 I have a few words to say an introduction to him. We're very fortunate to have him with us briefly this morning on this very important topic of climate change and his views on some successes, challenges, next steps in that arena. We appreciate very much the effort it took to fit this visit into his schedule. It took some finagling, but he so wanted to be with this group. And our concern that climate change is important and our need to take it seriously. I also think he especially appreciated our interfaith approach. Perhaps you read his letter shortly after Pope Francis visited Congress last fall. I'm thinking I'll be linking that also later tonight. And you know that he was very moved by that experience if you did read it. If not, then go to our website later tonight and you can read it. Our meaning, the cool Davis website where you signed up for this conference. It's for these reasons that we invited John Garamendi to join us. And here he is. Thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction and for all of you. Thank you for being here and for being concerned. And sister, where'd you go? Oh, there you are over here in the corner. Thank you. Thank you for being, I know Paris is a difficult place to spend time. But, well, I know you were busy. I could tell not just from what you were saying here, but also from the reports back. Thank you. And thank you for all of those that were with you. And what all of you were able to do and is to sound the alarm. Yesterday, actually two days ago when I was looking at the calendar of this weekend and beyond, it's okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to talk about California water and climate and droughts and the like. I could do that. Probably do that for several hours of discussion and, you know, maybe if I have time for Q&A, that'll happen. But I also went through my reading packet on the coming home late Friday night, Thursday night actually. And I came across an article that I said I want to talk to you about or said to myself I want to talk to you about. It was an article in the Washington Post and it was about the effect of climate change and El Nino being stronger than ever before, at least in recorded time. And the effect it was having not on California, but on Africa. And it reminded me and brought back to me what Patty and I were doing in the mid-80s. We had been Peace Corps volunteers in Ethiopia in the 60s. And the Ethiopian countryside had become devastated by a drought in the 1980s. And so we decided to return to Ethiopia to see if there was something that we could do. We took a team with us because we knew that if we were going to do anything, it basically had to be done through the public and public awareness. We took a reporter and a news cameraman from Channel 10. We took a reporter and a photographer from the Sacramento Bee. And we returned to Ethiopia. We're not exactly sure how we were able to negotiate the intricacies of the government at that time, which was I guess could best be described as a Stalin government. They fancied themselves communists, but really they were simply a brutal dictatorship. And like Stalin had brought the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse upon the people of Ethiopia. We were working with the Catholic relief organizations and others because they too wanted the story to be told. We went to a village in northern Ethiopia, a village called Alamada. It was maybe in normal times 5,000 people. At that time there were maybe 20,000. There were at least three camps, one one by Catholic Relief Services and other by World Vision and a third by, I'll think of the name, a third camp. Each one had about 5,000 people in it. We arrived at the camp and looked around and it was worse than you could even imagine. I think if you were around and remember the pictures of that time where maybe the extensive coverage that was done by the television and by the Sacramento Bee, it was everything except for the sounds, the sights, the odors and the death. Patty of course, doing what a mother does, went immediately to where the children were and began to do triage and to provide whatever there could. I looked around and I said, where's the water? And they said, well, it's there. I said, that's about a 500 gallon tank. You've got 5,000 people here. How does this work? And they said, not well. Not well at all. I said, well, why don't you do what? What are you doing about that? I said, we can't. I said, why? They said, we're not allowed off the compound. Okay. I said, then is there some solution if you were allowed off the compound? They said, we don't know. I said, well, okay. So knowing the Amharic language, went to the gate and walked off the compound and headed down to the government center, which was just kind of a ramshackled building near the central market. The soldiers put their gun in my belly and said, where are you going? I spoke to them in Ethiopia in Amharic and I said, I'm going to go talk to the mayor. He's not here. And I said, I'll bet he is and just walked by him. And the mayor came out of his little office and spoke to me in Amharic and asked me what I was doing and that I'd better get back in the compound. I said, no, there's no water and we're going to solve that problem. And he said, how did you learn Amharic? And I said, I was a Peace Corps volunteer. At that point, he took the soldiers away and said, wait outside. Went back to his office and spoke to me in perfect English. And he said, you were a Peace Corps volunteer? And I said, yes. And he said, do you know Mr. Adam Smith? And I said, no. And he said, he was my teacher. He lived in Spokane, Washington. And surely you must know him. And I said, no, I really don't. But I'll certainly try to find him when I return to the United States. In the meantime, there's no water in the community. And he said, I know. The rebels are in the hills. There was a rebellion going on. The rebels are in the hill and they've destroyed the water system. I said, well, we've got to fix it because there's going to be a lot more problem if we don't. And he said, what do you know? And I said, I'm not sure what I need, but let's go see what you may have lying around in one or two of the warehouses around. And he said, OK, so he assembled a team of military about, I don't know, 20 or so. We went down to the warehouse. We picked up all the pipe and everything else we could find, shovels and picks and the like. And we headed out. We walked about five miles out of town to where the water system was. And indeed it had been destroyed. And so we set to work with the crew to repair it. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to do that. So we returned that night to the camp, woke up the next morning and the sounds of the whaling and the sounds of the famine effect were found. And every morning there were another several, I don't know, 20 or 30 children that had died and adults and the grave diggers were busy digging the graves. That was in 1985. Fortunately relief did arrive, but not before nearly a million people had died in that famine. The report in the Washington Times was similar in every way. There were the same pictures, the same babies that were starving and about to die. And, you know, the same hopelessness with one exception. And that is that this time, after all of those years, early warning signs were in place. And we knew that this drought had been made worse by an extraordinary powerful El Nino that was created because of the warming of the ocean. Been going on maybe forever, but not in the intensity of today. And so back in Ethiopia today, there is new famine camps. The lorries are arriving with the grain from the United States with the hands clasp that says a gift from the people of America. All of that is taking place. There was another article in the newspaper yesterday that scientists and observers from one of the universities in Europe looking at tree rings in southeastern Turkey had determined that in the last several decades, actually the last 20 years, the amount of rain falling in the Middle East is the lowest it has been over the last 900 years. So what do you make of that? Another report coming out of the University of California, Irvine, by a professor that is now working at the NASA Ames Center in Southern California. His studies of satellite radar data of the world indicate that the aquifers of the Middle East are nearly gone. So from southeastern Turkey through Syria, Iraq, and further south and into Iran, the aquifers are not depleted but nearly gone or contaminated with heavy salts. And we have sold more F-150 pickups this year than in any other year here in the United States. The obligations that we have as world citizens were made very, very clear by Pope Francis, and I understand, Sister, you spoke some of those words or had them up on the screen before I arrived. And he could not be more correct in calling upon all of us to heed the warnings, to heed the warnings and to be responsible. The warnings are clear. The atmospheric contamination is known. We do those readings. We can look at the ice cores that go back two, three, 400,000 years. When I was deputy secretary at the Department of Interior, I had the, I guess I'd like to say, the obligation of observing what the U.S. Geological Service was doing in Antarctic. Never before over those hundreds of thousands of years has the greenhouse gases been higher. The warnings are there. The aquifers in the great valleys of California, the Salinas Valley, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley, heavily depleted and in some cases gone. And so the water upon which communities depend is gone. The contamination has taken over in many of those wells here in California, including Davis, and the warnings are clear. And our obligation as members of this generation, our obligation is to the future generations. Because the most powerful of all of our innate instincts is the survival of our species. But that survival for a large, large population of this world is in serious jeopardy. And so the drought in Ethiopia is replicated in southern Africa. The aquifers upon which the world's food supply largely depend are rapidly depleting. The Great Rivers of China and Southeast Asia are experiencing dramatic changes as the snow and the summer melt in the Himalayas significantly decline. And we observed from last year that it's possible, even in our mountains, that there is no snow, a most unusual event. So our obligation, you can put it in a religious, ethical, or even a survival mode, is very, very much dependent upon what we do. Those of us that are alive today, some of us a little older in this room and others a little younger, but whatever our age, it is this generation that are alive on this planet today that have the opportunity to literally destroy the potential of future generations. So you're here today. You're here today and you're concerned about these things and you are acting upon these. I had a little conversation coming in about the goal of this city for rooftop solar. Good. And I have my obligations in Congress also. And so when it comes to tax policy, that would further the advancement of clean energy of all kinds. I vote for it. When it comes to proposals that are put on the floor by my colleagues who are in the current majority to eliminate the rules of the EPA to reduce the emission from coal-fired power plants, I vote against it. Even though it passes and goes to the President for a veto, we've got our work cut out for us on the political side and on the individual as well as the community side. I'd like to go back to that 1985 and share with you some thoughts that I had on our third night in the camp at Alamada. This is entitled Will There Be Enough? Ping, ping, ping. One, two, three kernels falling against the bottom of a tin can. Again, the sunlit day turned gray as the evening dust came on. Another day without rain. The dusty field in front of the Alamada warehouse empty. The surging multitude all day in the highland sun gone. Tomorrow to return to beg for another ration of grain. Now night, fast approaching. Gray shadows moving slowly into the surrounding hills. People go to seek some shelter for the night. Pray it's warm. No coldness to cut through the worn out rags. Ping, ping, ping. Four, five, six, and seven. The tinny sounds echo down the near deserted road. A gray form squatted by the road near the distribution site. Her hand dotted out to pluck another kernel. Give thanks old woman for the tear in the grain sack. The day nears its end. Morning long since past saw a thousand newcomers lined up outside the feeding center. Special cases there were. Babies in mother's arms. Beautiful eyes too weak to shine or dance about. Now, staring into darkness. Nothingness. Barely clutching their mother's rags. Sometimes wrapped tightly and huddled on the back. A man here or there with a new maternal road. Roll thrust upon him by a mother's desk. Or a multitude perhaps 100 entered the gate to join the hundreds already inside. No more room they said truthfully and sadly. Ping, ping, ping. Eight, nine, ten. The light grows dimmer. The figure melts into the gray. Only movement and hollow sounds give her away. The tumult of the day. The desperate flurry of the activity is gone. Sun comes up early on the mountaintop. So much to do. There's food inside the gate. So many mothers. Looking up with eyes and voices besieging. Please, please. Patiently they wait their turn. Roll upon roll. Children between their legs. Barely enough porridge. Gruel and powdered milk to keep them alive. The first row ate. The next waited their turn to use the same bowl and spoon. Patient in a desperate moment. The very sick two weeks to swallow. Mama, force your child to eat. Ping, ping, ping. Slowly, patiently, the tin can fills. And will there be enough? Thank you very much. Certainly called, aren't we? Please sing with me.