know do we need to put in new pipes that are this big or new pipes that are this big? There's a different cost associated with those pipes. If we're resurfacing the airport runways, we need to know should we use a material that melts over this degrees Fahrenheit or over this? How hot is it going to get in the future? Sometimes we need more information, and so the one thing we do know though is that if we only use the past, we're going to get the wrong answer. We need this future information. So this is a lot of what I do and a lot of what we're planning on doing here, right? We're planning on taking these pictures of the future, different pictures, and we're saying, what are we going to avoid? What impacts are we going to be able to avoid if we can transition from old dirty ways of getting energy, coal, gas, and oil, if we can transition to clean ways of getting energy that we have so much of here in Texas. Last year, we got 12% of our energy from wind. Statewide, the goal is 25% within just a few years, and we actually hit 21% the first quarter of this year when it was super windy. Solar is expanding across the state, and Texas is uniquely poised, not just to lead the US, but to lead almost all the world, except for China and India, which are so far ahead, we cannot catch up with them. But Texas is uniquely poised to lead the country and to lead much of the world in this new clean energy. So what impacts could be avoided by choosing a different future is the first question we can ask. But then the second question we can ask is, what are the impacts that are going to happen, no matter how hard we try, no matter how well we do, that we need to prepare for, so that when they come along, when that 500 year flood turns into the 10 year flood, when the 10 year flood turns into the one year flood, when days over 100 degrees become as frequent as days over 90 degrees used to be, let's make sure we're prepared for when those happen. And what does that type of preparation look like? A couple of examples for you. One of the first cities that I was called in to work with was the city of Chicago, and I will never forget that. Now this was a ways back before cities were doing all this new fangled climate things, but Chicago had a very progressive mayor and a very progressive department of environment, so they said we're going to look at climate resilience in Chicago. And this was more than 10 years ago. They called in me and a couple other climate scientists, and they put us in a room with some bag lunches, and some representatives from every city department, and they closed the door. And you could see everybody was in there thinking, oh, okay, here I am. I got a dry ham sandwich, and I have to sit here listening to these people yack for a couple hours. So we said, okay, you tell us, we're here to learn from you. What ways have you seen your city affected by weather and by climate events? And so people started to say, well, you know, flooding is actually a pretty big deal in Chicago. You might not have known that. We're also worried about pollution in the lake. We're worried about extreme heat days. And then people started to get a little bit excited. They're like, well, so the Chicago Transit Authority said, well, our rail lines warp over 94 degrees. And we have to shut down the rapid transit rail that takes people out to the suburbs, and we have to bust them, and everybody hates it. It costs us a ton of money. Can you develop projections showing, not day, not day by day, not year by year, but decade by decade, how many more days over 94 degrees will have? Because at a certain point it's going to be cheaper to just replace the rails than to keep on shutting down. And we said, yeah, yeah, we can actually do that. And so then the emergency response department said, oh, well, could you tell us how many days will be over 92? I was like, yeah, yeah, we could do that too. Why? Because we staffed by the thermometer. Over 92 degrees, we need about double the staff in the south side of Chicago because people get irritated, people get angry. There's also health crises. People who already have problems breathing, people who are elderly or sick. The heat really gets them, and a lot of people are afraid to open their window at night because it isn't very safe in the neighborhoods where they live and they can't afford their air conditioning. And then the people who do the Chicago River said, oh, well, is there any way to translate that into lake levels? And I said, well, we could work with the Great Lakes Research Lab and we could see if we could do something on the Great Lakes levels. Why? Well, they said, because we've engineered the Chicago River to flow backward, out of the Great Lakes, down into the river system. Because it's so polluted that if it flowed in its natural way into Lake Michigan it would violate the International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes Pollution Standards. So will there ever be a situation where Lake Michigan drops so low that the Chicago River starts flowing back into Lake Michigan because we would be in serious trouble if that happened? You can see I had no idea about any of these things before stepping into the room. But we were able to collect the information from everybody who was there. They got a little bit of extra motivation from the fact that a bunch of insurance companies decided they were going to sue the city of Chicago and Cook County for failing to adequately prepare for the impacts of a changing climate on flood risk. Nothing to motivate you like a little lawsuit is there. And when all was said and done, we found that 14 out of the city departments, including the public school department, including the department that runs all the outdoor festivals where people don't show up if it's too hot and humid, including the people who do all the energy supply for the city, 14 out of 18 city departments were able to identify specific ways in which they were affected by temperature or rainfall or humidity or some type of change. And we were able to develop over 120 indicators for Chicago that helped the parks department determine when a tree died what type of tree should they replace it with? A tree that is native some distance south in Illinois because by the time that tree is grown it will be in the perfect climate for that tree. How cool is that? Or a measurement of how frequently heat waves would recur in the city and therefore how beneficial it would be for the city to lower its urban heat island by green roofs and tree planting so that as climate change pushes the temperature of the city up the city is actually lowering its own temperature because to a certain extent cities actually have their hand on their own thermostat. They can reduce the urban heat island effect and mitigate a lot of the heat impacts in the city. So we looked at how frequently heat waves would occur and how frequently blackouts, energy blackouts might occur. We looked at how frequently storm sewers would flood and this over here is a map the red area is is storm sewers that have flooded with sewage overflow. We looked at the number of days per year with at least 2.4 inches of rain in 24 hours. Where do we get 2.4 inches from? From the people who know what it takes to have a sewage overflow. And then a couple of years later I was like okay so what's going on in Chicago? I was giving a presentation on this and I was like you know what has anything happened in Chicago? I'm curious what else they did besides the green roofs. So I looked it up and that very week when I was looking it up there were two headlines that exact week. New sewers quickly dispatch heavy rains and massive new reservoir to help alleviate Chicago area flooding. Isn't that awesome? They're doing it. It can be done. So what's the big picture here? How can we move forward into an uncertain future recognizing that we are already on the curve? The first step, number one, is to acknowledge that our risks are changing. Whether that consists of redrawing flood zone maps or in the west acknowledging that the wildfire season is increasing in length and that wildfires are burning more and more area as they are today in the LA area. We need to recognize the disaster risk that we face is a function. It's a function of exposure, how many people, how much valuable infrastructure is at risk. It's a function of the weather and climate events. So not all but many of which are increasing in frequency or intensity or both. And so it's even more important to make sure that we're decreasing our vulnerability, that we're looking at people, we're looking at places, we're looking at public systems that are already vulnerable today and we are doing everything we can to build them up, to make them resilient through social networks, through improved building codes, through large projects, through small steps, whatever it takes to make us more resilient. And then once we know what the risks are and how they're changing, we can prepare for them. What is the biggest risks that the Netherlands faces is sea level rise, right? I mean a large area of the Netherlands is already below sea level and sea level is rising. It's risen only about eight inches in the last century. It's projected to rise anywhere between you know three up to possibly eight feet the rest of the century. That's a huge rise. You don't have to worry about that here directly. But where will people go when two-thirds of the largest cities in the world are within a few feet of sea level? But what are they doing in the Netherlands? One of the things they're doing is they're building floating villages. So if sea level goes up three or four feet you go to the local hardware store and you get a few more feet of anchor chain. Big deal. What are they doing in Chicago? As I talked about one of the things they're doing is putting in green roofs. It lowers your energy costs both your heating and your cooling. It provides a great place for people to eat lunch and it also lowers the urban heat island effect. Simple things we can do are just increase the reflectivity of the city. Lighter shingles reflect more energy. Dark shingles absorb the energy. A lot of renewable energy sources are more resilient than old ways of getting energy because they don't need water. So during drought they're not at risk. And people are also doing smart things like putting in riparian zones by rivers so that when they flood there's an area that's built there to take up that flood water rather than letting it flood valuable infrastructure. You know I could go for hours. You kind of get the picture right? I mean we're talking about this huge diversity of actions but what does it start with? It starts with an awareness of risk in the place where you live and then it progresses with creative ideas where everybody comes to the table on solutions. Solutions that can be all types of solutions. So you know insulating our houses, installing power walls. Have you guys heard about the power wall? It costs about three and a half thousand dollars. It's a giant battery you put in your garage and actually stores enough energy for you to run your entire house and plug in your car if you have a plug-in. And you can charge it from the grid or you can charge it from the shingles on your roof if you get solar shingles. Yeah, not panels anymore. They got shingles. Improving our transportation options so that we reduce our carbon emissions and we reduce infrastructure maintenance at the same time. How can we figure out win-win-win solutions that we're not just doing to build resilience to a changing climate. We're doing it to improve our quality of life, to improve the welfare of the people who live here, to make our lives better, more enjoyable, give us more time, more freedom and at the same time reduce our emissions and make us more resilient. It all starts with a shared understanding and a shared commitment and that's what this event is all about, isn't it? So if you want more examples, this is called cake. That's easy to remember, right? Cake. Climate adaptation knowledge exchange has tons of case studies from all of the entire country. But the bottom line though is this. When you are driving down the road and you realize you're on a curve, is the smartest thing to do to just jam on your brakes and come to a dead stop? No, because what would happen? The person behind you would go right into your bumper. We are on a curve, but we don't have to stop. We can, number one, build our resilience to the risks we already know are real. Number two, we can increase our resilience to the risks that we know are getting stronger or more frequent. Number three, we can incorporate quantitative information to figure out exactly what we have to do for things that are going to intensify, where it actually makes a significant difference in terms of, you know, what pipes we put in, how much water we're preparing for. But the bottom line is we can move forward. We can keep on going around that curve, doing so in a safe and a responsible manner to make sure that we're all going to be okay. I really do think that is possible. We have to plan for the curve to ensure a safe future for all of us. Thank you. So we have a panel setting up here, but I can take some questions. I've just been told I'm allowed to take some questions while we're waiting for the panel to set up. So have at it questions. Yes, right there. Because it gives me hope. One of the biggest questions I get these days is what gives you hope? Because when you listen to the news, when I look at what's happening in the science, in the science of this planet, that doesn't give me hope. What gives me hope is going out and talking to people, feeling like I'm doing what I can do to make a difference, and encouraging other people to do what they can do to make a difference. That's where my hope comes from, hearing about all the amazing things that are happening here in San Antonio. That's going to keep me going for weeks, possibly months. All right. Yes, right here. What's the biggest thing that we individuals need to be doing to spread the word? The answer is actually right in your question. The number one thing that we can do is talk about it. Because did you know when they surveyed people across the whole US, and they said, they didn't say, do you talk about a changing climate and how it affects you and what we can do to fix it? They said, how many times a year do you hear somebody else talk about it? Do you know 75% of people in the entire country said less than once or twice a year? Why would we care about something if we never hear anybody talking about it? That is why the answer was right there in your question. Talking about this is so important. But not talking about, you know, what's happening down in Antarctica, up in the poles. Talking about what's happening in here in San Antonio, why you care because it's affecting things that you care about in the place where you live, and even more importantly, what we're doing to fix it. Because if we feel like there's this giant problem that we could never fix, who wants to talk about that? We want to talk about something that we can fix, and that's why solutions are so important. All right, thank you. We're taking more questions now, but we're going to do so with the whole panel. Thank you for the presentation. Any more questions? Yeah, yeah. Just before we get a question for Dr. Heyho, part of this is the process of hearing from you guys on thoughts you have on ideas that should be part of the San Antonio plan. So we want to get to that as well, but let's let's take advantage of Dr. Heyho years while we have her. He was very patient. We had a hand up for a little bit. What he was asking was just to make sure that you're aware of a short PBS digital series that we have on YouTube called Global Weirding. They're super short videos. One of them is about how Texas is the best and the worst when it comes to changing climate. Another one is about hurricanes and extreme weather. We've got them on all different topics and we also do live Facebook Q and where we get people from around the world was just amazing. We're looking at doing thematic Q&A's in the new year and I think it'd be great to do a San Antonio live Q&A. That'd be so fun. Absolutely. The name of the series is Global Weirding and if you just google that it's on YouTube and on Facebook. What kind of vibe do you get from our glorious legislature? Let's just put it this way. There is a lot of action happening at the city level all across Texas. Cities are what's going on not just not just in San Antonio and not just in Austin. What's happening in Houston. What's happening in Dallas. What's happening even in smaller towns. I worked with St. Angelo last year of all things. It's really amazing what's going on at the city level because at the city levels where you see the impacts but at the city level too is where you can take the action. So that's where I find the hope and the encouragement and this is not just happening in Texas. It's happening around the whole world. Cities are emerging as true global leaders in innovation and building resilience and cutting carbon. There's a new book out called I think it's called City of Hope and it's talking specifically about the roles that cities play. Hello. How serious should we take the severity of animal agriculture and the effects that it has on our planet. So I don't think that urban there's not even a few cows. Goats. Goat chickens. Yeah well no but in off seriousness though the reason why this issue of climate change is such a big deal is because there's no one silver bullet that just fixes everything at the same time. About a quarter of our contribution to this problem comes from transportation. About a quarter comes from agriculture which includes not just the actual you know raising of animals like cows that produce a ton of methane but also includes deforestation and unsustainable cropping practices and then we've got industry then we've got our building stock and our electricity generation. There's no one silver bullet that fixes everything but at the same time there are so many little things that we can do. So eating food chain is depending on our lifestyle can be just as if not more important than taking public transportation to work. That's why I love carbon footprint calculators I don't know if you've ever tried one of those. Cool calculator from Berkeley is one of them but there's a bunch of others. You log in and you enter all the details about your life and it shows you where your personal carbon emissions come from and it's different for every person. And then it shows you what you can do to reduce them and I think there's actually a really cool program where they're pioneering it in California but I'm sure it's something that you know can be brought to Texas where it's an online program where neighborhoods can do this and you can join up with your block or with your Girl Scout troop or with your church group and you can compete against others to lower your collective footprint. It's a really cool competition I think they're running it in a couple of little towns in California and it's really awesome because if you want to do something there's somebody on that program to help you like I want to do this thing at my house but where do I buy X? Well it turns out your neighbor 10 blocks away did X and they What I was thinking of. Jewel bugs in Austin's using that. Okay there must be a couple of different ones then but I think that's a great way because working together is so much it's so much more encouraging isn't it than feeling like I'm the only person who's doing anything and nobody else is doing anything. Yes I was wanting to know if you were able to have a conversation with Scott Pruitt what would be the first thing you would talk about? That that is a good question Leo's is actually about talking to people about climate change and it begins by saying you know if I just tell them the facts they'll change their mind right and the answer is no no. Climate change has become one of the most politicized topics in the entire country and so when I talk to anyone what I try to do is figure out well what makes them tick what values do they hold dear what is really important to them that influences their decisions and is there anything and for 99.9% of people there is is there anything that I can connect to with them that a value that I genuinely share or agree with that I could use to connect to the impacts of a changing climate whether it's the fact that clean energy builds our local economy here in Texas whether it's the fact that energy independence actually has a huge huge benefit for national security whether it's the fact that you know removing subsidies on all fuels fossil fuels and renewables would actually create a more equitable free market than the current distortion we have where fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of nearly $170,000 a second so yeah I'm not sure if I want to talk about that or not but yes so so whoever you're talking with takes some time to get to know them first and figure out what makes them tick and then connect the dots between what they genuinely care about and changing climate. Okay next question up here have you been approached by anyone representing the fossil fuels industry asking you for your advice as to how they could develop best practices? Yes, yes I have. That's good news. It is, yeah it's great news. I tell them the truth that there's no magic switch that we can flip today to turn to turn off all our fossil fuels so their services are still needed but we're near the end of an era and people who produce oil and gas though that can be used for other things you don't have to burn it in fact I think in 50 or 80 years people are going to be horrified that we used to burn this stuff. They're going to be like what are you talking about we need it for all these other things but just in the same way that horse farmers and buggy manufacturers had to recognize that the Model T had come along in the same way people who have built their expertise on ways of getting energy that we are already transitioning off right here in Texas have to look down the road recognize that we're on the curve and the reason why they call me in is because they recognize that we are on the curve and what I say to them is you know energy you know energy better than anyone else you've been doing energy for decades so how can you continue to do energy in the future now's the time to ask yourself that question and to answer it fast. Hi my question is sometimes I'm troubled by the word resilience because the focus seems to be on fixing something that's broken rather than trying to get at its root cause in conservation can you talk a little bit about conserving I mean it hasn't been since Jimmy Carter when we were encouraged to drive 55 miles an hour and wear a sweater in our home that message really isn't given to the public. I think they're two different things and actually I would love to hear you guys comment on this too but when I when I use the word resilience I specifically mean building resilience to the impacts that are coming no matter what we do a certain amount just just as if you smoke to pack a cigarette a day for 30 years and then you stopped a certain amount of damage is built into the system we're already on the curve and we have to prepare for the impacts and conservation is not going to eliminate all the impacts but at the same time reducing our energy use and conserving as well as switching to new sources that is going to help the curve not be nearly as steep we're going to be able to make it around the curve if it can reduce and eventually eliminate our carbon emissions so we have to be doing both we don't have the luxury of picking anymore we can't just adapt or mitigate we have to do both so let's let's open it up I think that's the logic that that that the scope of work was based on the logic that our team is working based on exactly what you said is that mitigation and adaptation are not mutually exclusive it's really we need to be doing both at the same time there are things that will happen no matter what you what we do there are changes that unfortunately have happened in the climate and we need to be ready for those with the same time we need to make sure that we don't get more of that and that's where mitigation comes into play so I think you're absolutely correct I mean the only other thing I would add to that is in terms of what are we trying to be resilient to and resilience has become a big point of discussion in the community at city council and resilience basically covers the board are we talking about cyber security are we talking about resilience of residents and neighborhoods and so I think you know as we start having those those discussions really understanding being clear what we're trying to accomplish but I think it's and that's part of the plan is that that's the idea of looking at the climate projections and not just looking at what the future holds but looking at where we are now you know are we resilient now as a community as well as building an additional adaptive capacity for those future impacts and that's another basis for for our work we hope we hope that that when we end up getting making decisions the decisions that are based on information that are based on data that are based on actual objective assessments not just on personal preferences or anything like that so so we see our role as providing the city and providing the community with that basis that objective basis that you can use to hopefully make very good decisions not using energy and you know when you see people put solar panels on an inefficient home to me that's a huge missed opportunity get the energy efficiency right go with solar and now you've got a little carbon put hello so what is the the city doing to protect the water and what are we what are we going to do to preserve the San Antonio recharge zone so you know i think and i i think there was um apparently i sort of heard there was a pretty robust conversation today um regarding saws and and sort of the future of where where we're going i think you know when we start looking at climate um impacts and you start looking at what extreme heat means uh in terms of changing um water cycles so i think one of the things that we really have to look at through this planning process is really understanding what those future dynamics are because again you know we could take a look at the you know where we are with with um current water um resources and it may looks good but it's a thing to be different um 20 40 60 years from now i think you know we need to continue with the concerted effort that's been going on in terms of protecting um the the edwards um aquifer and the recharge zone in particular i think um there's movements with uh the river authority city and other partners really looking at okay well how do we continue moving with low impact developments uh improving um the best practices to ensure that you know we are not just treating the water but basically allowing as much to infiltrate um i think there's lots of conversations that are going to have to go forward through this next year and a few months to really look at what are those strategies that that we we need to um to employ to get us where we we need i mean i think again only being in san antonio for three and a half years the one thing that's really sort of struck me is just how much work has been done already arounds um protecting our water resources um but there's there's always more to do and we're fortunate you know san antonio we have so there really is an opportunity to kind of work together on the there is some excellent leadership on on the stage today this question is for all of you where do you see leadership coming from in in the future who are the champions on this issue in your mind who do you look to as champions my answer that was cities and i don't just mean texas i mean globally i feel like cities are where the leadership is emerging and this what's happening right here is an example of that i'll that's not an easy um question i mean i think there's all you folks uh you know who took time to come here and listen and so i think you guys have a responsibility um and i think in order to make this san antonio plan successful and and implementable and have legs it's got to be cross sector i mean we need business champions we need industry champions we need you know equity champions um it's it's this has to be a plan that everybody sees um the benefit and the need to um to accomplish otherwise it'll be challenging and then the fact is the clocks taking i was second that i think we hope already in the questions about the concept of personal responsibility that that really climate change is something that each and every one of us can contribute to either through our personal actions or through engaging and and trying to have conversations with people around you so so i would in addition to cities i would agree that this is the leadership need to come from each and every one of us and i would particularly single out students and bias being being a faculty member i i really think that the future will be them and i see a lot of hope in my students that that i know would be realized over the next few years i would also i mean i think most people to dr hayho's comments i think uh most people get this there are a few hold out still out there but whether you know we've got a city that has a very forward-thinking mayor and council and so there's opportunity there at the city from leadership standpoint you got the utility that's very forward-thinking as well so you've got them at the table uh homes and business i mean you got commercial customers that are basically saying i want more renewables i want to go a hundred percent renewables you got you know residential customers with that same appetite and so i think the momentum is there how do you bring it all together and that's part of what this process is people's people often say well yes climate change is important but it's not really the most important thing for me and to that i would say you know climate change isn't on my priority list either it isn't it's not top 10 it's not top 20 it's not even top 100 why do i care about a change in climate i care about it because it affects all of the other things that are already on my priority list it affects the safety and the welfare of my family and my community it affects the price i pay for food water energy it affects the quality of the air i breathe it affects national security and international stability uh it affects social justice people are disproportionately affected by a changing climate no matter whether they live here or in syria the lower down the socioeconomic scale they are and the less advantages they have today and so i would just say if you you know if you're talking to somebody who kind of feels that this isn't really my issue figure out what their issue is and nine times out of ten you can connect the dots between what's at the top of their priority list and this i feel very comfortable in this audience as a fellow senior citizen we're here collectively uh with a great deal of experience and shared wisdom i'm concerned about the plan that you're having you're going to develop but i'm also concerned about the people that are going to use it and those are our students how are we going to factor this information how are we going to get this plan before our students to understand the future for their foot by themselves uh we better be very careful that we don't stretch it too far but the plan way out in front of us and our future generation doesn't buy in yeah four heads and jumps in on that question i hundred percent agree with you hopefully we capture that up there because uh one of the reasons we partner with utsa is that is that student aspect and so uh you know we we are looking for utsa to kind of really help us with that but i think that's a great great point and we need to think more about how to engage that the younger generation on this issue because it affects them the most absolutely i think i think this is again has been something that's been on the mind of our team since we started talking about this we know that we're being in a university that gives us great access to students and we fully intend to take advantage of that engage the students try to get them to understand why we're doing this and and honestly in in in my experience they understand it they get it and they understand it a lot easier than than many others so uh but i agree with you completely and and in general one of the things that that we have discussed again within our team and with the city and with cps is that we care a lot about developing a plan that has the highest possible opportunity of being implemented and that requires buying that requires you to be to be engaged to have to feel and get a sense of shared responsibility uh and and we hope that through our engagement process through providing you with with the information that you need to make informed decisions that we can develop that buy-in and that sense of shared responsibility and let's go see two quick things then because katherian is going to have to head out soon so i'm going to be super quick so um you're absolutely right i think one of my objectives is to work with the team to develop those materials that can be dispersed to k through 12 colleges where teachers can engage with their students and then transmit those results to us the other thing i would mention is seniors are a key group um that we want to engage in engage with you guys have been here the longest you guys have seen these trends we want to be able to capture that and and tell those stories to say this isn't just anecdotal um this this is happening and here's my story there's a the uh the male me and nuremberg used an expression that i found very touching he said the word in spite of lack of national leadership and that's a very strong message that we have to realize that there is going to be some need for coordination since there's no central leadership of any sort we need to have these efforts that what's going on in san antonio coordinated coordinated with that of other cities and i'm proud to see that happening but uh also uh dr heywood talked about a what appears to be a systems uh issue we're dealing with here very little small smart actions that can be taken in different ways and uh the question i have maybe for dog as well is where what's the i guess the direction in terms of capturing the successes of these small smart steps because they're so small they could be missed i mean they have to build up to something but they're going to take time to build up so what's the mechanism you're thinking of for capturing these small successes and really building them up into something big and that i mean that's pretty much been the big challenge my entire career nowhere no matter where i've been it's always been you know from the sustainability perspective working in other cities is there's all these things going on and how do you how do you capture them and then how do they add up so i think for for this planning process i think and pack so i think it's going to be a really systematic process to look at all those um leverage points and interconnections and when i was in albany we developed a comp plan and it was uh we had a consultant well as roberts and hud we had some pretty innovative people and it was sort of like the first plan that looked at sort of systems thinking and it had all sort of the sorts of crazy terminology that he was throwing into it but it was an attempt to start looking at all those interconnections um i think it works it helps prioritize and then really look at you know this action pulls 10 levers and this one only gets to maybe we should concentrate on this i think that's part of the process that's going to help us when we start looking at how we implement this plan absolutely this is probably one of the key strategies that we're aiming to use as a team uh our intent is to look at all possible options we're not really taking any prior positions with regard to which which strategy will be more useful or more successful we're going to look at them all we're going to look at them all as comprehensively as we can we're going to look at the cost and benefits the the straightforward economic analysis but we're also going to look at other indirect impacts co-benefits avoided costs all of the other interconnections and relationships that we all know exist and that often get neglected and not accounted for so we'll try to capture that as much as possible to that when again when somebody makes a decision about selecting strategy a versus strategy b it isn't it becomes an informed decision an incision that has the most likelihood of success so i think one last question quick question kathryn and i also want to mention um if somebody with uh microphone there's some whole bunch of very patient people down here so this this last question is only for me because unfortunately i have to leave after this i would love to have you yes thank you i will come back if you invite me but they will be here to continue to answer questions so there's somebody has a question specifically for me oh we got a question right here specifically for me and then others if you follow my facebook page you'll you'll get the notifications for our q and a's that we have on facebook that's a great way to connect in the future so right here is the question for me thank you thank you uh you initially mentioned that china and india are ahead of us oftentimes when i am trying to have a discussion with regard to climate change people will point them out and say well what about china and india do you have any sources uh to which you can refer us about exactly what china and india are doing that we could use to educate ourselves to have be prepared to counter those comments yes uh so we do have a global weirding video on renewable energy it talks a lot about what's happening in other countries but i'm glad to raise that because this is one of the most important oh yeah but what about questions that people say they say well what if we as a false statement because of course wind and solar grows our economy yeah there's many more jobs in the solar industry now than in the coal industry in fact the muski put solar yeah and a chinese company and went into wyoming and is retraining coal miners in wyoming to do wind installations so so that in itself is is a is a false statement that it would destroy the economy but the second part is because they're so dirty why do they say that it's because every picture that we see of air-chunk quality in china looks like what awful did you know that living in beijing actually shortens your life by an average of five years but because their air quality is so bad right in front of their eyes they recognize that coal is not the answer and so china has not been building a new coal power they've actually been shutting them down they're building wind energy they're building solar energy they have more wind and solar than any other country in the entire world they're investing 360 billion dollars in continuing to grow their clean energy economy the next two years india is setting records for the cheapest solar prices on record in the entire world without subsidies and the things that are happening in the emerging economies are stunning they're so stunning that i think there's a serious concern of the us being left behind technologically if it doesn't pull up its socks and that is the message that we can reply to people say we don't want to be left behind anymore it's not a case of us being out here and them being back here no they have overtaken us in many ways not every but many and we are in serious danger of falling behind so thank you so much everyone i want to see how many people leave well you know what i would say you know we'll still take comments and questions but i think more importantly we have a website that is saclimateready.org that just went live today if we could get it on the screen here and it's an opportunity for you to kind of connect so you can register you can you know submit your comments or questions there so that's another forum there in addition to this but you know this is a journey we're going to go through public dialogue public input will continue to be very very important uh we're happy just you know to take some more comments but you know why don't we take a few and then uh the laser has been so patient so if we can get a we want everything yeah want all the information that you can give us and we'll be happy to absolutely it's data and i think it's it's it's local data and i think it's quantitative as well as qualitative yeah i think i think it's a good thing to capture also ronda i know we're trying to capture some of these ideas is there a way for the public to give data and input as they see it in the community is there a framework is there a way that we can capture that so we'll capture that at this point you can use our email sa-climateready at utsa.edu but we will have other methods of engagement that will allow you to send this data directly but absolutely just send us an email and we'll we'll get in touch with you and we'll coordinate with you this question is for Doug uh whenever we sign the Paris climate agreement you know that is very focused on emission reduction i feel like we're talking a lot about resiliency and adaptation to climate change when are we going to start talking about emission reduction and climate change prevention it's it's both i think the first phase of the plan is the climate mitigation component the climate action component so right now hasem's team is basically gathering all the data to update the 2014 greenhouse gas inventory for community and municipal operations um developing those long-term trends and start developing the strategies specifically focused on um reducing emissions through buildings energy system transportation solid waste and then there's some overlap where it starts shifting into more of a climate adaptation process so it's it's we're doing we're doing both um i'm a UTSA student and i really want to know how i can personally get involved like on the animes what's your email address first name last name at utsa.edu can you can you guys put that up there oh send an email to us yeah that's the landing web page so if you want to link to that right down thank you someone else mentioned this earlier i think um bio the threat to the loss of biodiversity is an important motivating factor and it also resonates very well with the younger set yes uh that aren't having to pay their own bills yet and stuff like that so i i'd love to see that it was really difficult to narrow down the list of possible yeah there are quite a few of them yes absolutely and actually the the plan includes when we started getting to the adaptation and the resilience discussion basically the natural resources and natural systems whether it's water air and all that or biodiversity thank you i was struck by one of the uh dr haos slides that showed that south miami has instituted a rule that uh all new construction have uh solar panels on the roofs uh with the upcoming population change that uh for san antonio i think this is a really necessary thing that we ought to put it in and into the universal building code that we have a requirement to put solar panels on on rooftops uh in the future just like that a personal anecdote on this we had one of the first solar rooftop solar systems in san antonio about 10 or 11 years ago and uh there's a little known uh reference in the uh state code that you can't your property assessment has to cannot include the price of these solar systems uh when we appeal that to the to the appraisal district they said oh we've already figured that in uh so i think there has to be some uh really uh aggressive action to try to enforce the law that is on the books right now that says that your house should not be appraised to include the price of that solar system it should be deducted from that appraisal and reduce your property taxes basically i think all you know all these strategies all these barriers to implementing strategies are going to be on the table for for valuation especially on the north side a lot of the uh developments in neighborhoods this is at the lowest level of government i suppose you could say have hoa agreements that are very restrictive in terms of what kind of roofing you can get i really liked uh right obviously with these deep roofs we can't green our roofs but we can certainly lighten up the um shingles and if you could find a way i believe the texas legislature some years ago passed a law about water catchment they said homeowners associations can't prohibit them they can tell you got to put a fence around them like they can't prohibit them and so if we could get some sort of action along that line i think it would help for those of us who are facing a new roof in the next five to ten years thank you i know this uh this system has just been like this is the kickoff and it's the beginning but i was wondering if um you know as everyone here probably knows sweden runs on like waste um i was wondering if you guys are tackling at all or acknowledging waste in san antonio that you can you know look to in the future and maybe reduce or use its energy is that something i'll have talked about that that is part of the plan that is part of uh waste is a one of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions that we're looking into in developing the inventory right now and certainly strategies to reduce the emissions coming out of waste will be among all the other strategies that we would be addressing and the city's solid waste department has current reduction goals and we'll be working with them and folding them into the process as well as the community to start looking at you know where are we going with waste in terms of those long-term greenhouse gas reduction hi so right now we're blessed with a wonderful mayoral administration and leader in great council leadership um that that instigated all of this and an essay climate ready what are the plans for i'm a san antonio resident and i and i plan to be here for a while what are the what are the plans for um being climate resilient decades into the future and is there a sustainability just for this program i mean i think the key to this one we do have an office sustainability that's been around and i think making making some headway um i think in terms of this climate plan i mean the key is to make a come up with a plan that's going to fit san antonio and something that san antonio can rally around um we have two year mayoral cycles you know so i think the goal is to come up with something that um fits just right that's going to move us in the right direction um i think we can be aggressive uh and i think we need to be very aggressive but when we start looking at pathways we need to come up with something that um whether changes in political um uh administrations um but i think that's why the engagement part is and the education part is so important because if it's something that there's no ownership across the board uh and i've seen this in other communities where i worked it's too easy to just basically say well that's not that's not my plan um you know let's do something else i would add you know hopefully 20 30 years from now we will look back at this moment in time and say wow this is when it all kind of came together for this community so hopefully history judge as well if we execute on this plan in the way that we need it oh let me ask steve who uh is in the you know represents the business community you know that some of the questions how do you get some of the other state you know this is you know preaching to the choir so to speak but uh steve hennigan who's a CEO of uh credit human i wanted to get to you your comments well chris you know we're getting ready to build a sustainable building uh the the challenges are have been and i was a former public policymaker you know here in town as well the the environment is is getting closer and closer to shifting the tip this is the group that's you know these are you don't need to convince this group uh the real challenges is the barriers to the groups that are not quite there yet and that doesn't happen quickly it takes time to do that uh i can just tell you from trying to build uh you know about a hundred and fifty million dollar project here the the key elements of a new building just in the building component of the sustainable olives of the building which will include rainwater capture in geothermal energy solar uh and a tremendous energy reduction plan that would reduce you know you need by 40 percent water usage by 90 percent the the professional expertise needed to lead that type of development the knowledge creation it's it's uh we're fighting uh conventional inertia if you will and so the mp firms the mechanical electrical and plumbing engineering firms that were part of the design they had to come from out of state typically you know when we do buildings and i know i did my personal residents many of those knowledge bases are not in our community even though there's a demand for them and really developing the skill sets is going to be equally as difficult as developing the plan so when you have workers come to actually do this construction it's it's it's it's new practices new materials coming together so i can just tell you to put a hundred fifty million dollars into a new facility that's a big decision all of itself but then you've got to actually have the people that can critically do it i know in personally with our building if i wasn't personally involved in the design of the building it wouldn't have happened even with the best intentions of the people that were on the plan so it's it the business community is important but it's going to be really the trades and the crafts and the engineering firms that actually help move this and you know i can go on and on but i think you get the point that's a great point i think we need to capture that as well how do we how do we get the skill set and the knowledge here as we you know as we go down this this path in this journey so i great comment steve so i'm thinking this is all aimed at san Antonio the quality of life and this is wonderful it has to be the case however uh there are there's a context in which the air quality in san antonio is being impacted negatively that does not fall within the city limits or even the county and several years ago uh peter bello who i think i see down there in the first row is that right as the chief air quality enforcement official for acog did studies which showed that the air pollution from the eagle for shale activities is moving into san antonio and impacting no matter how hard peter worked and had a compliance for nine years it was starting to go up and now we're out of compliance so yes there's other factors here that can be under the control of the city but my question is having learned from the past and now that you're building this plan and just about the time and some of the smaller communities in the eagle for shale are beginning to realize this is not all good news and they're dealing with the air quality themselves with the other factors that come with fracking and flaring and emissions out of the compressors methane specifically they're beginning to wonder what we can do about it and they do not have the resources that a city the size of san antonio does so my question is have you considered building into this process and networking with key officials in these lower counties to offer them some help in improving their quality of life because they're just getting to the point where they're ready to listen i think and that's a i mean that's a great observation and really important and when we started envisioning this process it is it is not a city issue i mean this is it's a it's a regional and it's a it's a large it's beyond regional and so we had discussions as far as how how do we do that and what does that look like and what are the resources and the the avenues that we have i i think i'm glad and we can capture that comment talking to the mayor talking to other city leaders and business leaders and because it's going to take i think all hands on deck to get everyone sort of at that table to begin that conversation and i think also doing it in a way where it doesn't appear that it's the big city of san antonio coming in and trying to get in people's corner of the corner of the state but i think it's something we need to figure out because i think you're absolutely right we're blessed with resources and not just financial resources but human resources and people you know people who understand this and i think we need to that's something that we really need to consider during this process absolutely absolutely i think we captured it well it wouldn't be a climate event without peter bella so peter well so yeah right well i think we're coming to our end actually could i ask you a question please yes uh actually i published a site called sustainable essay dot com or sustainable centurion dot com on that site about the question getting ready to ask is it's great with sustained building resilience and that sort of thing that being consideration building into and kind of speaks to what steven's talking about uh building in to the plan not just sustainability and resilience but eco-positive and being regenerative because we have the technology and actually i think educating people here locally teaming up with the universities and stuff and what kind of plans are there basically in regard to being planning for eco being eco-positive and regenerative rather than just sustainable and resilient i think the goal needs to come from the community so whether whether it is by 10 percent 20 percent 90 percent 100 percent 200 percent that needs to be a goal that comes from the community that the community believes in and is committed to so i think our role is to lay out all the options and then we will hear what people want to do and i think it's a great suggestion yeah i would also say look a great suggestion also that part of this is technology if there's technology out there that will vacuum all the carbon up and put it someplace you know i think we need to be open to what technology is out there and how can we leverage that technology to kind of get and one great way to to take carbon out of the atmosphere is plant a tree so you know so that's something to think about okay uh well again i think we're you know coming to an end we very much appreciate everyone's involvement everyone's commitment here uh we have the website to land on um and i want to give a thank you to the city and UTSA for for partnering with us on on this this effort thank you thank you all for coming thank you