The California dream is imperiled by climate change

May 20, 2014

A climate researcher used a colorful word picture at a conference Monday in Sacramento to convey the gravity of rising temperatures on earth, reported Elizabeth Case in the Davis Enterprise

"The climate is an angry beast and we're poking it with a sharp stick" said Benjamin Santer, a research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The conference, hosted by UC's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, covered water use, adaptation to a changed climate and tangible predicted impacts on California's agricultural production, the story said.

Another speaker at the event, Dan Sumner, director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center, said California agriculture and policy should look beyond the state's borders. As temperatures rise and weather patterns change, crops may be better adapted to other states and countries and, potentially, California less so. Already a migration toward greener pastures for range cattle has begun.

Gov. Jerry Brown was a featured speaker at the conference. He discussed a report released Monday by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences that predicts a $1.7 billion loss to California agriculture because of the 2014 drought. He said California is at the "epicenter" of climate change and called for the state's residents and people and governments of other states to work with him to halt the planet's rising temperatures.

Richard Howitt, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis and lead author of the study, predicted climate change will lead to an inevitable decline in agriculture.

"We will have more land (to farm) than water to irrigate," he said.

In a Sacramento Bee story about the conference, written by Edward Ortiz, Maximillian Auffhammer, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy at UC Berkeley, called the effects of climate change "slow moving," a pace that gives the ag industry time to deal with climatic uncertainties.

Additional coverage:

In California, Climate Issues Moved to Fore by Governor
Jennifer Medina, New York Times

Gov. Brown: California at 'Epicenter' of Climate Change
CBS News Los Angeles

Governor Jerry Brown calls for action on climate change, irks protesters over fracking
Jessica Calefati and Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News


By Jeannette E. Warnert
Author - Communications Specialist