The Westly Write Up

Six Ways California Can Prevent Devastating Floods

California's infamous droughts have now created major risk of serious flooding. According to UC Berkeley scientists, Sacramento recently surpassed New Orleans as the American city most in danger of flooding. After the destruction caused by hurricanes on Texas and Florida, Californians would be well served to prepare for massive floods.

Climate Change and "100 year droughts" are increasingly linked to flooding, whether you are in a hurricane zone or not. Warmer air holds more water vapor, leading to dramatically increased rainfall, while higher sea levels from a warming climate intensify storm surges. California is already feeling the effects of climate change: more of our precipitation now falls as rain instead of snow, so the snowpack that normally provides water for our state into the spring has shrunk to lower levels than ever. Instead of being slowly released from melting snow, water is increasingly rushing into rivers all at once, resulting in overflow and flooding. In 50 years, as the earth warms, the San Joaquin River flow is expected to be 60 to 80 percent greater than it is today.

There are six things Californians can do to reduce the risk of a catastrophic flood:

• Use green technologies like electric cars, solar energy, LED lighting, etc. to slow the warming of the climate.

• Push for federal action to slow climate change like California’s cap-and-trade program.

• Restrict building in flood plains. Despite the obvious risk, cheap land in flood plains continues to attract developers. 

• Fully fund the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan. This plan isn’t cheap but the cost of a massive flood in Sacramento alone would cost at least $25 billion.

• Use new flood warning and mapping technologies like MIT developed RiskMap.us that gathers real-time, crowd-sourced flood reporting.

• Adopt flood-resistant urban planning strategies like green roofs to absorb rainwater and other ideas

Read my full op ed, published in the San Diego Tribune

The Resource Efficiency Revolution

I was born in LA and like just about everyone else, we would go the beach. What sticks out in my mind now is that when you went to the beach back then, your parents would have to pack kerosene or turpentine because they would have to use it to wipe the tar off your feet after being on the beach. We lived in a "oil age" where the nine largest market cap companies in the world were oil and car companies—and we didn't think much about oil spills. These companies largely dominated the global economy and a lot of government regulations were tailored to their needs, more than to the public's. That's changing rapidly as 8 of the 10 largest market cap companies in the world are now tech companies, and they will continue to be the driving force in the 21st century economy. 

This month, I delivered the keynote address at David Abel's clean energy conference, VerdeXchange, speaking on the revolution in resource efficiency. Norway has already moved to ban oil and diesel vehicles by 2025, while Britain, France, and India have banned the sale of gas and diesel cars by 2040. The maritime technology firm, Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, will soon begin deploying its autonomous cargo ships, making the seas safer and cleaner. When maritime disasters due to human error are ended and up to 15% less fuel is needed, its easy to see how this change in shipping will be seen as revolutionary. Even The Kentucky Coal Museum has embraced clean energy and just last year switched to solar power because it's cheaper. The resource efficiency revolution isn't just coming, it's here!

Watch my speech on the future of energy at the 2018 VerdeXchange

Companies Can Profit While Fighting Climate Change

Lastly, I'd like to share an example of a great company that is attacking the world's garbage problem head on and all while continuing to grow. One of the Westly Group portfolio companies Enerkem, is a world leading municipal waste-to-biofuels company solving two major problems. First, the company helps cities reduce municipal waste by 80% while creating low cost ethanol by using a proprietary thermo-chemical process that turns municipal waste into valuable ethanol. Second, this company creates high paying building trades jobs in cities. The company is growing quickly and just announced in January that it had raised $125M.  Their lead investor, the Sinobioway Group from China, is committing to building 100 plants in China over the next 15 year! We would do well to take a serious look at what China is doing and start investing less in border walls and more in ares that will drive job growth and opportunity in the 21st Century global economy.