[Rachel Golden, ERG graduate student]

My alarm goes off at 4:30 on Saturday morning in a hotel room in Chowchilla, a small city (under 20,000) in the San Joaquin Valley, that feels like a deserted rural town. Unsure if I have slept at all, I slip quietly out of the hotel and slowly drive through a thick darkness. Silently freaking out and cursing Siri, I drive for 20 minutes in the wrong direction on the I-99. My counterparts later teased me that “you city folk don’t know how to drive in the Valley.”  It’s true, I’ve gotten lost twice in 24 hours.

Once I reorient and backtrack, I begin to see cars lined up like a silent train along the side of the road, about a mile from the Chowchilla fairground. The fairground parking lot is where Valley Clean Air Now (ValleyCAN) will be hosting the “Tune In and Tune Up” event in a few hours.  Hundreds of people spent Friday night in their cars alone, with loyal friends, or with their families to get a place near the front of the line. Several people even arrived at noon the day before in order to ensure entrance to the event. The lined-up cars are old. Really old. Most are “pre-OBDIIs,” (made before 1996) and are classified as some of the most polluting cars on California’s roadways.  It is said that cars are born in California’s coastal cities (like the Bay Area) and come to die in the Central Valley. Only, they don’t die. These cars clunk around for well beyond their expected lifespan on expensive life-support, because people have few options for transportation and depend on these wheels for groceries, work, and taking kids to school.

Jose in the early morning directing cars into the parking lot from where they were parked (and slept in) overnight

The people in line aren’t sleeping in their cars to get Taylor Swift tickets. Or a selfie with Barak Obama. They are there for a free smog screening and a $500 voucher to get the needed car repairs for passing the smog test—a prerequisite in California for keeping your car registered. Wait, this is a story about SMOG TESTS? No! Okay, yes. Well, sort of. It’s really a story about much more. This is a story about community groups coming together from all parts of life to make living a bit easier and healthier.

Some quick stats to set the context:

• Smog (i.e. ground level ozone), which is just one of the forms of air pollution caused by cars, can cause asthma, hurt the linings of lungs, aggravate chronic lung diseases such as emphysema and bronchitis, and reduce the immune system’s ability to fight off bacterial infections in the respiratory system.
• The San Joaquin Valley is home to the worst air quality in the country and has some of the highest rates of childhood asthma in California.
• Those most impacted by smog are children, adults who exercise or engage in outdoor physical labor (think agricultural and construction workers), and those with continued exposure (think everyone who lives in the Valley).
• Smog’s not all. These nearly 2-decade old cars also produce considerable hazardous air pollution, contributing to increased risk of cancer, heart and lung diseases, and diabetes.

I pull up to the fairground gates at 5:45am to see Tom Knox standing in the dark wearing his white ValleyCAN t-shirt and holding a bottomless cup of black coffee. Tom seems to be in a long-term relationship with caffeine, and this event, “Tune In and Tune Up,” is their baby. Tom is the executive director of ValleyCAN and has generously met with me weekly for my research. I spend the next hour discussing the day’s logistics with him and the event manager Jose Martin, a community organizer from outside of Guadalajara, Mexico. Jose tirelessly travels up and down the Valley, building support from community groups for these events, which occur every other weekend as far north as San Joaquin County and as far south as Kern County.

At 6:30am the sun starts to rise and Jose opens the gates to the fairground parking lot. We see the silent train come to life as over 500 cars turn on their engines one by one and roll into the lot, which is lined with orange cones and tents staffed by people in orange vests. Many of the cars are without license plates, about half are unregistered, yet most people are smiling because they are a few feet closer to getting that voucher to clean up their cars. 

Lideres Campesinas, the women who cook lunch for all participants and provide community education for farmworkers about sexual assault and abuse

To a bird in the sky, this event just looks like a parking lot. But on the ground, there is more than meets the eye. The traffic is directed and the event managed by local community groups, like gang prevention groups, who get a modest payment and work experience. The cars are screened by local, top smog testers and students from community colleges across the Valley. In school, the students only see one car a day, but out here they see up to 550 in a day. The students soon become experts, able to open up their own local smog test shops and return here as teachers. Women from the group Lideres Campesinas get paid to cook a free lunch for all participants and set up their table of educational flyers for agricultural workers about sexual assault and violence. Three radio stations set up their tents to blast music and broadcast live from the fairground parking lot to cover the event.

Veronica, who manages a pilot program funded by the San Joaquin Valley Air District that gives qualifying low-income Valley residents up to $5,000 to retire their old car and purchase and lease a new cleaner model

And in a small tent off to the side sits Veronica, who manages a pilot program funded by the San Joaquin Valley Air District that gives qualifying low-income Valley residents up to $5,000 to retire their old car and purchase and lease a new cleaner model. Paired with California’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, low-income drivers can get up to $12,000 to purchase or lease an advanced car like a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEVs). Since there are no PHEVs in dealerships in the Central Valley and inadequate chargers to keep these cars moving, most drivers opt for a smaller rebate for a less advanced vehicle, like a used minivan or occasionally maybe even an early-model Prius.

I can’t help wondering if some Berkeley environmentalists’ eyes are rolling. Cars are evil. Why aren’t they getting electric vehicles? What about public transit? We shouldn’t even be farming in the Valley anyway.

Yes, I know. Maybe I’m just sleep deprived, but the way I see it:  People live here, in the Valley. For their livelihood they need to drive long distances.

• Until we can make major system-wide changes so we can live in balance with the natural environment…
• Until state regulators (CPUC and CEC), utilities, and industry groups get EV charging stations installed at scale…
• Until the California Air Resources Board deploys hundreds of millions of dollars of cap-and-trade revenue to counties and community groups to increase low-income people’s access to EV cars, buses, and trucks…

Until any of this happens, simply retiring the oldest fleet and getting people into cleaner cars is the best game in town.

Until any of this happens, simply retiring the oldest fleet and getting people into cleaner cars is the best game in town.

Although it may make many environmentalists queasy, getting cars built in 1995 and earlier off the road for good, and replacing them with LEVIIs (cars made since 2008) will bring considerable air quality benefits to the Valley (i.e. reduced NOx, SOx, smog, particulate matter), improve fuel efficiency, and ease the financial burden for low-income people who are car dependent. This is just one first step in a longer-term game plan towards turning over the fleet and making way for near-zero emission vehicles.

In the meantime while the low carbon solution is being simmered and seasoned in state agencies and prodded by green groups, an under-the-radar smog event — which under most circumstances sounds like the last place to spend a Saturday afternoon — actually feels like a community party with music trumpeting, free food sizzling on the grill, and a team of unlikely partners bonding over a job well done.


Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

[Joseph Rand, ERG Graduate Student]

On any given Monday, conversations buzz around ERG’s communal cubicle workspace with stories of weekend skiing, rock climbing, surfing, bicycle rides, trail runs, skijoring, LARPing, lumberjack games... you name it, ERGies probably do it.

View of the Colorado River from the Nankoweap Granaries in the Grand Canyon (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

A good number of ERGies would attest to having developed a deep environmental conscience from time spent in the wilderness. For many of us, whenever we are not buried in reading, writing, and problem sets, we are finding renewal through various outdoor adventures and activities. Fortunately for us, the Bay Area is situated pretty well whether you’re into mountains, forests, or the ocean. Or if you’re like me, you like to hang out in the Earth’s drainage ditches: rivers.

Taking the leap at Elves’ Chasm (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

My passion for rivers led me to leave California over winter break and head to the biggest drainage ditch in the country: the Grand Canyon. Although permits to run the river are extremely competitive to win through the National Park Service (NPS) Lottery, the winners occasionally have to back out of their trips, freeing up their coveted permits. In these cases, the NPS issues "follow-up" lotteries, which tend to be less competitive (especially for river trips in the dead of winter around the holidays).

Through this process, a few friends and I were lucky enough to secure a Grand Canyon permit, which launched on December 19, 2014 (leaving barely enough time to finish my final exams!). We would be kayaking 279 miles in 13 days without raft support, meaning we had to cram 13+ days of food and gear into our kayaks. It is a big, committed trip--requiring a great deal of planning and preparation--from what food you’ll bring along to how you’ll go about packing your solid waste. I should have consulted with Emily (from my ERG cohort) for some creative ideas on my fecal sludge management! (See photo below.)

Kayaks loaded at the put-in (note the white PVC tubes - used to pack out human waste!) (Photo: Joseph Rand)

As I made the long drive from Berkeley to Lee’s Ferry--the put-in of the Grand Canyon--I reflected on what may be a slight contradiction in my values when it comes to my own carbon footprint: I willingly drive long distances in order to spend time in the wilderness. Here in Berkeley, I live a fairly efficient urban lifestyle and try to minimize my carbon impact. Admittedly, I do own a car, but it sits parked on the street for weeks at a time while I ride my bike everywhere (my steering wheel literally had cobwebs on it earlier this year). I, like all ERGies, consider it a part of my identity to live as efficiently and sustainably as I can.

Yet, here I am, driving over 2000 miles round-trip just to float down a river for two weeks. Is this carbon impact an acceptable trade-off for the enjoyment and renewal I expected from this adventure?

My close friend Josh--one of 3 other guys running the river with me--provoked these questions further. Just before leaving for the canyon, Josh graduated with an MS from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, where he studied grid integration of renewable energy. While floating down the river, Josh and I began discussing: How long would we have to spend in the Grand Canyon to balance the carbon impact of traveling there, compared to the baseline of our normal urban, energy consuming lifestyles? The assumption, of course, being that once we are in the Canyon, our carbon footprint drops to nearly zero (aside from food and cooking).

The group after hiking Deer Creek Narrows in the Grand Canyon (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

Having taken Energy and Society (ER200) in the fall semester of 2014, I had gained the tools to do a simple back-of-the-envelope equation to attempt to answer this question! So, for the energy-nerds / wilderness lovers among us, here is a simple estimate of the number of days I would have to spend in the Grand Canyon to offset the CO₂ emitted to get there in the first place.

A few key assumptions:

• Food-related carbon emissions are the same in the Canyon as they are at home (let’s ignore the fact that I was eating around 5,000 calories per day in order to paddle 25-35 miles each day and stay warm!).
• The round-trip journey to and from the Grand Canyon (including shuttling my car to the takeout at Pearce Ferry) was about 2,000 miles.
• My car averages about 24 miles/gallon (the boat on top adds a lot of drag!).
• I will use the EPA estimate that burning one gallon of automobile gasoline emits ~8,887 grams of CO₂.
• For my CO₂ emissions here in California, I am assuming the average CO₂ intensity of California’s electric grid to be 277 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour.

So how much CO₂ did am I responsible for emitting based on this 2,000 mile drive?

Using a (very) crude energy audit based on a typical day here in Berkeley, I calculated my average daily CO₂ emissions to be roughly 3.75 kg per day:

Energy audit

So how many days would I have to spend in the Grand Canyon in order to offset the CO₂ emissions from driving there (compared to a baseline of a typical "Berkeley Day")?

Of course this is based on a lot of assumptions and rounding, but at least this number gives me a general ballpark idea. I was hoping for a smaller number--so hopefully whoever graded the ER200 problem sets can find an error in my calculations ;)

While I would LOVE to spend 198 days in the Grand Canyon, the maximum permit length is ~35 days. Next time I’ll just have to bring a few more ERGies along with me to the Canyon! Check out some more pictures and a short video from the trip below!

Camp at Lower Blacktail Canyon (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

Hiking Deer Creek Narrows (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

Scouting Lava Falls - Mile 179 in the Grand Canyon (Photo: Joseph Rand)

Joe scouting the crux move at Lava Falls, mile 179 in the Grand Canyon (Photo: Jonathan Sisley)

Dropping into Lava Falls - 30 seconds of chaos! (Photo: Joseph Rand)

Grand Canyon - Self-Support Kayaking - December 2014 from Joseph Rand on Vimeo.

Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.