Issue 11 | Spring 2026

Spring 2026 | Issue No. 11

PERENNIAL

THE UNDERGRADUATE ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNAL OF BERKELEY

Dear Reader, 2026 has been a tumultuous year for the environment.

We have witnessed a rise in research defunding, policy changes, and anti-science rhetoric, all of which put dangerous pressure on our already-fragile climate.

When our planet’s future is so uncertain, we recognize more than ever that it’s necessary to make our voices heard in the fight for climate justice. As students, journalists, writers, and artists, we use storytelling to empower our communities and resist oppressive systems.

In this issue of Perennial: UC Berkeley’s Environmental Journal, our team has worked tirelessly to bring light to issues that affect human and environmental well-being, from food waste on our campus to clean energy and water across California.

We would like to thank our editorial team for their dedication to sharing these stories, as well as our design team for their transformative creative pieces. A special thank you to Perennial’s dedicated leadership board, who have stepped up to shape the journal’s trajectory. Our appreciation also goes to students who have submitted their art, creative writing, and research to our journal, and to our fellow environmental leaders and organizations— SERC, ASUC STEAM, the Lawrence Hall of Science, the Wildlife Society, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, ESSA, and more. These networks of collaboration make our publication more meaningful.

Finally, we thank our readers for your open-mindedness and attention. We hope that these pieces resonate with you, and that you are inspired to put your own voice out there.

Sincerely, Milo Davis-Bonk and Indra Deshmukh Editors-in-Chief

Table of Contents Letter from the Editors ……………………………………………… 2 Journalism …………………………………………………………… 5 “The World’s Dumbest Problem”: Why Is Food Waste A Major Issue and How Are Berkeley Dining Halls Facing It? by Amandine Gerardot In Berkeley, Matcha Going Viral Comes at an Environmental and Economic Cost

by Sophia Wilhelm

Op-Ed ……………………………………………………………… 13 Effective of Exploitatitve? Clearing Up the Carbon Market by Ieleen Li Animals in the Media by Erika Spargo

Palestinian Water Rights by Neekta Baghoolizadeh Biophilic Design on Campus and Beyond by Zephyr Eslick-Persyn The Yosemite Firefall: A Fiery Past and Uncertain Future by Sara Warford-Crowe California must address water scarcity before it’s too late by Gaby Jimenez

The Ugliness of the Exotic Animal, Fur, and Feather Trade by Shagun Juthani The History of Earth Day & the Future of California’s Oil Platforms by Garrett Kitahata

Creative Pieces ………………………………………………………38 Tucked into Blankets of Nature by Aneri Shah What We Cannot Stop For: On the Bodies We Leave Behind by Tabina Tariq

Studies on Wildlife by Yichen Gao

Research …………………………………………………………….47 Tahitian Pearl Farming: An Economy Dependent on Environmental Health by Emma Berman and Sofia Berman The Smokey Bear Effect by Shakira Maxamed

Cost-Shifting Concerns: Don’t Pay for a Data Center’s Transmission Lines! by Diya Kandhra

Journalism

“The World’s Dumbest Problem”: Why Is Food Waste A Major Issue and How Are Berkeley Dining Halls Facing It?

by AMANDINE GERARDOT One-third of food produced worldwide is never eaten. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), up to 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year, although 700 million people in the world are suffering from hunger every day [11]. Food waste is a major problem, and it is not only happening during production. 10% of the food produced gets wasted in restaurants or households [4]. Food waste can be defined as “food that is intended for human consumption that is wasted and lost, and can occur anywhere throughout the entire supply chain from farm stage to harvest to households,” according to Earth.Org [5]. It has significant consequences on human lives, the economy, and what matters most in this article: the environment.

“The World’s Dumbest Problem” “Around 25% to 30% of global emissions come from our food systems, and this rises to around one-third when we include all agricultural products”, states a 2021 study by Our World in Data [6]. Food production is also one of the many reasons for deforestation.

designed by MJ SMITH

Let’s take palm oil as an example. Palm oil plantations require removing all existing vegetation and forests, which are irreplaceable ecosystems home to varieties of plant and animal species. FAO data shows that palm oil plantations represent “5% of tropical deforestation in tropical areas”, and “2.3% of global deforestation” according to The European Commission [2]. 2.3% of global deforestation would represent 230,000 hectares, out of the estimated 10 million hectares lost between 2015 and 2020 [2]. In addition to destroying the ecosystems present in forests, palm oil plantations have very limited ecological value compared to tropical forests.

They store less carbon, which means that they do not climate-regulate as much as tropical forests would do.

Overproduction also comes as one of the top reasons for food waste.

Industries are overproducing, and society is overwasting. Throwing away food means wasting the resources that have been used to produce it. The production and the use of these resources we waste generate significant gas emission: The UN IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land reports that from 10.8 to 19.1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions are caused because of food production per year, which makes this 21% to 37% of global total emissions. Even though food is an essential need for humans, it destroys forests, causes fires, dries soils, and produces high gas emissions, which is why we have to be more mindful when it comes to waste.

Unfortunately, mass consumerism and overproduction have created the idea that food is easily disposable. However, this has not always been the case. Food waste first became a serious issue in the late 1800s due to industrialization and low food costs. Therefore, consumers shifted their behavior and started to rely on mass production instead of local smallscale production, leading to more food waste. Another reason is that food

storage became easier. Consumers are more likely to waste a food product that has been stored for a longer duration, and longer food storage lowered their perception of food freshness [14].

Mass consumerism and overproduction are a leading reason why food waste persists, making it the “world’s dumbest problem” according to WWF [11].

Berkeley’s Dining Halls Are Not Immune To Overproduction At UC Berkeley, “most of [food waste] comes from overproduction”, according to Amelia Cortina, the Food Waste Reduction Coordinator at UC Berkeley Housing and Dining Sustainability. Berkeley dining halls measure food waste with a device called Leanpath. Leanpath is essentially a scale with a camera and a tablet on top. At the end of every meal period, all the dining halls and campus restaurants use this device and weigh all the food that has not been served and will not be eaten. Then, food service staff have to mark a reason why it was wasted. Among these reasons, Cortina pointed out three: overproduction (food that has not been served and remained behind the line), presented-not sold (food that was served on the line and is accessible to students), and back-of-house waste (food that went bad or expired).

Currently, Berkeley dining halls and campus restaurants still do not have a measurement system for food that has been thrown away from students in the composting and trash bins, also called front-of-house waste.

After staff measures food waste, Leanpath sends this data to the Housing and Dining Sustainability team. Then, staff like Cortina produce graphics and reports of the data. Cortina shared that within “the first week of January, the Eateries at Student Union had a total waste value of $616, and 201.5 pounds”. During the second week of class from January 26th through February 1st, Clark Kerr’s waste value was $1,791 and the waste weight was 712 pounds. “This is kind of like average for them, for every week,” Cortina said. These reports are not published or accessible online.

The Spring 2025 Waste Report, provided by Donna Lin, a Food Service Worker at Brown’s interning at Housing and Dining Sustainability (H&DS) and the Basic Needs Center (BNC), shows the total waste value in dollars, the total waste weight, the waste transactions, the top wasted items, their reasons for waste, the overall donation vs. compost transactions percentages, donation value, weight and meal equivalent, and the top reasons for waste

among all items. The data spanned from January 20, 2025 to May 18, 2025. In Foothill, food waste weight reached 9,627 pounds. Alarmingly, only 2% of food waste was donated even though 12.4% of the transactions were marked as overproduction waste.

Similarly, for Crossroads, only 10% of food was donated out of the 28.5% transactions marked as overproduced food, and the total food weight reached 11,725.7 pounds.

These numbers can either show a lack of data accuracy, or a lack of action.

Composting and Donating: Two Main Initiatives From The Housing and Dining Sustainability Team In addition to producing reports, sorting Leanpath data, and making recommendations to dining halls with the Housing and Dining Sustainability team, Cortina is also involved with the Basic Needs Center. She helps pack and distribute meals using leftover food from the dining halls. “Basically, in the mornings from 8 to 10 a.m., one of our team of student staff [...] go to the dining halls and [...] pick up the leftover food of good quality, and then bring them back to our space within MLK [Student Union] on the first floor,” Cortina said. Then, she and her team package the food with the help of volunteers and interns into individual meals. “We will set them up in our welcome center for opening hours [...] from 1 to 4:30 p.m. every day,” Cortina said. According to UC Berkeley Dining, over 50,000 pounds of food is donated every semester [7]. However, data reports show that only 10,256.2 pounds have been donated during Spring 2025.

Cortina also mentioned that data can often be inaccurate, therefore, a number like this cannot be completely verified.

Berkeley dining halls also compost all the food that has been presented-not-sold, or expired. In Crossroads, 90% of food in this category is composted.

Getting The Right Data To Give The Right Recommendations One of the main reasons why the Housing and Dining Sustainability team is having a hard time solving the food waste issue in Berkeley Dining Halls is data inaccuracy, as Cortina stated. Using Leanpath at the end of the shift is a required task for dining hall staff. At Brown’s, all food service workers put leftover food on the scale and mark it on Leanpath. However, Lin mentioned that in some campus restaurants or dining halls, understaffing can make logging food waste into a low priority task.

Moreover, food service workers can log incorrect loss reasons due to lack of training, and Leanpath also happens to go offline sometimes, which further exacerbates the inaccuracy issue.

Leanpath reports are also not included in Jamix, the ordering system with which Berkeley Dining orders its food. Even when recommended to produce less, overproduction still occurs, since the ordered amount overlooks the Leanpath reports and remains the same.

A New Device For Front-of-House Waste To address this issue, the Housing and Dining Sustainability is working on implementing a device called Spark. This device is planned to be introduced next semester and is a scale that is placed underneath the compost and trash bin with a camera over it. It will take the weight of wasted food, and project it on a TV screen toward the entrance of the dining hall.

Therefore, it aims to encourage students to waste less by making them more conscious and mindful of how much food they serve for themselves in buffet style dining halls. It will also allow Cortina and her team to have more data to work on how to provide the dining halls with more precise recommendations. “I feel like that would make a big difference,” Cortina said.

Even though Berkeley dining halls are working with several organizations (H&DS, Cal Zero Waste, and BNC) and measuring, composting, or donating food waste, these initiatives remain Band-Aid solutions to a flawed model. Buffet-style dining halls mirror the two major issues about food waste our society is facing: mass consumerism and overproduction.

The Environmental Protection Agency produced a list of ideas that college food services can implement to reduce food waste [10]. Among them, they advise to provide a cook-to-order model instead of a buffet line to minimize leftovers. They also recommend educating students and displaying food waste data in dining halls, to encourage students to waste less. Hopefully, the new Spark device will prevent students from wasting food and help the Housing and Dining Sustainability Team collect more accurate data.

Works Cited [1] Bartholomew, Cassie. “Cal Dining: Food Waste Prevention”. StopWaste, 2026. stopwaste.org/resource/ cal-dining-food-waste-prevention.

[2] FAO and UNEP. “The State of the World’s Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people”. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2020, openknowledge.fao.org/items/d0f20c1c-7760-4d9486c3-d1e770a17db0.

[3] Hutchinson, Haley. “Tackling Food Waste on College Campuses.” Stone Pier Press, n.d., stonepierpress.org/goodfoodnews/foodwaste-collegecampus.

[4] Jangira, Lewis. “How Does Food Waste Affect the Environment?” Earth.Org, 17 Oct. 2022, earth.org/howdoes-food-waste-affect-the-environment/.

[5] Lai, Olivia. “Explainer: What Is Food Waste?”

Earth.Org, n.d., earth.org/what-is-food-waste/.

[6] Ritchie, Hannah. “How Much of Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Come from Food?” Our World in Data, 2021, ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissionsfood.

[7] UC Berkeley Dining. “Waste Reduction.” Berkeley Dining, University of California, Berkeley, n.d., dining.berkeley.edu/sustainability/waste-reduction/.

[8] United Nations Environment Programme. “UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 Key Messages”. United Nations Environment Programme, 2024, wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/5a45a93c93b9-4606-a9db-ed69d7158931/content.

[9] United States Department of Agriculture. “Food Waste FAQs.” USDA, n.d., usda.gov/about-food/foodsafety/food-loss-and-waste/food-waste-faqs.

[10] United States Environmental Protection Agency.

“Food Loss Prevention Options for Universities”. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Aug. 2016, epa.gov/sites/default/files/201608/documents/food_loss_prevention_options_universitie s_august_2016.pdf.

[11] World Wildlife Fund. “Food.” World Wildlife Fund, n.d., worldwildlife.org/our-work/food/.

[12] Venkat, Kumar. “The Climate Change and Economic Impacts of Food Waste in the United States”.

International Journal on Food System Dynamics, vol. 2, no. 4, 2011, pp. 431-446. doi.org/10.18461/ijfsd.v2i4.247.

[13] World Wildlife Fund. “Food Waste Warriors: A Deep Dive into Food Waste in US Schools”. World Wildlife Fund, 2019, c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1271/files/orig inal/FoodWasteWarriorR_CS_121819.pdf.

[14] Xie, Vivian (Jieru), and Rajesh Bagchi. “How Duration of Storage Affects Food Waste Behavior.”

Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 34, no. 4, 2024, pp. 570–587, doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1389.

In Berkeley, Matcha Going Viral Comes at an Environmental and Economic Cost

by SOPHIA WILHELM The distinctive green of matcha tea is everywhere—on social media, in cafe windows, and in cups carried by students throughout UC Berkeley. Matcha’s demand and prices have skyrocketed, creating a market with an expected value of $5 billion by 2028, according to Time Magazine.

In contrast to matcha’s roots in slow-consumption and ceremonial use, the modern matcha latte has taken an intense hold over American audiences. As its trendiness continues, the iced matcha latte’s taste and convenience come with unintended effects—namely, a hefty plastic price tag.

History of the problem The high demand for matcha, and the resulting emergence of cafes whose brand is centered partially or exclusively around selling matcha lattes, have created a steady source of single-use plastic in a city working to eliminate plastics.

Matcha’s possible health benefits (such as antioxidants, anti-inflammatory qualities, and crash-free caffeine) and aesthetic quality have made it a viral drink on social media [2, 3]. When a food or beverage goes viral, consumption increases and prices rise, making it an appealing product to sell. New business start-ups are encouraged by the low cost (assuming a business is comfortable using lower-grade matcha and plastic cups), high demand, and profitability.

In the last two years, the number of matcha spots around the Berkeley campus has skyrocketed in response to this trend. Eight Grams Matcha opened across from campus this spring [4]. Chicha San Chen and Binge Coffee House both opened nearby locations less than a year earlier [5, 6].

Many of these businesses operate in very small properties. Yume Mori Matcha in Downtown Berkeley, for example, has such limited space that on weekends, it allows six customers inside at a time and only has outdoor seating.

Limited seating, as well as students’ need for on-the-go, caffeinated “sweet treats,” has produced business models that depend on single-use PET plastics to meet high demand. This frenzied rate of consumption is dependent on plastic use that has unfortunate environmental consequences.

“Less than 30% of PET plastic is actually recycled,” said Dr. Sam Bunke, UC Berkeley’s Zero Waste Specialist.

“When people put plastic in the wrong bin or when there is excessive contamination, the plastic gets ’downcycled’ instead.” Downcycling PET converts it into lower value #5-7 plastics, which the City can’t recycle [7]. At the same time, 40% of the world’s plastic waste is packaging (ex. to-go beverage cups), and that number is only expected to grow, with plastics having the strongest production growth of all bulk materials in the last decade [8, 9].

Additionally, some of these businesses exclusively sell iced matcha lattes, whose appeal is, as previously noted, partly their aesthetic: the green mixed with various toppings and foams. Consequently, consumers want transparent cups. That presents unique sustainability challenges compared to the traditional cafe model, which places less value on seeing the beverage.

At their current production rates, matcha cafes’ plastic waste is a negative externality—a side effect of rapid growth with environmental and societal costs, but little impact on their business costs. This raises the question of how waste from a viral product can be mitigated, and more specifically, what incentivizes businesses to use less single-use plastics despite their low cost.

What can be done?

Matcha cafés’ sustainability is dependent on cost constraints and individual businesses’ willingness to change. The situation is complicated by the question of at which point the environmental cost outweighs the desire for social media hits, and the extent to which businesses rely on social media to stay afloat.

According to Bunke, the best-case solution for the environment is to eliminate plastics altogether.

Since reusable containers have a lower environmental cost than compostables (especially as they are continually reused), this would be the most preferable substitute. The City of Berkeley’s Zero Waste team is working to phase-out single-use plastics. City policy requires businesses with on-site eating to provide reusable foodware and color-coded waste bins [10]. The city also stipulates disposable accessories such as straws and lids must only be provided by request or a self-serve station, and should be BPI-certified compostable [11].

provided by the businesses themselves [15]. Bunke explained that a “huge barrier [to reusables]...is dishwasher capacity.” Third-party reusable container suppliers like Dispatch Goods, found at UC Berkeley’s Monsoon Kitchens, work because they have industrial dishwashers. They collect, wash, and make weekly deliveries of clean containers to participating restaurants.

For individual businesses, it may be harder to implement.

The City addresses these barriers with its waiver system.

Businesses can waive the requirements for on-site reusable foodware if they have insufficient dishwasher capacity [16]. They can further waive the requirement for BPI-Certified compostable foodware if using it would unfairly financially burden them [17].

A survey of some of the matcha-branded cafes around the UC Berkeley campus suggests while some of these ordinance requirements are met, many need improvement (see table).

A major benefit of single-use plastics for beverage businesses is a low financial cost. The City addresses this by requiring a $0.25 itemized charge to incentivize consumers to switch to reusable foodware [12]. The charge is collected by vendors to offset the cost of using more expensive compostable [13]. The City further supports the transition to reusables with technical assistance and grants of up to $500 [14].

Matcha latte cafes’ small property size means that many have limited indoor seating, and may not have a dishwasher with the size, strength, or supporting manpower necessary to support reusable glassware.

Yet, as we see, this is not enough to completely eliminate single-use plastic foodware. Sanitation is a universal concern for reusable containers, whether they are brought in by customers, supplied by a third-party, or

Additionally, they risk losing a part of the marketability of their products if they switch to an opaque compostable cup. It is likely that many, if not all of these matcha cafes waived their foodware ordinance requirements.

A rapidly growing sector of the food and beverage

Compliance with Berkeley’s Single-Use Foodware & Litter Reduction Ordinance

Requirement

Yes

No

Reusable cups provided for dining in?

Eight Grams, De Matcha, Binge Coffee House, Chicha San Chen

Single-use plastic charge itemized on receipts, menus, or online ordering?

Eight Grams*, De Matcha

Can customers bring their own cup?

De Matcha, Eight Grams, Binge Coffee House

Disposable accessory items available through self-serve stations or request (rather than automatically included)?

De Matcha, Binge Coffee House, Eight Grams, Chicha San Chen, Yume Mori

Chicha San Chen

Notes: information collected through conversations with employees, collected receipts, and observed signage on doors, windows, and cafe interior. * Eight Grams includes a $0.26 “operating fee,” but does not specify whether this is a single -use plastic charge.

Surveyed: Eight Grams Matcha, De Matcha, Binge Coffee House, Chicha San Chen, and Yume Mori Matcha.

industry avoiding the city’s zero-waste ordinances would suggest it is time to explore options besides the $0.25 fee for reducing plastic waste. This puts environmentallyconscious businesses in a tough spot. Do they appeal to their consumers’ desire for a transparent cup and continue generating PET waste? Do they fully convert to compostable paper cups? There is no single solution to single-use plastics. However, these businesses have options.

reusable cups to the locations that accept them.

Businesses can offer bamboo stirrers and lids that do not require straws, or sacrifice aesthetics for the sustainability of a paper cup.

The future Improving the sustainability of takeout-based businesses in spite of their trendiness is possible, but not logistically easy. It will require careful coordination and cooperation of stakeholders.

Pilot programs for reusable containers in UC Berkeley suggest that reusable systems are not only possible, but the student population is decently receptive to them [18, 19]. Bunke explained that the current pilot program of reusable Dispatch Goods containers at UC Berkeley’s Monsoon Kitchens has a 70-80% return rate. According to Dispatch Goods, a return rate as low as 20-30% has positive sustainability impacts, and as the program is scaled up, both the cost-effectiveness and the sustainability of the program increase. “Collection is expensive, but economies of scale apply,” and the financial cost of the containers is similar to compostables, explained Bunke.

Plentea, a boba business who faces the same challenge of looking for sustainable, transparent cups to allow consumers to see and photograph their drinks, found their solution in reusable glass bottles. A Plentea worker explained their Berkeley location has used this system since around 2014, and between the choices of a glass or plastic cup, most customers choose glass.

How does it work? Plentea lists glass and single-use plastic cups at the same price, and gives customers a 10% discount on their next drink when they return the bottle. Glass bottles and caps are cleaned by customers and then re-cleaned by Plentea before reuse. Of course, the success of this system depends on businesses’ dishwasher capacity and their profitability. If the bottles shatter, they cannot be reused, which can be financially (and environmentally) costly.

If matcha businesses cannot support glass or aluminum cups, there are still ways to improve this growing business sector’s sustainability. Customers can bring

Works Cited [1] Schneid, Rebecca. “We are Drinking So Much Matcha That Supplies are Running Out.” Time Magazine. 26 July, 2025. https://time.com/7305699/weare-drinking-so-much-matcha-that-supplies-are-runningout/.

[2] Cushing, Ellen. “The Matcha Problem.” The Atlantic.

17 November, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/11/matchashortage-food-trend/684934/ [3] Frank, Christina. “Matcha: A Look at Possible Health Benefits.” Harvard Health Publishing. 25 November, 2024. https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-andlongevity/matcha-a-look-at-possible-health-benefits [4] Lu, Ingrid. “Eight Grams Matcha, Confounded by UC Berkeley Alum, Opens Across from Campus.” The Daily Californian. 26 January, 2026. https://www.dailycal.org/news/city/localbusinesses/eight-grams-matcha-cofounded-by-ucberkeley-alum-opens-across-fromcampus/article_5079dbfc-290d-4fc6-8b4514b6beaf00dc.html.

[5] Volman, Ava and Allison Chow. “Chicha San Chen Opens Berkeley Location.” The Daily Californian. 4 March, 2025. https://www.dailycal.org/news/city/localbusinesses/chicha-san-chen-opens-berkeleylocation/article_e78eb840-f8c4-11ef-b62507acda80add7.html.

[6] Erickson, Evelina. “Binge Coffee House to Open Second Location in Berkeley.” The Daily Californian. 29 April, 2025. https://www.dailycal.org/news/city/localbusinesses/binge-coffee-house-to-open-second-locationin-berkeley/article_b862b05e-6bab-4b15-897da8c0754350b2.html.

[7] Duggan, Tara. “Here’s Which California Plastics are and aren’t Recycled.” The San Francisco Chronicle. 25 September, 2024. https://www.sfchronicle.com/clim ate/article/plastic-recycling19786872.php.

[8] Samborska, Veronika.

Packaging is the Source of 40% of the Planet’s Plastic Waste. 2022.

Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/datainsights/packaging-is-the-sourceof-40-of-the-planets-plastic-waste.

[9] Karali, Nihan et al. Climate Impact of Primary Plastic Production. Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems Energy Analysis and Environment Impacts Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

2024. https://etapublications.lbl.gov/sites/default/fi les/climate_and_plastic_report_fin al.pdf.

[10] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley. https://berkeleyca.gov/doingbusiness/operating-berkeley/foodservice/single-use-foodwarerules.

[11] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley.

[12] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley.

[13] Heiges, Jessica, et al.

“Disposing of Single Use: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Berkeley’s Anti-Single Use Disposable Foodware Ordinance.”

Elementa (Washington, D.C.) [Oakland], vol. 12, no. 1, August 2024, https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2 023.00055.

[14] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley.

[15] Gallego-Schmid, Alejandro, et al. “Environmental Impacts of Takeaway Food Containers.” Journal of Cleaner Production [OXFORD], vol. 211, February 2019, pp. 417–27, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.220.

[16] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley. https://berkeleyca.gov/doing-business/operating-berkeley/foodservice/single-use-foodware-rules.

[17] City of Berkeley. “Single-Use Foodware Rules.” City of Berkeley. https://berkeleyca.gov/doing-business/operating-berkeley/foodservice/single-use-foodware-rules.

[18] Guerrero, Susana. “DoorDash plan in Half Moon Bay Could Change Food Delivery Forever.” SFGate. 2 April, 2026. https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/bay-area-doordash-containers22160491.php.

[19] “Cafe Owners: Offer Your Drinks in Durable, Beautiful Cups.” Okapi Reusables. https://www.okapi-reusables.com/for-cafes.

Images Cited “Matcha” stock photo by https://www.vecteezy.com

Op-Ed

Effective or Exploitative?

Clearing Up the Carbon Market

by IELEEN LI The decarbonization of the global economy and movement towards achieving net-zero carbon emissions is one of the most pressing challenges of the century [1]. While significant progress has been made in the identification and initial response to the issue, the “how” behind operationalizing carbon goals is still a largely new and uncertain field, with current techniques often falling short under greater scrutiny [2]. As of June 2024, 107 countries—representing the sources of over 80% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—have adopted some form of a net-zero pledge [3]. The fact situation and shared climate ambition are clearly present. However, the timely implementation of actual net-zero practices rests on social, political and economic systems, and is where the true challenge lies.

Presently, one of the most widely used methods to meet net-zero goals is carbon offsetting [4]. Buyers—often large, private corporations—can purchase and “retire” carbon credits in order to offset unavoidable emissions and comply with government policy or meet certain climate change goals [5]. A carbon credit represents one metric ton of “captured” carbon dioxide, which in principle mitigates or offsets the buyer’s emission.

design by YICHEN GAO These exchanges comprise the foundation of a growing global carbon market, a large part of which features nature-based solutions centered around the protection and restoration on of ecosystems able to store carbon at notable densities [6].

Such an approach has the potential to benefit both the environment and communities—locals in under-resourced communities can generate carbon credit sales while working to conserve native ecosystems. This then provides a sustainable source of income and protects natural resources that can be reinvested into the community’s local development priorities [7].

However, institutional structures can create immense incentives against the implementation of quality projects. The new market has faced, and is facing, a “greenwashing” crisis, where tight deadlines, poor verification standards, and stakeholder pressure often lead to socially irresponsible projects and “phantom” credits.

A 2023 Guardian investigation into Verra, one of the world’s

largest carbon credit certifiers, revealed that 94% of their carbon credits not only had zero benefit to the climate, but even harmed local communities with their methodology. One project in Peru led to the harassment and forced evictions of local residents [8]. Companies like Gucci, Salesforce, and Shell were among those who purchased their offsets.

Clearly, there is much work to be done to increase the quality and integrity of carbon credits, and even then, it is not quite a full solution. Even the most optimistic estimates, which assume full restoration of the most efficient carbon sequestering ecosystems, predict the possible capture of up to 3% of current global GHG emissions [9]. But that’s not to say it’s a useless endeavor. Many projects funded by the carbon market, such as ecosystem restoration and conservation, would provide numerous ecological and social benefits while buying us more time to consider further options [10]. As Nat Keohane, president of the U.S Center for Climate and Energy solutions, said in an interview with the Guardian, carbon credits should be seen as “complementary, not a substitute [for cutting emissions].”

California, a leading figure in achieving carbon neutrality, recently reauthorized the "Cap-and-Invest" program, which is a key aspect of the state’s plan to reduce GHG emissions. It is the most cost-effective way for California to reach its climate goals and is designed to create incentive for polluters to reinvest in cleaner energy [11]. But it, too, falls short under the scrutiny of carbon credit quality and measurable climate benefit— one landmark 2022 study found that California’s forest offset program in particular has led to the systematic over-crediting of 30 million tons of carbon, generating offset credits that do not reflect actual benefits [12].

UC Berkeley’s Carbon Trading Project’s Barbara Haya and Stephen Lezak suggest alternatives: replacing offsets with a climate solutions fund, which can protect energy affordability and advance climate justice; eliminating the offset program altogether and enforcing a true cap with higher allowance prices; and tackling the most significant issue at its root by attempting to improve offset quality [13]. The last option would require a complete overhaul of the current market and require much stricter regulation and compliance. While the most ambitious course of action, securing an effective verification system for carbon credits can pave a road that allows for innumerable impactful projects to be

realized.

Pamela Castel de Oro, a current Master of Public Policy student specializing in carbon and working under Haya for the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, offered her perspective on the issue. Before we can develop a standardized verification system, she explained, it’s important to evaluate the current discrepancies in project criteria amongst stakeholders.

“A nonprofit might put community engagement as a top priority,” she said. “But a for-profit company might prioritize carbon accounting instead.”

She ended the interview with words of encouragement— the field is largely new, and constantly evolving. “Try to follow the market tendencies around nature-based solutions,” she suggested to young environmental professionals, “because [it] can give you a lot of insight about where best to put your effort and attention.”

Carbon offsetting might not be a miracle solution to climate change, but it certainly has merit and has potential to be an important part of the greater picture to decarbonize our modern day systems. And as the world works towards carbon neutrality, California stands as a leading figure. In 2022, California law mandated the state to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 or earlier; a year later, new data showed that 65% of the state’s retail electricity sales came from renewable and zero-carbon sources [14]. Many solutions, like green infrastructure upgrades and alternative urban designs are not only recommended but feasible. For example, after Phase 1 of its Clean Energy Campus Utility Improvement Project, UC Berkeley’s campus carbon emissions will be reduced by approximately 60%. In addition to carbon offsets, developments in new technology, unprecedented levels of transitions to clean energy and policies, and potential changes in city planning all point towards a brighter, greener future. It falls to our generation to guide and ensure such implementations for the sake of the futures to come.

Works Cited [1] United Nations. Net Zero Coalition. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition [2] Johannessen, S. C., & Christian, J. R. (2023). Why blue carbon cannot truly offset fossil fuel emissions.

Communications Earth & Environment, 4(1), 411.

[3] United Nations Environment Programme. “Emissions Gap Report 2024.” https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report2024 [4] Net Zero Climate. “Carbon offsetting.” https://netzeroclimate.org/research/carbon_offsetting/.

[5] Carbon Offset Guide. https://offsetguide.org/.

[6] Daniel A. Friess., Jen Howard, et al (2022).

Capitalizing on the global financial interest in blue carbon.

[7] Medealanu, Maria et al. “The Promise of Blue Carbon Credits”. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2025, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/blue-carbon-creditskenya-mangrove-forests.

[8] Greenfield, Patrick. “Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows.” The Guardian, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/r evealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-providerworthless-verra-aoe.

[9] Macreadie, P. I. et al. Blue carbon as a natural climate solution. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2, 826–839 (2021).

[10] Johannessen, S. C., & Christian, J. R. (2023). Why blue carbon cannot truly offset fossil fuel emissions.

Communications Earth & Environment, 4(1), 411.

[11] California Air Resources Board. “2026 Updates to California’s Cap-and-Invest Program Fact Sheet”, https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/202604/nc-CAI_FS_2026.pdf.

[12] Badgley, G., Freeman, J., Hamman, J. J., Haya, B., Trugman, A. T., Anderegg, W. R. L., & Cullenward, D. (2022). Systematic over-crediting in California’s forest carbon offsets program. Global change biology, 28(4), 1433–1445. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15943 [13] UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

“California sends millions of dollars out of state for carbon offsets of dubious quality.” 2025, https://gspp.berkeley.edu/archived/files/page/Californiasends-money-out-of-state-for-carbon-offsets--May-2025-BCTP-Policy-Brief.pdf.

[14] Governor Gavin Newsom. “In historic first, California powered by two-thirds clean energy – becoming largest economy in the world to achieve milestone.” 2025, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/07/14/inhistoric-first-california-powered-by-two-thirds-cleanenergy-becom ing-largest-economy-in-the-world-toachieve-milestone/

design by NATALIE SU

by ERIKA SPARGO

If you were active on social media of any form in February of 2026, it is likely that you came across (and maybe shed a tear at) one or two videos of Punch the Monkey—an incredibly adorable orphan macaque at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan who went viral for clinging to a plush orangutan while his fellow zoo-mates bullied him. Punch was an overnight sensation, garnering copious support globally as people took to social media to empathize with him and fawn over his irresistible cuteness. Some users went as far to demand action from the zookeepers, asking them to punish the bullies, even going as far as to threaten the other monkeys. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) publicly criticized the zoo [1], calling for Punch to be relocated to a wildlife reserve.

Sensations like these are far from new in the internet age. From Harambe the gorilla to Tilikum the orca, the media can play a significant role in shaping public opinion about certain animals. Animals can quickly become sensationalized and therefore, societal attitudes pander heavily towards those that we conveniently view as cute. Positive emotional connections to animals can result in a greater public concern for their well-being, sometimes influencing conservation priorities and policy decisions. Empathy towards animals can drive ethical concern. People often feel that they can relate to animals that they interpret to be displaying humanlike emotion.

Empathy towards animals can drive ethical concern.

People often feel that they can relate to animals that they interpret to be displaying humanlike emotion. In his book, “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight about Animals”, anthrozoologist Hal Herzog explores the psychological and moral complexities that characterize human relationships with other species. Herzog attributes various attitudes to different variables. Instincts tell us to fall in love with animals with soft features and big eyes.

Experiences tell us what animals to fear. Cultures tell us what species to love, hate, and eat. Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian zoologist credited for founding modern ethology (the study of animal behavior), explains this further through his research on the “baby schema effect” [2]. Lorenz identified a set of physical features—a large head, big eyes, chubby cheeks, small noses—that trigger an innate nurturing response in human adults.

This is a biological mechanism to ensure that parents feel motivated to take care of their infants. The baby schema effect directly translates to how much we want

to care for certain animals, pandering to those that we find to be cute.

Media, particularly social media, amplifies this and puts forth a rather dramatic narrative, further shaping how people view animals. In a PubMed study, researchers showed a mock social media page of a primate to 200 people [3]. All participants saw the same image of a primate but were randomly assigned to a pro exotic pet keeping or anti exotic pet keeping narrative beforehand.

When participants were presented with the anti narrative, they perceived the animal to be more stressed.

In free text comments, participants expressed reservations in the face of a narrative they disagreed with. The study’s conclusions suggest that people moderate their discussions on human-animal interactions based on the social network they are in. A great example of this phenomenon is Punch—thousands of videos that pushed a narrative of sadness and desperation circulated on TikTok and Instagram. With sorrowful piano music in the background and slow-motion clips of a teary-eyed Punch closely hugging his orangutan plush, it is clear what story is being told. Punch became more than a celebrity animal—he became a symbol, representing the outsider, the odd one out. By playing into people’s emotions, these videos gained copious amounts of public attention, landing news segments and taking over people’s feeds.

As public opinion fluctuates between certain animals, so does the protection and funding they receive. The term "charismatic megafauna” refers to species that are large (relative to the category that they represent) with symbolic value or widespread popularity, and environmental activists often leverage these characteristics to gain public support. Lions, pandas, elephants, gorillas, and polar bears are some of the megafauna that garner more public support and conservation funding than other, smaller species.

These biases in funding consequently skew scientific research. A 2025 analysis of more than 27,000 ornithology papers found that the higher a bird ranks for characteristics that humans find beautiful, the more likely it is to be the subject of scientific research [4]. If we zoom out to the entire animal kingdom, the same theme persists. A different study found that roughly 85% of both total funding and conservation projects went to mammals [5].

The role that these animals play in their respective ecosystems is not accurately reflected in the value that humans place on them—rather than considering their ecological importance, funding and research focus on the species that humans favor subjectively.

While emotional engagement can drive change by encouraging the public to care more about habitat restoration and conservation, it can also skew priorities. As George Orwell famously states in “Animal Farm”, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Policymakers and philanthropists should pay closer attention to what exactly they are working to progress. By considering ecological significance and the endangerment status of various species before investing in research and conservation, we can encourage thriving biodiversity and restoration of those that need it the most.

Works Cited [1] Waldman, Elena. “Don’t Let Punch Become the New ’Moo Deng’: Why Internet Fame Is Bad for Captive Animals.” PETA, 2026, https://www.peta.org/news/punchthe-monkey/.

design by CLARA KEOUGH [2] Borgi, Marta et al. “Baby schema in human and animal faces induces cuteness perception and gaze allocation in children.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2014, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4019884/.

[3] Riddle, Elizabeth and Jill R.D. MacKay. “Social Media Contexts Moderate Perceptions of Animals.”

Animals, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10050845.

[4] Heisman, Rebecca. “Researchers Favor Beautiful, Colorful Birds in Scientific Studies, New Analysis Finds.” Audubon, 2025, https://www.audubon.org/magazine/researchers-favorbeautiful-colorful-birds-scientific-studies-new-analysisfinds.

[5] Guénard, Benoit, et al. “Limited and biased global conservation funding means most threatened species remain unsupported.” PNAS, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2412479122.

Images Cited “Abstract” and “Blue” vectors, “Postcard” and “Newspaper” stock photos by https://www.vecteezy. com “Dave Sudbury King of Rome” from https://commons. wikimedia.org/

Palestinian Water Rights

design by MJ SMITH

by NEEKTA BAGHOOLIZADEH Note: This article was written in May 2026. Exact statistics and updates surrounding the genocide of Palestine may have changed since.

You crack your eyes open as your alarm blares, stumbling half-awake to the bathroom. You splash some water on your face, followed by a cleanser. You brush your teeth and rinse your mouth. Hopping in the shower, you give your hair a quick scrub. As you head off to lecture, you fill up your water bottle. You think it’s going to be a good day.

Rewind: Run the day back, but this time, without the water.

The average American uses over 310 litres of water in a day [1]. For Palestinians in the West Bank, that number is just 82 [2]. And for Gazans, who are facing the third year of genocidal Israeli attacks, the number falls to around four litres of water a day [3, 4].

It is hardly a secret that the Middle East is facing an impending water crisis, with the climate crisis amplifying regional droughts [5]. However, for many Palestinians, this water shortage is manufactured. From Gaza to the West Bank, Israeli aggression, restriction, and occupation all have a chokehold on Palestinians’ access to water. By restricting access to aquifers and water infrastructure, not to mention outright destroying water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government is quenching Palestinian citizens.

“The Israeli occupation uses water as a weapon against Palestinians,” Abeer Butmeh, a water advocate working with the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) based in the West Bank, said. “So controlling water resources, whether inside Gaza or the West Bank, means controlling life.”

capabilities, undercutting its need to rely on West Bank aquifers. Israel is easily able to provide around 170 litres of water a day for its own citizens – both inside its 1948 borders and within its illegal West Bank settlements [12, 13]. Under these conditions, Israel has effectively turned water into a weapon of control.

The issue of water in the West Bank is well-documented.

The West Bank is part of the Palestinian Territories, having been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967 [6]. With this occupation of land came the occupation of water, with Israel assuming control of all the West Bank’s aquifers and water structures [7].

Where violence in the West Bank is riddled with administrative pitfalls and bureaucratic red tape, in Gaza, it is unleashed at full force. Like the West Bank, Gaza was occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.

However, unlike the West Bank, Israel “disengaged” from Gaza in 2005, pulling its military and settlers out of the region—but retaining its control of the borders, airspace, and seashore [12]. The 2006 Gaza elections led to a narrow victory by Hamas, which seized military control of the strip one year later [14]. In 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel out of the Gaza Strip, killing approximately 1,200 Israelis.

In the Oslo Accords, Israel was granted control over more than 70% of the aquifer water in the West Bank, while Palestinians were only granted access to 17% [8].

Today, Israel uses closer to 90% of the aquifer water [9].

Palestinians are not only deprived of water but also forced to buy their water back from Israeli companies at expensive rates.

The Oslo Accords also created the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994, which governs the West Bank alongside Israel, with authority split based on location [10, 11].

Area A is administered by the PA, Area B by the PA and Israel, and Area C, comprising 60% of the West Bank’s land, by Israel alone. Within all of these areas, Palestinians are required to obtain Israeli permits—a rare feat—to construct any form of water infrastructure, including digging new wells, installing water pumps, or even collecting rainwater [7].

Without these permits, West Bank Palestinians’ access to water is extremely limited, depending on the region [2].

Some areas, such as Qalqiya, a city in northwestern West Bank, have access to almost 150 litres of water a day per capita. Others, like Bethlehem, are restricted to only 50.

Despite this, the PA is unable to transport water from one area to another, as this too requires (rare) Israeli permits.

A defense of this system might rely on its validation in the Oslo Accords. After all, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed to the terms. However, the Oslo Accords were not meant as a long-term resolution.

Rather, they are an agreement from the 1990s, only meant to remain for five years [2].

As a result, they were fundamentally unable to account for the increase in Palestinian populations, or indeed the marked improvements in Israel’s own water-producing

Israel’s response to the October 7 attack has killed at least 70,000 Palestinians (though this is likely a severe underestimate, due to the limited functionality of Gaza’s Health Ministry), with a UN Commission describing its actions as genocide [3, 15, 16]. One component of this atrocity is Israel’s attacks on water infrastructure in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking access to water in Gaza [17]. This attack on water in Gaza is many-pronged, as MSF details. Through the course of its genocide, Israel has repeatedly targeted two of the three water pipes going to Gaza, rendering over 60% of Gaza’s desalination plants non-functional, and blocking the import of 90% of items requested for water desalination.

The blockage of fuel, along with these other inputs, has prevented desalination plants from treating water in Gaza, as Butmeh shared. In addition, Israeli attacks have compromised Gazan aquifers, contaminating them with seawater and making the water unusable.

Together, these violations paint a grim picture, one that begins to take on the figure reported by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: that most Gazans are only able to access between three to five liters of water per day. According to the World Health Organization, at least 20 litres of water are needed a day in emergencies, with the ideal standard being up to 100 [18]. Without

access to clean water, disease and dehydration will run rampant, as they have in Gaza. Targeting water infrastructure—along with civilian infrastructure as a whole—is a war crime for precisely these reasons. It is an act of cruelty, plain and simple, a shameless display of the power of obliteration.

Whether through brutal obliteration or crushing bureaucracy, the control of water in Palestine is just another branch of Israeli apartheid and occupation.

Recognizing and truly understanding the insidious nature of this relationship is an important first step in standing against it.

“These abstract terms like occupation have a real price on people. There is a cost inflicted by Israel on a day-today basis on the Palestinian population,” Maya Hilmi, a Berkeley student who grew up in East Jerusalem with research interests in Palestinian history, said.

“Ultimately, what liberation means for us is the ability to live normally,” Hilmi added. “The ability to live without worrying when our water will come next.”

Works Cited [1] United States Environmental Protection Agency.

“WaterSense - Statistics and Facts.” https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts [2] B’Teselem. “Parched: Israel’s policy of water deprivation in the West Bank.” 2023. https://www.btselem.org/publications/202305_parched [3] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. “ Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds.” 2025. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israelhas-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds [4] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/?ItemID=5946&lang=en [5] Mahmoud, Mohammed. “The Looming Climate and Water Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/04/thelooming-climate-and-water-crisis-in-the-middle-eastand-north-africa [6] Al Jazeera Staff. “A simple guide to the West Bank.”

Al Jazeera, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/ 2024/8/31/why-are-we-always-talking-about-the-westbank.

[7] Amnesty International. “The Occupation of Water.”

2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/ 2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/.

[8] Corradin, Camilla. “Israel: Water as a tool to dominate Palestinians.” Al Jazeera, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/6/23/israel-wateras-a-tool-to-dominate-palestinians.

[9] Hickel, Jason. “The Divide.” Penguin Random House. 2018.

[10] O’Dell, Hope. “What is the Palestinian Authority?”

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2024, https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/palestinianauthority-prime-minister-resigns-explainer.

[11] Anera. “What are Area A, Area B, and Area C in the West Bank?” https://www.anera.org/what-are-area-aarea-b-and-area-c-in-the-west-bank/ [12] Ministry of Environmental Protection. “The domestic sector.” Gov.il, https://www.gov.il/en/pages/domestic_sector.

[13] Institute for Middle East Understanding. “Fact Sheet: Israeli Settlements & International Law.” 2015, https://imeu.org/resources/key-issues/fact-sheet-israelisettlements-international-law/215.

[14] University of Portsmouth. “Hamas: what you need to know about the group that attacked Israel.” 2023, https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-andblogs/blogs/building-an-inclusive-and-growth-ledeconomy-and-society/hamas-what-you-need-to-knowabout-the-group-that-attacked-israel.

[15] Mahase, Elisabeth. “Israel accepts Gaza death toll of 70 000, but experts say true number is much higher.”

BMJ, 2026, https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s239.

[16] Tanno, Sophie. “Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds.” CNN, 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gazadeath-toll-underreported-study-intl/index.html.

[17] Doctors Without Borders. “Israel is intentionally depriving Palestinians of water.” 2025, https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/israelintentionally-depriving-palestinians-water.

[18] World Health Organization. “How much water is needed in emergencies.” 2013, https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/washdocuments/who-tn-09-how-much-water-is-needed.pdf.

Biophilic Design on Campus and Beyond

by ZEPHYR ESLICK-PERSYN

As I wandered through Chou Hall, a beautiful building at the edge of the Haas Business School on campus, I realized what all the fuss was about: sun rays gleamed through the ample windows, lighting the entire lobby with a soft but steady glow.

The wood-paneled walls and wave-patterned overhead lights gave the impression of a truly natural space. I could feel the difference that just being in this place was having on me. I felt calmer, lighter, like something was just a little bit more right.

Chou Hall is a fantastic demonstration of the power of biophilic design: the psychological relief of spaces truly designed for humans.

Biophilic design involves building an environment that is centered around humans’ natural affiliation with life and lifelike processes [1]. It goes beyond the simple addition of plants in a lobby or an outdoor fountain: it integrates knowledge about human and environmental well-being into the design framework itself. We are happier and healthier when we have ample connection to nature in our environments [1].

For example, simply walking through a natural environment decreases blood pressure and increases relaxation response (parasympathetic nervous system) by 56% [2]. Additionally, people recovering from surgery healed faster when they had a natural view through their window as opposed to a brick wall [3].

We are physiologically the same as we were thousands of years ago—when we were living completely in sync with nature—so our environments should reflect those that we lived in then. If they do not, we become disconnected from our own biology and experience many physical and mental ailments including decreased concentration, vitamin D deficiency, and an increased rate of mental health disorders [4].

Rebuilding our vital connection to nature through the built environment can show up in many ways, such as letting daylight in, allowing air to flow through a room, and having potted plants. Indirect elements can also increase this effect, such as building with natural materials, landscape paintings, and even integrating particular natural patterns.

design by CLARA KEOUGH

These choices can not only decrease the negative effects, but also elicit strongly positive responses: people feel more nature connected and increased life satisfaction, perceive increased air quality and higher productivity, and experience overall

positive effects [5, 6, 7].

The reason Chou Hall embodies these principles and elicits these effects so wholly is because of its WELL certification [8]. WELL is similar to LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—the more common sustainability certification standard for all UC Berkeley buildings [9]. However, it focuses more on occupant experience and wellbeing.

While LEED focuses on energy efficiency and limited environmental impact, WELL builds upon that by integrating occupant wellbeing into the sustainability framework through categories like light, fitness, mental health, nourishment, and air.

Within the UC Berkeley context, Dr. Schiavon said he thinks this shift will “need to come to a certain degree from students.” We can do this by making our voices heard and advocating for our own health and well-being.

Chou Hall has set a good example, but we have to make it known that this consideration is necessary and should become standardized campus-wide.

Any students interested in bolstering biophilic design on campus, reach out to the Center for the Built Environment. This hub of occupant-centered design on campus conducts ongoing research about sustainable and biophilic design that funnels directly into university decision-making. We need occupants at the center of design discussions, and that includes you.

Chou Hall is currently the only building in UC Berkeley that is WELL certified, but Dr. Schiavon said he hopes that it will become common practice soon, as “there is substantial competition from [the] home environment where people can create what they need to succeed,” particularly in universities due to recorded lectures.

Right now, UC Berkeley and many other educational spaces are focusing on sustainability and energy efficiency, with occupant experience often secondary neglected in the design process because of the high upfront cost [10]. The people who ultimately fund design decisions are shareholders and developers, groups that tend to focus on short-term return on investment, which biophilic design unfortunately does not provide.

However, to entice people back into classrooms after the COVID-19 pandemic, we will hopefully start to see a shift in the design space towards occupant wellbeing. Dr. Sally Augustin, an environmental psychology consultant with Design with Science, said that there are “lots of schools around the world that are [already] really tuned into science” and are “creating learning spaces” based on these principles.

design by CLARA KEOUGH Works Cited

[1] Browning, William D., and Ryan, Catherine O. Nature Inside: A Biophilic Design Guide. United Kingdom, RIBA Publishing, 2020.

[2] Park, B.J., Tsunetsugu, Y., Kasetani, T. et al. “The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan.” Environ Health For example, The Green School in Bali, Indonesia, has Prev Med 15, 18–26. 2010, classrooms that are not only built of natural materials, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-009-0086-9. but are integrated into the surrounding environment, [3] Ulrich, R S. “View through a window may influence open to light and air [11]. In Baltimore, Maryland, Green recovery from surgery.” Science (New York, N.Y.) vol.

Street Academy contains indoor ecosystems such as koi 224,4647. 1984, 420-1. doi:10.1126/science.6143402 ponds and greenhouses, where student stress lessened, [4] Suttie, Jill. “ How to Protect Kids from Natureand performance improved in a biophilic classroom Deficit Disorder.” 2016, environment [12]. If it can be done there, we can do it https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_pro here. tect_kids_from_nature_deficit_disorder.

[5] Gaekwad JS, Sal Moslehian A, Roös PB and Walker A. “A Meta-Analysis of Emotional Evidence for the Biophilia Hypothesis and Implications for Biophilic Design.” Front. Psychol. 2022, 13:750245. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.750245.

[6] Kaigang Li et al. “Impact of biophilic design on college student perception of mental health and environmental benefits: A dose-response study”.

Building and Environment, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2024.112318.

[7] Capaldi CA, Dopko RL and Zelenski JM. “The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: a meta-analysis.” Front. Psychol. 2014, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00976 [8] International WELL Building Institute. https://www.wellcertified.com/certification/v2/.

[9] U.S. Green Building Council. “LEED rating system.” https://www.usgbc.org/leed.

[10] Leif, K., & Loftness, V. “A Toolkit of Biophilic Interventions for Existing Schools to Enhance Student and Faculty Health and Performance.” Architecture, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture4020024.

[11] Gray, Fiona, and Andrea Downie. "Designing Thriving School Ecosystems: The Synergy of Biophilic Design, Wellbeing Science, and Systems Science" Architecture, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture4030031.

[12] Browning, William, and Jim Determan. "Outcomes of Biophilic Design for Schools" Architecture, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture4030026.

design by NATALIE SU

by SARA WARFORD-CROWE

The Yosemite Firefall: A Fiery Past and Uncertain Future Three weeks into February, thousands of tourists, photographers, and nature-lovers flock to Yosemite National Park to witness the annual “firefall” at Horsetail Fall, an illusion of a flaming waterfall down the cliff of El Capitan. This 2026 season, under the precarious rule of the Trump administration, reservations to enter the park are not required—anyone willing to brave the cold and a $20-35 entrance fee is welcome to explore the soaring boulders and meadowed rivers of the valley, and perhaps get a glimpse of the bright, flaming natural phenomenon that occurs every winter.

The third weekend of February, around the 21st, is one of the busiest of the National Park. The firefall occurs annually, and only under specific, unpredictable conditions. First, there must be water to flow off the side of El Capitan; this requires sufficient snowfall in the winter, but enough warmth to melt it to form the waterfall. Then, the precarious sunset conditions must be met: at around 5:30 PM, clouds must not obscure the sun, and just the right angle of sunlight must filter through the water, fleetingly lighting it aflame to resemble lava cascading 2,130 feet above the valley. The spectacle only lasts about nine minutes, so the viewing window is thrillingly narrow, driving many to stay in the park for multiple nights for their best shot.

Weather forecasts are watched with bated breath as visitors pray for these perfect conditions each year. In the early afternoon, photographers swarm the most sought-after viewing spots of the El Capitan Picnic Area, Valley View Turnout, and along the Merced River, setting up tripods and chatting with one another several hours before sunset. Bundled in blankets and hats, thermoses steaming, all the hopeful spectators have left to do is wait.

This annual tradition didn’t start, however, until the midseventies. Before then, Horsetail Fall was barely on anybody’s radar—it didn’t show up on maps or hikers’ bucket lists. The waterfall is dry most of the year, and seems inconsequential compared to the dozens of powerful, magnificent falls of the park like Bridalveil, Yosemite, and Vernal Falls. Additionally, since the 19th century, Yosemite’s tourism hub has lain on the eastern

side of the valley, opposite this quiet spectacle to the west. Horsetail’s firefall was not widely known until Oakland-born, UC Berkeley drop-out photographer Galen Rowell stumbled across the majestic natural event, cementing it in Yosemite legend.

Fire Fell An entire century before Rowell’s discovery, a less natural, though more literal firefall would tumble off Glacier Point every night. Facilitated by the owner of the hotel Glacier Point Mountain House, James McCauley, visitors enjoyed an evening bonfire on the Glacier Point’s cliff, across from Half Dome.

Then, after nightfall, McCauley would kick the remaining embers off the edge, inspiring awe in the onlookers below as the flames tumbled to the earth.

Visitors began to look forward to the spectacle, even paying the owner’s sons to embellish and continue the event until 1897 when the hotel came under new ownership and the tradition was lost.

However, stories of the fire that plunged 3,000 feet in a nightly show echoed throughout the valley. David Curry, founder of Camp Curry in 1899, listened to these stories, and eventually restarted the tradition during summer seasons. His employees determined that red fir bark was the best embering wood for their illusion, and would drive for miles to find dead trees and haul their remains up the cliff. In the following decades, the firefall went in and out of production, being discontinued during World War II throughout clashes between the Curry family and National Park Service (NPS).

For as America became more aware of human influence on the environment in the 1960s, Yosemite’s stewards grew increasingly frustrated with the several disturbances the firefall event brought to the park. Eager viewers would trample native meadows and jam roads. The vegetation below Glacier Point was burnt night after night, stoking concerns for fire safety. Also, the event itself was artificial, taking away from the appeal of “pristine nature” that National Parks boast—Park Service director George B. Hartzog permanently banned the event in 1968 on these grounds.

Today’s Firefall Once Galen Rowell published his photograph of the natural firefall in 1973, titled “Last Light on Horsetail Fall,” the sight became an instant celebrity. Instead of flocking to Camp Curry on summer nights, firefall hopefuls gazed up from the western side of the valley amidst the cold February air.

While the artificial firefall of previous decades was certainly a sight to behold and likely distracted people from the natural one on the other end of the valley, one might wonder why nobody had pointed out the watery orange cascade, atop one of the most famed cliffs of the park, before 1973.

The answer could be climate change. At the turn of the 20th century, when the manmade firefall was beloved, the average Yosemite temperature in February was around 40°F according to climate archives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Seventy years later, Februaries warmed to around 45°F. This warming, combined with fluctuating precipitation patterns could have yielded the exact conditions to create the sunset firefall that may not have existed before. The earlier snowmelt, creating the Horsetail Fall, perfectly lines up with the position and angle of the sun as it sets at around 5:30 PM throughout the month, refracting through the fall to light it orange, pink, and yellow.

The ephemeral nature of the firefall certainly adds to its intrigue, and visitation has steadily increased over the years. This has led to problems similar to those that shut down the original firefall’s operation in the 60s— enthusiastic crowds leave trash behind, stress the Merced’s riverbanks, and even trampled the El Capitan Meadow to the extent that it now must be closed off in mid-February to prevent further damage to native plants and wildlife.

Despite these concerns for the park’s health, administrators made a procedural change in the 2026 season to cease requiring reservations to enter, determining them to be unnecessary with past seasons’ data. With federal cuts to the NPS budget, many firefall veterans worried that the reduced staff would struggle to control the crowds. However, the 2026 firefall seemed to bring a similar crowd to previous years, and no extra damage was reported.

The firefall was even a featured aspect in February 2025

protests by park employees. Hung upside down against El Capitan as a sign of distress, the employees expressed their frustrations with the Trump administration cutting one thousand NPS jobs earlier in the month. The remaining employees, already compensated poorly, have to then deal with long lines, trashed facilities, and unmanaged hiking trails. Using the popularity and publicity of the firefall event, the striped distress signal was spread through hundreds of photographs. The Trump administration responded to the backlash by promising to restore 50 jobs and hire 3,000 additional seasonal employees who were able to help control the crowds in subsequent high-visitation months.

NBC Bay Area Firefall’s Unforseeable Future With federal cuts to NPS as well as warming temperatures that dramatically affect snowfall and melt, the Horsetail firefall may prove to be a short-lived display.

The firefall relies on February snowfall, which has fluctuated drastically between 0-49.5 inches over the past five years. As climate change influences precipitation patterns and melts snowfall earlier in the year, the firefall may lose its water supply in the coming decades. Just as the event may have only recently appeared because of these climate change effects, its window may soon close from the same factors.

And as this administration continues to withdraw funding and protections for our environment, these climate factors will continue to be exasperated. The park and all the wonderful phenomena within it, including the firefall, require care and respect to continue thriving.

Still, the firefall’s lifetime may now be out of our control

because of harmful anthropogenic climate change and an increasing disregard for it by the Trump administration.

And with modern environmental protections preventing another artificial coal-fall, such a sight may be impossible within only a few decades. So before the perfect conditions for the firefall are melted away, consider taking a trip to Yosemite in mid to late February, and practice leave-no-trace principles as you do: clean up after yourself, leave the environment in the state you found it or better, and respect the natural world in which we live so that we can continue to enjoy its bounties and beauties.

[4] Ho, Theresa. “Yosemite Firefall 2021 Guide | Yosemite National Park’s Horsetail Fall.” Discover Yosemite National Park, 9 Jan. 2020, www.yosemite.com/a-guide-to-yosemites -naturalfirefall-horsetail-fall/.

[5] “Horsetail Fall - Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service).” www.nps.gov, 14 Jan. 2026, www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/horsetailfall.htm.

[6] Lenthang, Marlene. “Upside-down U.S Flag Hung at Yosemite National Park to Protest Employee Cuts.”

NBC News, 24 Feb. 2025, www.nbcnews.com/news/usnews/upside -us-flag-hung-yosemite-national-parkprotest-employee-cuts-rcna193409.

Works Cited Images Cited [1] “A History of the Yosemite Firefall.”

Yosemitefirefall.org, 5 Jan. 1998, yosemitefirefall.org/.

[2] Drum, Kevin. “Why Did No One Notice Yosemite’s Horsetail ’Firefall Effect’ before 1973?” Mother Jones, 10 Mar. 2018, www.motherjones.com/kevindrum/2018/03/ why-did-no-one-notice-the-horsetailfirefall-effect-before-1973/.

[3] Harden, Olivia. “Yosemite Tries to Control February Crowds after Damage Done to Park.” SFGATE, 29 Jan. 2025, www.sfgate.com/californiaparks/article/yosemite- february-crowds-firefalldamage-20034176.php.

“Watercolor Painting of a Cloudy Sky Over a Dark Landscape,” “Torn Paper,” “Trash,” “Pile of Trash,” “Tent” PNGs by https://www.vecteezy.com

photographed by NATALIE SU

California must address water scarcity before it’s too late

by GABY JIMENEZ While our bright and sunny California is described as a place of innovation, agricultural abundance, and natural beauty, the true nature of our state is often overlooked, and the consequences will catch up soon enough.

Summer after summer, California’s reservoirs dwindle, and we are reminded of the severity of water scarcity that is no longer a distant threat. Water scarcity is a crucial condition of how this state is defined, but continues to be treated as a minor or temporary issue.

It’s not that California is running out of water; the problem is that our long-standing systems assume more than what is actually in place, functioning off the notion that we have enough. Whether it’s the expanding suburbia covered in lush green lawns or agricultural industries that make up a third of the country’s vegetables, the water demand continues to exceed the supply. What’s more is that climate change continues to tighten this gap.

Earlier this month, the California Department of Water Resources reported a record-breaking period of heat and aridity during March, concluding with a severe depletion of the Sierra Nevada’s snowpack. This record heat caused premature snowmelt, reducing our natural frozen reservoir, which contributes 30% of California’s water supply. In short, warm temperatures mean less snowpack, leading to earlier snowmelt and more intense droughts. One of California’s most dependable natural reservoirs, mountain snow, is becoming less reliable.

Even though the state is seeing a clear escalation of climate change impacts on water supplies, policy has been insufficient, seeming more reactive than effective.

During the past years of consistent drought, citizens were encouraged to take shorter showers and refrain from watering their lawns. While personal conservation efforts such as these do have some impact, focusing solely on individual efforts distracts us from a larger problem.

Agriculture consumes about 40% of California’s total water and 80% of the developed water supply. Many crops in California, including almonds and alfalfa, have very water-intensive production, but continue to overtake agricultural produce since they are profitable in global markets.

But this isn’t an argument opposing agriculture, which is very central to the California economy and identity. We must rethink what and how we grow crops, and begin to prioritize what is most adaptable to a shrinking water supply. Producing crops that require less water intake must be incentivized, and water rights allocation must be reevaluated. The state’s current system of water allocation and distribution is outdated, overusing a limited supply of resources and ultimately benefiting those who utilize it over those who conserve it.

Urban areas alike must recognize the issue of water scarcity and address it adaptively as well. Although cities have made significant strides in decreasing per capita water use, there is still a continuous demand for such that is only going upward. Many development decisions continue to disregard long-term water availability, going on to allow for new housing projects without a reliable and sustainable water supply. Such ignorance exhibits the broader failure to regard water policy within land-use planning.

Furthermore, equity disparities across California reflect the increasing shortages of water sources. Communities of most vulnerability, including low-income and rural communities, especially in the Central Valley, experience the consequences of water scarcity more than others. The Central Valley is heavily dependent on groundwater wells for drinking water and agricultural irrigation, but this region has been experiencing a water crisis of severe groundwater depletion, resulting in driedup wells. Water quality declines as the wells run dry, forcing residents to consume expensive bottled water, whereas wealthier areas maintain access. Addressing this crisis requires paying attention to the fairness of water resources in addition to efficiency and sustainability.

Technological advancements offer some optimism. There has been progress in advancing wastewater recycling, groundwater management, and desalination that may extend limited resources. While the tech sector gives us some hope, technology can’t solely solve a problem that is ultimately political.

Technology offers some hope. Advances in wastewater

recycling, desalination, and groundwater management could help stretch limited supplies. But technology alone cannot solve a fundamentally political problem.

Decisions about who gets water, how much, and at what cost are inherently about priorities and power.

California sits at a crossroads. Either we can continue to handle water scarcity as simply areas of temporary crises, making small attempts to withstand a structure that we’ve outlived. Or, better yet, realize and understand that scarcity is our new normal, and state policies, industries, and individual lifestyles need to evolve to fit this existing system. Facing the hard truth of the conditions we are truly in, we need to understand that water isn’t simply a manageable resource, but a foundation that California’s future depends on.

Works Cited “Record Hot, Dry March Wipes Out California Snowpack, Leaving No Measurable Snow for April Survey.” California Department of Water Resources, 1 Apr. 2026, https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2026/Apr2026/Record-Hot-Dry-March-Wipes-Out-C alifornia-Snowpack-Leaving-No-Measurable-Snow-forApril-Survey.

Becker, Rachel. “Newsom Unveils Long-Term Strategy to Bolster California Water Supply.”

CalMatters, 11 Aug. 2022, https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/09/californialegislation-water-drought/.

Mount, Jeffrey, et al. “Water Use in California’s Agriculture.” Public Policy Institute of California, Apr. 2023, http://ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-californiasagriculture/.

“Snow Water Content.” Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, State of California, https://oehha.ca.gov/climate-change/epic-2022/impactsphysical-systems/snow-water-content.

The Ugliness of the Exotic Animal, Fur, and Feather Trade

by Shagun Juthani Animals are extremely complex and sentient beings that have existed on this planet long before humans.

However, as human civilizations developed, they started destroying the pre-existing and fully functional ecosystems of their predecessors for their own benefit– not out of necessity.

One prominent practice that highly accelerated this trend was the exotic animal, fur, and feather trade which started as far back as the 15th century; humans would poach animals they perceived to be beautiful in order to use and sell their appendages as adornments, purely for aesthetic purposes.

The exotic pet trade started operating at high capacity because certain animals were seen to be rare and unusual in the civilizations of Egypt, Rome, and China. This innate fascination with the unusual and subsequent desire to be perceived as higher status drove individuals to seek out certain animal products–and animals themselves [1].

Some of the first traces of the fur trade started in the late 15th century, when Native Americans in North America started trading the pelts of mink with local fishermen in order to acquire some of the goods they brought from their home countries, like knives and other iron-based products [2].

In addition to aesthetic and medical purposes, the animal trade industry supports certain animal products that are considered delicacies for consumption. For instance, sharks are captured solely to remove their fins which make up only 5% of their total body mass; they are then tossed back into the ocean and left to die, unable to swim without their fins. This cruel practice kills 73 million sharks each year. Sharks play such an essential role in the oceanic ecosystem that the decimation of their population has greatly disturbed the food chain [13].This industry causes other ecosystem imbalances akin to “severe gender imbalance” like with elephant poaching.

Because males are the ones that bear larger tusks, they are targeted for their body parts, leading to a declining reproduction rate of an already vulnerable species, making it even more difficult for them to recover.

Moreover, having a slower reproductive cycle leads to further population decline.

The increase of Europeans in North America who were drawn by the prospect of opportunity brought other demands upon the land, its people, and living beings.

Many Europeans were used to wearing wool felt hats on a daily basis. However, the demand for specialty fur hats made of beaver, rabbit, mink, fox, and otter started increasing because of their durability to weather and water.

This fueled the fur trade and as a result, the population of species like beavers started dwindling. Additionally, the increase of felt production technology further reduced the animal resource base. In other civilizations, people believed that certain animal products had healing qualities, though today we do not have any scientific evidence to prove this. This is why pangolins are still one of the most trafficked animals–they are poached for their scales–and it has left them critically endangered.

designed by VYAS CHIPALKATTI

European explorers that encountered novel species in continents like North America further accelerated the industry by introducing foreign animals to their home countries.

While the transportation of exotic animals can traumatize animals and even kill them, this is also a glaring ethical problem as animals are separated from their communities and natural habitats for a life laden with human exploitation.

This haphazard practice of introducing animals to foreign ecosystems often allows them to thrive due to ecological advantages: a lack of predators to prey upon them and a wide variety of resources for them to grow in numbers. This can cause them to become “invasive species” and destroy native habitats that they are in. For instance, close to 85% of the non-native reptiles and amphibians in Florida were brought into the local ecosystem via the exotic pet trade.

One of the most famous examples are the Burmese pythons who were kept as pets by many Floridians in the late 1970s. However, once they reached their full size, becoming aggressive and too expensive to care for, their caretakers released them into the Everglades. These pythons started threatening the local ecosystem by becoming apex predators.

Additionally, although not necessarily a part of the exotic animal trade, the introduction of deer from Britain to the New Zealand ecosystem for hunting purposes ruined the native ecosystem. The deer became invasive and removed various essential plants from the native New Zealand landscape.

As a result of this threat, the local government started to fence the deer in specific areas to promote hunting and farming to sell their skin and antlers. Not only is this solution to a human-induced problem inhumane by limiting the amount of space that deer have, but it allows the deer to be farmed and hunted for their commodities, promoting the industry.

On top of this, rabbits were brought to New Zealand around the same time as deer for sport and food.

Unsurprisingly, they also became invasive by feasting upon the native New Zealand plants, giving them perfect conditions to thrive. In order to mitigate this problem, the British introduced ferrets and stoats to the native ecosystem.

This introduction still causes a multitude of problems as these new species are extremely adept at preying upon native birds in New Zealand, decimating their species and driving them to extinction. Studies have shown that over 42% of endangered species are at risk due to invasive species [3].

However, it is extremely unjust to kill living beings that humans themselves introduced in a landscape that wasn’t theirs in the first place.

Besides the obvious ecosystem effects, this also desensitizes people to violence against animals while encouraging them to continue expanding this practice to other living creatures.

These issues still persist today and are worsening as a large percentage of the exotic pet market relies on kidnapping animals from their native habitats [1].

Accelerating technology, online marketplaces, and social media have made this practice even more accessible to individuals all over the world.

Other sources of the exotic animal trade stem from people who exploit gaps in local regulations to traffic endangered species that are extremely valued on the black market. Even though enforcement attempts to mitigate the exploitation of these laws and species, fragmentation of the countless sources of trade makes it hard for them to be tracked and shut down.

Oftentimes, the sentences they do receive for committing these crimes are extremely light and without detriment to the networks behind the trade which remain operational. This is often because wildlife crimes are treated to be victimless, making them less prioritized when fighting organized crime.

Today, the trade of animals and their body parts contributes to a billion dollar industry that continues to deplete local ecological diversity of regions where there are limited wildlife protection legislations. On top of this, it can spread deadly zoonotic diseases that can decimate the populations of native species and potentially reach humans.

For example, in the 1970s, there was an outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease from to parrots who were kidnapped from South America, resulting in the deaths of 12 million birds [4]. Other examples of pandemics that have come from these markets include SARS and

COVID-19 [5].

Remnants of this cruel practice remain as many average people still use animal products in their daily lives (i.e., leather, feathers, etc.). However, it is not deemed to be as unethical as exotic animals and fur or feather trading was eventually deemed to be as the living beings that are poached for products now are not considered to be exotic.

It is quite strange how people draw the line between what is considered to be cruel and not cruel by looking at the value of the living being concerned. For example, take a scarlet macaw poached for their feathers versus a cow being poached for their skin: the scarlet macaw being poached is considered unethical while the cow being poached is considered a normal practice, as purchasing leather is a commonality.

Although it is true that scarlet macaws are endangered and cows are extremely common, the fact that humans not only upended ecosystems for their own benefit, but started placing value on a life when all living beings should be treated equally is extremely unjust. It shouldn’t be up to humans to decide who lives and dies.

Many movements have encouraged masses of people to recognize that this practice is not right; as such, regulations have been put in place to take some control over this industry. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an agreement to ensure that the international trade of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival or infringe upon local ecosystems.

On a national level, there are laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Lacey Act. However, these regulations often suffer from issues like insufficient funding and resources which does not allow them to control the illegal activities effectively [1].

Additionally, organizations like the World Wildlife Federation have been working with places that endorse travels like airports to install X-ray scanners with AI autodetection systems to send out an alert if wildlife products or trafficked species are found [5].

While there are certainly some regulations and laws in place, the animal and animal product trade flies largely under the radar of international enforcement agencies.

Since the trade’s beginnings hundreds of years ago,

these exploited animals have not been granted the same value as humans and are killed, skinned, poached, and removed from their homes every day. As we continue to uncover the injustices of this practice and face the consequences in our ecosystems and own bodies, we must hope and fight for stricter, more compassionate laws against animal abuse. In refusing to take part in this unethical trade by avoiding animal products like leather, skins, and feathers, you can take the first step toward supporting the suffering animals who need it most.

Works Cited [1] “Exotic Pet Trade: An In-Depth Study of the Trade in Wild Animals as Pets.” Diverse Daily, August 2024.

[2] Carlos, A.M. and Lewis, F.D. “The Economic History of the Fur Trade: 1670 to 1870.” Economic History Association, March 2008.

[3] Schowe, Devan. “Unleashed Threats: How the Exotic Pet Trade Fuels the U.S. Invasive Species Problem.” Born Free USA, June 2025.

[4] Hall, Jani. “Exotic Pet Trade, Explained.” National Geographic, February 2019.

[5] “COVID-19 and Wildlife Trade: Perspectives and Proposed Actions.” World Wildlife Fund, 2020.

[6] “Deer: Animal Threats.” Department of Conservation, New Zealand.

[7] Guthrie, Kate. “Liberation of Stoats and Weasels – a Look Back in Time.” Predator Free NZ Trust, June 2017.

[8] Housden, Rachel. “The Illegal Exotic Animal Trade.” UNLV Center for Crime and Justice Policy, Dec. 2024.

[9] “Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching Explained.”

World Wildlife Fund, 2019.

[10] Kurylo, Benjamin. “Wildlife Crime: Threats to Global Ecosystems and Biodiversity.” Earth.org, May 2024.

[11] Weber, Chris. “The Impact of Wildlife Trafficking on Global Biodiversity.” Animals around the Globe, April 2025.

[12] “What Is Wildlife Trafficking?” IFAW, May 2025.

[13] “Wildlife Trafficking: Why Battling This Illicit Trade Is Crucial.” US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, August 2023.

design by YICHEN GAO

The History of Earth Day & the Future of California’s Oil Platforms

by GARRETT KITAHATA

the pipeline.

The history of Earth Day can be traced back to Santa Barbara, California, where the first oil rigs were erected and drilled in 1896 at the Summerland oil field. The rigs were created to extract oil from the offshore coast. They offered a solution that would help power California, and the world, for the next century. The transition to oil and offshore drilling took time in the early 20th century, and a new transition away from offshore drilling is now taking place in the present day, as most of these oil rigs have been decommissioned. The most popular plan to move forward has been to completely remove the structures [1]. The primary perceived benefit would be a total reset to the marine ecosystem, along with the fact that the State Lands Commission would no longer have to manage the structures.

The holiday started in 1970 with Gaylord Nelson, who helped to galvanize the support of millions of people for marches in the streets of America combating the environmental destruction that was taking place globally [4]

However, citizens, professors, and other community members have risen up in opposition to the way that the offshore drilling process is being conducted, in favor of either partial removal, or for one particular platform Holly, completely repurposing the structure into an energy and research hub [2]. The suggestion is that saving these large structures provides both a spiritual and practical value to society and the environment. The documentary Titans: The Reefs of Santa Barbara’s Oil Rigs outlines the spiritual importance of these structures, representing the rich past of oil offshore as “ghost ships” that some find deeply beautiful. The practical value of keeping the rigs partially intact is preserving the manmade reefs teeming with life below the surface of the ocean, while simultaneously cutting removal costs and lowering emissions [3]. Overall, these groups have made compelling cases as alternatives to the status quo for planned complete removal.

In the bigger picture, climate change is intricately connected to the storyline of these offshore oil rigs, particularly Platform A, where the oil spill from that platform was the last straw that set off a chain of events leading to the mobilization of the first Earth Day. The central problem that spurred the creation of Earth Day was the oil spill of the offshore oil rigs via a rupture in

Fast forward to the 21st century, we continue to face problems similar to the ones in the 70’s, and at a predictably greater scale. Temperatures have gone upwards on average and are much more extreme, with heat waves and cold spells in different regions during the year. Gaylord Nelson, among many others, stepped up to highlight the necessary protection we needed to preserve the natural environment, from oceans to forests and clean air. This was a multifaceted effort involving both primary political parties in the United States, and a powerful national, and then worldwide, group effort to combat the emerging environmental destruction apparent from deforestation, ocean litter, as well as particulate matter in the air and carbon pollution.

Earth Day has represented an effort to make amends with the environmental destruction from events like the Platform A oil spill that devastated the environment and killed fish populations, clarifying our collective struggle from then onward to reverse the mechanisms throwing our environment into disarray, while simultaneously finding solutions, such as renewable energy and reduction of resource use, to resolve those problems [5].

One specific structure that stands out from the rest is Platform Holly. Positioned away from the other oil structures, it was recently decommissioned, with oil wells plugged as of September of 2024. The resulting fate of the platform will be decided by a consensus of community members and the California State Lands Commission. I believe that the oil platform should be repurposed to also include solar power, vertical wind, and even wave energy to power research equipment, ships, or land sites. This multifaceted project could generate revenue and profit through the economic benefit and value the technology on the platform can add

to society, such as clean energy and cameras for early warning weather detection for fires, storms, and floods on land from a vantage point that can catch these events earlier [3] More broadly, the Goleta community around Santa Barbara has heavily advocated for the preservation of marine life on the platforms, as a part of a sustainable end to offshore oil drilling [6]. Work is being done to further the cause for preserving hundreds of species of coral and fish that live on these structures. This partial dismantling project will move forward if the State Lands Commission (SLC) approves it; this would mark the end of an era dominated by oil [7].

One distinct but related technology emerging offshore is the proposed floating wind structures off the coast of California. This emerging project has two wind turbine sites off the coast of California—Humboldt and Morro Bay—and projected development is 5 GW by 2030 and 45 GW by 2045 [8]. This exciting work is happening adjacent to the project work aiming to end offshore oil, and I like to connect the two technologies as loosely analogous because they both represent the old and new ways of powering California and beyond.

Overall, the projects happening off the coast of California represent the transformation we ultimately want to make towards clean, renewable energy that does not pollute the environment that we live in. The current presidential administration has set policies that contradict this movement, with an interest in recommissioning some of the oil rigs and disinterest in floating offshore wind platform technology [9].

Other environmental challenges closely tied to Earth Day include cleaning up the oceans from litter such as plastics, managing coastal erosion with properties next to the water along with sea level rise, and watching out for increased intensity of coastal storms churned up from uneven heating out at sea. The ocean plays an important role in the regulation of our global environment [10].

We collectively as citizens have a responsibility to understand the history of the catalysts for both global warming, and the changes we are making to reduce our impact on the environment. The storyline of Earth Day and the projects associated with ending the worst forms of devastation need to be spread to broader audiences, such as the international community.

Works Cited [1] Fausey, Callie. “Erasing Santa Barbara’s Offshore Platforms.” The Santa Barbara Independent, 25 Dec. 2023, www.independent.com/2023/12/25/erasing- santabarbaras-offshore-platforms/.

[2] Davis, Ryan. “Americas Green Corps.” Americas Green Corps, 2026, www.americasgreencorps.com/.

Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

[3] Energy Solutions Intelligence. “Offshore Decommissioning 2027: Rigs-To-Reefs vs Full Removal Costs & Environmental Trade-Offs.”

Energy-Solutions.co, Energy Solutions Intelligence, 10 Jan. 2025, energy- solutions.co/articles/sub/offshoredecommissioning-rigs-to-reefs-vs-full-removal- 2027.

Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

[4] “Meet Gaylord Nelson | Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day.” Nelsonearthday.net, nelsonearthday.net/gaylord-nelson-founder-of-earth-day/.

[5] Thulin, Lila. “How an Oil Spill 50 Years Ago Inspired the First Earth Day.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Apr. 2019, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-oil-spill-50years-ago-inspired-first-earth-day-180972007/.

[6] Flores, Pricila. “Goleta Community Advocates for Marine Life in Platform Holly Decommissioning.”

Noozhawk, 22 Feb. 2026, www.noozhawk.com/goletacommunity-advocates-for-marine-life-in-platform-hollydecommissioning/. Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

[7] “Platform Holly Decommissioning Project | CA State Lands Commission.” Ca.gov, 2021, www.slc.ca.gov/ceqa/platform-holly-decommissioningproject/. Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

[8] “Pacific Offshore Wind Summit 2025.”

Pacificoffshorewindsummit.com, 2025, pacificoffshorewindsummit.com/.

[9] Cart, Julie. “Trump’s Order Won’t Halt California’s Offshore Wind Leases. But Will It Derail the Industry?”

CalMatters, 24 Jan. 2025, calmatters.org/environment/2025/01/trump-order-banoffshore-wind-california/.

[10] “Earth Day.” Noaa.gov, 2024, www.noaa.gov/earthday.

[11] Sheena Kay Rock. “TITANS: The Reefs of Santa Barbara’s Oil Rigs | OFFICIAL (FULL DOCUMENTARY).” YouTube, 15 Feb. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRWss-0HVY. Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

Creative Pieces

Tucked into Blankets of Nature A series of campus vignettes

by ANERI SHAH

slip a smile onto your face.

Soft light greets my eyes around seven o’clock on a bright, almost too-perfect morning. It streams through the window like gentle kisses, rising and falling—almost like tea warming in a kettle, almost like lightning trapped in a bottle.

But magic doesn’t need to be noticed to be felt. Cupid doesn’t need to be seen to loose his arrow and rain down love. Students pass beneath the swaying stalks with halfmoon nail marks pressed into their coffee cups and sleep-heavy eyes, rarely pausing to glance up at their surroundings.

The birds wake me next, more fully this time, with their incandescent chatter. So much spoken in such short chirps—I envy them the ease of conversation. No squirrels or mice appear on my windowsill; I’m not quite a Disney princess lookalike. Still, the moment feels like a scene from a movie.

My arms stretch above my head, pulling loose the curves and corners that stiffened in sleep. The day is here. The day is waiting—to be taken softly by the hand and, by evening, spun gently toward its quiet conclusion.

When I finally step outside, purple JanSport bag and water bottle in hand, Berkeley is already settling into the soft sift of morning.

And yet, even among the hustle and bustle of students passing one another, I find small ways to stay still— falling, again and again, into the quiet blankets of nature.

The Ballet of Bamboo In the stories of Wendy Darling and Peter Pan, Neverland lies just a little way off—on the second star to the right in the midnight-blue sky. Right here, near Unit 1, Berkeley seems to have its own small patch of pixiedust magic.

A grove of bamboo leans gently over the path. In the rosy light of early morning, the thin green stalks sway back and forth, back and forth. They move almost like dancers—gliding from first position to second, to third, to fifth, and back again in a practiced routine that continues quietly through the changing days.

For those who say magic isn’t real, this feels like its own everyday kind of magic—something small and steady that, if you pause long enough to notice it, will always

Why would they, when their earbuds press lovely music into their ears and their screens flash silly cat and dog videos?

Yet for every person who rushes by, step after hurried step, there is someone who stops—shoes gliding quietly to a halt. A boy, a girl, a passerby who falls into generations of plant admirers and simply breathes.

And for that brief moment, suspended between time and space, the bamboo ballet finally has its audience.

Playful Wildlife By the late afternoon, the quiet ballet of the morning has dissolved like sugar in tea, like dewdrops on leaves, into something louder and bolder. At everyone’s favorite campus spot—the Golden Bear Café—tables overflow like floodbanks, students spilling into every available space, conversations overlapping as voices compete to be heard. The air itself seems to hum with movement, as if everything is pulled along by an invisible thread. But the students aren’t the only ones enjoying the clear blue skies.

Bright blue jays, small sparrows, and crafty crows pick their way across the leaf-littered ground and scrap-filled tabletops, hopping so quickly they almost resemble bunnies rather than birds. They peck at fallen burger crumbs and abandoned pastries, weaving in and out of swinging feet and stray backpacks. Not far away, squirrels take a different approach. They pause, sit up on their hind legs, and beg—eerily similar to dogs. Not that squirrels would ever admit they borrowed the idea from them, of course. There’s something familiar, almost funny about it all. So many creatures gathered in one place, coexisting for brief moments in time. We use the

word animal to separate ourselves from wildlife, but moments like this make me pause and wonder: is there really any difference at all?

Unexpected Wilderness And then, just like a rainbow appearing after a storm, as suddenly as the noise arrives—it disappears.

@_natalies.pictures

California Scrub Jay

Near Haas and Foothill, where the edges of campus begin to blur into surrounding grassy hills, the energy in the air shifts. The glossy white sidewalks that glow at night grow quieter. The constant hum of conversation softens into background noise. The feeling of being watched, of being part of something always moving, fades—if only for a moment.

And then—oh, and then, if you stay very, very still— You see them.

A doe and her fawn step out from beneath the shadow of a lamppost and move toward the trees ahead. The fawn is still dappled with white, a California Bambi.

Their ears flick at the slightest sound, their small hooves poised for flight. For a moment, they don’t move at all, caught in that familiar “deer in headlights” stillness.

Neither do you.

Time seems to pause here, stretching softly, like an orange cat waking slowly from its nap, light spilling into something warm and golden. Your phone lifts, almost instinctively, ready to capture the moment—but then you hesitate.

Some memories are better kept as mind photographs.

Clarkia

photographed by NATALIE SU

Cherry Blossom Quiet And when the days begin to feel too full—bright-eyed and rushing forward—the cherry blossoms arrive.

Even the grumpiest of students can feel a smile working its way across their face at the sight of pale pink petals drifting across the branches and into the open sky.They catch the wind and float lazily, like someone half awake, peering through the morning light.

Maybe that’s why so many choose to take their graduation photos beneath them. Cameras flash, smiles widen, and eyes quietly fill with tears. The question lingers—is the journey really over? These blossoms have witnessed it all: the first midterm failure, the first heartbreak, the first internship win.

Just like the bluebirds, the squirrels, the deer, and the bamboo, they have been there—quiet observers of every small and monumental moment.

@_natalies.pictures

Nature has seen Berkeley at its quietest and its loudest. It does not demand attention or ask for anything in return.

It simply exists, offering something softer in the background—a quiet reminder that not every moment needs to be perfect. Sometimes, it is enough just to be.

What We Cannot Stop For: On the Bodies We Leave Behind

by TABINA TARIQ At sixty miles an hour, a life becomes a blur. First, a dark shape on the road, collapsed and flattening into asphalt… then nothing but memory. By the time my brain registers what I’ve seen, I am already past them.

The car behind me does not slow down. Traffic flows around the shape as effortlessly as water around a stone.

Sometimes they are a squirrel, tail splayed like a question mark; sometimes a bird, wings folded as if in thought. Occasionally someone larger—a raccoon, a cat, once a deer lying awkwardly along the road’s edge, legs angled in a way that made clear they would never hold weight again.

These moments are fleeting, but they linger. Hours later, I return to the image, wondering how long they lay there before I arrived… how many cars passed before mine.

People call this “the circle of life.” Animals die. Bodies return to the earth.

But the circle of life does not usually involve four lanes of traffic.

The animals I encounter are not deep in forests or fields; they appear where human infrastructure cuts through the landscape: highways, suburban streets, parking lots, strips of grass that remain between road and sidewalk.

These are not ecosystems designed for them, and yet they navigate them anyway, crossing divisions we have imposed, searching for sustenance in spaces that once sustained them naturally.

Sometimes I want to stop. The instinct is immediate: pull over, move them from the road, place them somewhere softer than asphalt; perhaps bury them, or simply

acknowledge that they existed, grieving a lost soul.

But at this speed, there is no safe way to mourn. The road margins are narrow; cars move too quickly. The highway demands a kind of emotional efficiency: see, register, continue.

So I keep driving.

The unsettling part is not that animals die, but how ordinary these encounters have become. A body in the road barely interrupts the rhythm of traffic. Drivers slow only slightly, just enough to avoid damage—not enough to acknowledge who lies there.

I think about scale: highways stretching across the country, each mile accumulating its own record of impact; a rabbit in California, a fox in Indiana, a possum in the middle of the night when no one is watching.

Roads cut through landscapes the way rivers once did, carving paths across distance. But where rivers sustain life, roads fracture it. They divide ecosystems into smaller pieces, producing habitat fragmentation that constrains movement along corridors that animals were never meant to navigate.

Animals do not recognize property lines or zoning districts. They move according to older patterns— migration, instinct, the search for food or shelter. A road interrupts those patterns without warning. To cross it requires timing they do not possess, and speeds they cannot anticipate.

The result is a quiet, continuous violence, one we rarely notice because it happens so often.

When I mention this, people shrug. “That’s nature,” they say. Or: “It happens.”

They are not wrong. It does happen.

But the explanation feels incomplete. Natural death is one thing; mechanized death is another. A hawk preying on a mouse belongs to an ancient system; a BMW moving seventy miles an hour through a deer’s migration path belongs to something else entirely.

Still, the road does not pause for these distinctions.

The body remains behind me; the car continues forward.

At this speed, even grammar flattens.

We are tempted to call animals it, because that is easier—because objects, because something, require no pause, no acknowledgment, no grief. But they are not things. They are someone: a creature like us, moving, feeling, living, whose brief presence cannot be reduced to debris. To call them someone is to recognize that their life mattered, that even in passing, they were part of the world we have reshaped, and that we bear a responsibility simply by seeing them.

Anthropocene in miniature: landscapes reshaped by human convenience, lives fragmented by our infrastructure.

These moments are easy to ignore.

Most of us do. Desensitization is a slow violence, numbing the eye while fracturing the moral imagination.

Yet they reveal something essential about the landscapes we have built— and the lives that continue to move through them.

The highway keeps moving whether I grieve or not. The body in the road shrinks in the rearview mirror until they disappear completely.

Still, I try to remember them.

I sometimes imagine a different version of the moment, one where I can stop.

Traffic disappears. The highway quiets.

I pull over, carry them from the road, place them in the grass. Maybe I dig a small hole. Maybe I leave them somewhere that feels less violent than asphalt.

But that version almost never happens.

So what remains, most of the time, is attention.

I look. I register the shape in the road. I resist the urge to turn away too quickly.

It is a small act, almost invisible; a refusal to let them become refuse.

Of course, I could cite statistics: how many animals are killed on roads each year, the ecological toll, the economic cost. Numbers matter, yes—but they cannot account for what moves us as humans: the moral pause, the recognition of life, the grief that statistics cannot measure. We must be guided not only by data but by feeling.

Environmental destruction often arrives in dramatic forms—wildfires, floods, melting glaciers. But it also appears quietly: a bird along a parking lot, a squirrel crossing a suburban street, a deer left along a highway margin that once cut through their home. This is the

Not because remembering will change what happened—it will not slow traffic or restore what was lost—but because remembering resists erasure.

At sixty miles an hour, that may be the only form of care the road allows.

Studies on Wildlife: Birds photographed by YICHEN GAO

photographed

by YICHEN GAO

Studies on Wildlife: Animals of the Antarctic

Studies on Wildlife: Amphibians and Reptiles photographed by YICHEN GAO

Research

Tahitian Pearl Farming: An Economy Dependent on Environmental Health

by EMMA BERMAN AND SOFIA BERMAN When we think about the environment and the economy, we often view them in opposition, with the assumption that something good for the environment is not the most economical. In other words, what benefits the environment is often assumed to come at an economic cost. Environmentally friendly options are often perceived as expensive, and industries such as fossil fuels rely on the expectation of cheap, accessible, constant energy. This framing raises a difficult question: how can we transition to sustainable, “clean energy” systems if doing so threatens existing economic structures?

Less often acknowledged, however, is that many economies around the globe rely on environmental health, and a thriving economy does not always come at the expense of the environment. In these cases, environmental degradation is not a trade-off but a threat to the economy’s survival. This is the case for Tahitian pearl farming in French Polynesia, where ecological sustainability and economic prosperity are inseparable.

Located in the South Pacific Ocean, French Polynesia is an archipelago whose economic cornerstone is the farming of black Tahitian pearls. The industry generates employment, supports tourism, and preserves the cultural heritage of a practice that has evolved and developed to become a territorial signature. In 2023 alone, it was reported that the pearl industry in French Polynesia brought in $100 million revenue [1]. Far from exploiting natural resources, this industry depends on maintaining the delicate balance of its marine environment in the Tahitian lagoons.

The process of pearl cultivation is both intricate and time-sensitive. Suspended by buoys, about fifteen meters below the surface of the water, oysters mature and grow.

During their harvest, they are carefully lifted out of the lagoon waters. Once they arrive to land, the process is a race against time.

Within a 24 hour period, Tahitian pearl farmers meticulously clean and process thousands of oysters.

The oysters also undergo a precise surgical procedure to remove their previously implanted pearl. They are then meticulously reimplanted with a larger nucleus and then returned to the water.

During this intense 24-hour period of harvest and reimplantation, the farmers working in the outdoor lab have to keep track of the size reimplantation needed for each oyster, as implanting the incorrect nucleus into the most precious (almost decade-old) oysters can cause the oyster to die. The process demands extraordinary precision. The spherical nucleus comes from a Mississippi River mussel shell. This initial nucleus is implanted along with a specifically color-selected oyster mantle from a donor oyster. These factors determine the final color of the Tahitian pearl. Once returned back to the lagoon, nourished by the nutrient-rich water and currents, the oysters grow over one to two years to yield iteratively larger pearls. Year after year, the pearls are harvested, new nuclei are implanted, and the cycle repeats over multiple harvests, with each iteration dependent on the stability of the surrounding marine ecosystem.

Because pearl quality, and by extension, economic viability, is directly tied to environmental conditions such as water temperature, currents, water pollution levels, and sea life, this industry is uniquely vulnerable to climate change. Rising ocean temperatures, acidification, and changes in water currents risk disrupting oyster reproduction and life span and reduce their pearl quality.

Even short-term interferences such as a storm or human actions, such as a tourist sailboat getting tangled in the nets, can have devastating consequences.

For example, farms can lose entire generations of oysters if their suspension lines get severed. Recovery is also slow, often requiring years of growth.

Tahitian pearl farming demonstrates a powerful yet undervalued reality: a healthy environment can be the foundation of a thriving economy. Sustainability is therefore imperative, and a prerequisite for survival. The industry’s success is reliant on water quality, preserving biodiversity and maintaining stable ocean conditions.

As climate change accelerates, industries like pearl farming in Tahiti highlight what’s at risk. They challenge the narrative that economic growth and ecological growth come at the cost of one another, instead demonstrating that long-term economic resilience depends on environmental health, making environmental protection even more imperative.

Works Cited [1] “The Cove.” KYR: French Polynesia – Economy, 5 Feb. 2025, KYR: French Polynesia – Economy.

design by SAMANTHA CARRILLO

by SHAKIRA MAXAMED

The Smokey Bear Effect Smokey Bear, an American Black bear dressed in durable jeans, a ranger’s hat labeled Smokey, a shovel in hand, and a wistful twinkle in his eyes, is a recognizable sight across America. The year 1944 is often noted as the beginning of Smokey Bear, recognized through his widespread posters and catchy slogans, such as “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” It is important to recognize that this anti-fire sentiment didn’t begin with Smokey Bear, but it certainly fueled his existence. However, ever since this guardian of the forest was established, a cultural shift has begun to take hold, fueled by years of anti-fire sentiment, reinforced by policy, rhetoric, and even the prevention of indigenous cultural burning. In this research paper, I will cover how Smokey the Bear’s widespread public campaigns, which strictly framed wildfires as preventable rather than beneficial, have negatively impacted the public’s perception of fire, overlooking its diverse and beneficial effects on our ecosystems.

Smokey Bear’s beginnings weren’t unprecedented; it was fueled by decades of anti-fire rhetoric, fire suppression, and a lack of understanding and connection to America’s forests. Most origin stories of Smokey Bear begin with the orphan cub found in the 1950s during the Capitan Gap fire in New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest. However, this isn’t where the story started. To fully understand how Smokey Bear came to be, we need to go back to World War II. In 1942, Japanese submariners shelled an oil field outside of Santa Barbara, near the 2,700 square mile Los Padres National Forest. This raised concerns that fires on American soil could distract from the wartime effort, so the War Advertising Council and the U.S. Forest Service created a campaign program [1]. This program emphasized personal responsibility to prevent fires, claiming that Americans’ carelessness was the Japanese secret weapon. This campaign did not make distinctions between wildfires and human-made fires; instead, it branded all fires as detrimental.

This is when the cultural shift started to take place; Americans all across the nations all felt the need to protect their

forests, allowing anti-fire rhetoric to be solidified for the first time. It was also during World War II, when the American Lumber industry and Government increased their efforts on the prevention of forest fires. “Each year, America suffers from 140,000 to 220,000 forest fires, and of these, 90% are man-made and thus preventable…

Advertising, through education and reminder and warning, can combat the sabotage of our forests, ranges, and woodlots” [2]. It was clear that these campaigners prioritized personal responsibility and branded all fires as preventable and harmful.

In the year 1942, the same year the Japanese submariners shelled the oil field, the Cooperative Forest Fire campaign was established. This was a partnership between the War Advertising Council, the Federal Office of War Information, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Forest Service, which produced public campaigns during the years 1942 to 1944 that promoted the prevention of all fires. It was in 1943 that this program truly produced results. The program was granted usage of characters from the Walt Disney film Bambi. This campaign was incredibly successful because of its wide appeal to diverse audiences. During this time period, other campaigns were established, but weren’t as successful. The usage of Bambi demonstrated that characters, specifically animals, could be of use in spreading the campaign’s message. Since Bambi was only loaned to this campaign program for a year, the Forest Service needed a new symbol, and it was here that Smokey Bear was born.

On August 9, 1944, the official birthday of Smokey Bear, the Forest Service established the creation of Smokey Bear with a poster of him pouring water on a campfire, with a concise message stating that caution can prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires, a common statistic used in these campaigns [3]. Smokey Bear was a national sensation; by 1964, Smokey was receiving so many positive letters from children that the post office gave him his own ZIP code, but this widespread fame was with the help of the orphaned cub in 1950, New Mexico, that set Smokey’s prominence in stone. After the cub was saved, the State Game Warden wrote a letter to the Forest Service asking to integrate the cub into the publicity program. This request was accepted, and Smokey was moved to the National Zoo and became a prominent symbol. While Smokey Bear died in 1976, his message remained. The AD Council estimates that 96% of adults can recognize Smokey Bear [1]. Forest fires caused by humans were reduced by 25% from the years

1942 to 1974; the acreage of forest fires burned dropped from 31,000,00 acres to less than 3,000,00 acres. Smokey Bear was the Ad Council’s longest-standing campaign, and its effects still linger to this day [4]. Smokey Bear’s campaign utilized the media to influence the public’s attitude towards fires, promoting fire prevention and suppression as a means of protecting forests, ignoring and overlooking ecological benefits. While it is clear that this campaign prevented forest fires and protected forests, this prominent campaign also contributed to the decline in forest health and the increase in high-intensity fires nationwide.

Due to Smokey Bear’s widespread and prevalent message, there has been a huge shift in the density and health of America’s forests. Research has shown that aggressive fire suppression can increase the amount of high-intensity fires, in turn harming forests [5]. It has indirectly encouraged fuel loading and increased densities, often called the “Smokey Bear effect” or the “wildfire paradox” [7]. Fire prevention involves the accumulation of fuels, such as dead wood, undergrowth, and leaves. This fuel on the forest floor fuels fires and can lead to huge fires that devastate these forests, but controlled, low-intensity fires reduce the amount of fuel loads. Frequent, low-intensity fires even assist some ecosystems; many forest species rely on fire to germinate their seeds. Fires also increase biodiversity. Suppressing fires allows shade-tolerant species to outcompete fireadapted ones, which in turn reduces biodiversity. It is clear that low-intensity fires are beneficial, and this concept was practiced by indigenous communities long before settlers arrived and banned these important ecological practices. So, with fire suppression policies being enacted, it alters fire regimens, causing natural forests to become weaker and high-intensity fires to be established. Fire regimes, attributes of fire such as frequency and intensity, are imperative to understand because they vary across ecosystems and uphold the health and diversity of a habitat [8].

Fire has many ecological benefits, and indigenous communities have known this for decades. Indigenous communities have been using fires for decades for various purposes, such as creating space for smaller plants to grow, clearing underbrush to prevent larger fires from occurring, increasing biodiversity, and more [9]. So, when it comes to protecting forests, cooperation and collaboration must take place interculturally to effectively steward and protect our forests. While the media was negatively used to influence people’s views on fire, it can

be used positively as well. Using indigenous and Western science to demonstrate how fire can benefit communities when done right can change people’s views for the better. The media can have benefits if utilized correctly, but it is just the first step. Indigenous inclusion and ecological stewardship are both things that have to be implemented within government policies to make positive change. There has to be a focus and emphasis on intercultural connection and communication, because combining our forms of knowledge is the best way to help our landscapes and forests.

This has been done before with Australian Aboriginal communities. These communities have implemented Indigenous-led social movements that focus on indigenous environmental authority, agency, and autonomy while maintaining a focus on dismantling the public’s negative views on fire and integrating indigenous knowledge in wildfire policy [9]. It is also important to utilize active management of our forests because we have reduced, altered, and introduced various disturbances, such as invasive species, into our forests, and increased fire intensity. Our forests have been heavily altered in relation to their historic conditions and are being introduced to many more disturbances, and this is only being exacerbated by climate change. Active management can support species that depend on their pre-settlement forest types, encourage more biodiversity, and reduce fire risk [10].

Smokey Bear’s omnipresent presence has contributed to the decline of our nation’s forests and to the public’s grasp and understanding of the concept and purpose of fire. From the very beginning, Smokey Bear’s history was one of divisiveness, misrepresentation, indigenous discrimination, widespread public misinformation, and colonial exploitation. With indigenous ecological knowledge and openness to different forms of science, America’s forests can be effectively and ecologically stewarded and protected.

Works Cited [1] Forman-Cook, Whitney. “Smokey Bear’s Birthday Is Fast Approaching! Who’s Up for a History Lesson?”

National Association of State Foresters, 3 Aug. 2022, www.stateforesters.org/2022/08/03/smokey-bearsbirthday-is-fast-approaching-whos-up-for-a-historylesson/.

[2] Grennan, Rory. “Getting the Hat Right: The Untold Origin of Smokey Bear.” University of Illinois Archives, 23 Aug. 2013, archives.library.illinois.edu/2013/08/23/ the-birth-of-smokey-bear/.

[3] “About the PSA Campaign.” Ad Council, 2025.

[4] Minor, Jesse, and Geoffrey A. Boyce. “Smokey Bear and the Pyropolitics of United States Forest Governance.”

Political Geography, vol. 62, 2018, pp. 79–93.

[5] Donovan, Geoffrey H., and Thomas C. Brown. “Be Careful What You Wish For: The Legacy of Smokey Bear.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, vol. 5, no. 2, 2007, pp. 73–79.

[6] Puig-Gironès, Roger, et al. “The Use of Fire to Preserve Biodiversity under Novel Fire Regimes.”

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 380, no. 1924, 2025.

[7] “The Ecological Benefits of Fire.” National Geographic Society, 15 July 2022.

[8] Smith, Will, Timothy Neale, and Jessica K. Weir.

“Persuasion without Policies: The Work of Reviving Indigenous Peoples’ Fire Management in Southern Australia.” Geoforum, vol. 120, 2021, pp. 82–92.

[9] Loehle, Craig, et al. “Forest Management Is Key for Conserving Biodiversity and Providing Ecosystem Services in the United States.”

Forests, vol. 15, no. 12, 2024.

[10] “Smokey’s Story.”

Smokey Bear, 2019.

Cost-Shifting Concerns: Don’t Pay for a Data Center’s Transmission Lines!

by DIYA KANDHRA With threats of climate change impacts worsening over the coming decades, renewable energy and investing into the electric grid is frequently cited as a key mitigating solution. However, as the AI boom has given rise to power-hungry data centers, the electric grid’s infrastructure is being pressured into expansion, with a new threat arising— residential ratepayers footing the bill for electric grid infrastructure (principally transmission lines) used only to serve data centers.

What Is Transmission, and Why Is It Important?

Transmission and distribution electric power lines operate as the liaison between large-scale electricity generation and end-use electricity consumption for homes, businesses, and large industries (usually three electric consumer classes). Transmission operates at high voltages and transfers energy over long distances, and conversely, distribution wires operate at lower voltages and carry energy over short distances.

CAISO (California’s regional electric grid) broadly classifies transmission into three categories, similarly used by other regional grids: (1) reliability-driven (“needed to serve load reliably and meeting NERC national standards”), (2) policy-driven (“needed to deliver renewable generation to load centers to meet state clean energy goals”), and (3) economic-driven (to

“reduce the cost of energy to ratepayers by, for example, reducing grid congestion costs”).

Long-distance transmission has been shown to provide some economic benefits in transporting low-cost renewable power, where there is an abundance of energy production but not enough electric consumers. As more generation seeks to get interconnected with the grid, transmission will be critical for “unlocking” that renewable energy and connecting it with growing end-use electricity consumption (particularly building electrification, electric vehicle charging, and large loads like data centers). In fact, the undersupply of transmission, and the long permitting and regulatory process to get more transmission and grid upgrades built, is the reason that interconnection queues across US regional grids are each facing a multi-years long backlog, halting late-stage projects that otherwise could soon be operational.

Existing literature particularly cites high-voltage transmission as being chronically underinvested into, with the Clean Air Task Force estimating California alone will need between “$46 billion to $63 billion in new high-voltage transmission infrastructure investments to deliver a clean energy electric grid by 2045”. In their Mind the Regulatory Gap whitepaper, RMI also highlights that high voltage regional transmission investment has trended downwards due to the predominant build-out of smaller, lower-voltage utility transmission projects and local upgrades, since these projects can serve immediate local grid needs without the same regulatory scrutiny and oversight as regional projects. According to supporting analysis from Grid Strategies and the Brattle Group, while transmission spending hit a record high in 2023, only 55 miles of new highvoltage transmission was added nationally, with 90% of transmission spending occurring for lower-voltage reliability upgrades.

Data Centers Connecting to the Grid: Consumer Cost Shift Impacts According to CAISO’s 2025-2026 Transmission Planning Report, the California Energy Commission (CEC) forecasts as of January 2026 that data center demand alone in the state will rise up to 1.8 GW by 2030, and 4.9 GW by 2040. Considering that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) expects new statewide peak demand by 2030 to reach over 30 GW, it’s clear that data center demand (potentially reaching up to one-sixth of total statewide peak electricity use) is creating immense strain on existing and future grid resources. This is especially visually evident by the 2024 Integrated Energy Policy Report forecast, which shows the statewide coincident peak accelerating much faster than prior estimates.

As data centers connect to the grid and impose new large loads on constrained, existing generation resources, they require transmission lines to bring in new power to serve their load, and trigger local infrastructure upgrades (such as new substations or reconductoring) so that serving their load doesn’t compromise the quality of electric service to existing customers. New transmission lines and grid upgrades can cost millions of dollars, and usually they are proposed to serve demand across multiple customers, justifying socializing the project costs across a sub-region with multiple customers (’the ratebase’). Data centers break this paradigm by creating a large load pocket as a single customer, thus triggering expensive grid upgrades that wouldn’t have existed without their interconnection, and socializing the cost of grid infrastructure to all ratepayers despite the grid infrastructure largely serving them or not being needed without their interconnection. Furthermore, hyperscale data centers (developed by tech giants like Meta and AWS) can usually afford to pay for the grid upgrades they trigger— highlighting the principle injustice of residential ratepayers bearing higher energy costs from data center transmission.

Literature-Backed Evidence of Cost-Shifting There has already been a lot of documented evidence of data center-attributable costs across regional electric grids that have entered their respective ratebases. Particularly, an investigation from Mike Jacobs, Senior Energy Analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, found that several utilities across various planning regions (but most prominently in PJM) were upgrading their transmission from local utility planning to that of regional planning.

This is significant because when local utility projects discreetly add data center-exclusive transmission to regional plans, these projects forgo the same regulatory approval that projects in the regional plan usually receive (as discussed above in RMI’s Mind the Regulatory Gap report). Additionally, regional projects that are found to be necessary for wider grid reliability can socialize their costs across the ratebase, since combined FERCapproved project costs lose their individual cost causation from the grid customers that triggered the project. These socialized costs can include interconnection costs and transmission costs, which force residential ratepayers to bear the costs of grid infrastructure that they don’t directly benefit from under false pretenses of wider grid

reliability. In the table above, we can see that over $4.3 billion in data center transmission costs were approved from PJM’s Regional Transmission Plan into the respective ratebases of seven states, with nearly half of those socialized data center transmission costs being in Virginia, hosting the highest concentration of data centers in the US. A whitepaper from Harvard Law’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, titled, Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility Ratepayers Are Paying for Big Tech’s Power, uses PJM’s $5 billion of approved transmission projects in their 2022 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan to illustrate unjust socialized data center transmission costs. PJM’s cost allocation methodology for regional transmission projects includes splitting half of the costs proportional to utilities’ share of regional power, and the other half of costs proportional to simulated utility benefits from the operation of the proposed transmission projects.

Although this allocation resulted in several states experiencing undue burden on residential ratepayers (with Virginia’s largest IOU embedding over half of its allocated regional transmission costs into its residential ratebase), PJM claims that regional transmission, regardless of direct beneficiaries, benefits all ratepayers by improving system-wide grid reliability and quality of service.

Besides approved regional transmission plans, another possibility of data center transmission costs shifting onto consumers is through special contracts between utilities and data centers, such that special conditions allow for data centers to pay disproportionately less for the amount of energy they consume (ex: lowered electricity rates due to contractual curtailment during peak hours).

In some cases, such as Meta’s data center in the Richland Parish of Louisiana, data centers have their own transmission lines that will be paid for by utility customers due to the data center’s wider promised economic benefits of job creation and local economic investment.

Empirical Observations of Potential Future Data Center Transmission Cost-Shifts in California: CAISO’s 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 Transmission Plan have also shown evidence of planned transmission and grid infrastructure projects supporting data centers being justified for cost allocation to the wider ratebase.

Although data centers have been independently studied

by CAISO in large load cluster studies, several grid

infrastructure projects that have cited data center influence have been proposed on the guise of supporting widespread grid reliability. Using key word searches for “data center” and “large load”, I identified four transmission or grid reinforcement projects in the 20242025 CAISO Transmission Plan that were built at least partially in response to data center load in the regional grid: (1) the Ames Distribution—Palo Alto 115 kV transmission line, (2) the San Jose B-NRS 230 kV line, (3) the Metcalf 500/230 kV Transformer Bank Addition (supporting a Silicon Valley demand pocket of predominantly large load), part of the Greater Bay Area 500-kV plan, and (4) South Oakland Reinforcement Project.

Moreover, two additional reliability projects have been named in CAISO’s 2025-2026 Transmission Plan that have used justification from data-center driven load growth: (1) DeAnza 115 kV substation, where a significant 50% load growth is “primarily driven by…contributions from new large load interconnections”, and (2) the Monta Vista 230/115 kV Transformer Bank, where large load interconnections are in part responsible for a projected load growth rise from 480 MW in 2027 to 730 MW in 2040.

After reliability-classified project costs are approved by FERC, CAISO’s Transmission Access Charge (TAC) partially recovers the cost of electric transmission service in its planning region by socializing the transmission revenue requirement (approved by FERC) across the gross load in the CAISO region. Moreover, there are high voltage TAC charges for facilities at 200 kV or above (paid as a single rate for all CAISO ratepayers), and low voltage TAC charges for facilities at 200 kV or below (with rates varying by utility). Applying this regulatory background to the data center projects identified above, we see first observe that the four identified projects in the 2024-2025 period have the following estimated individual and cumulative costs in millions of dollars: (1) Ames Distribution, $84M, (2) San Jose B-NRS line, $200M, (3) Metcalf Substation, $182M, (3) South Oakland, $250M— totaling $716M. Notably, in the 2024-2025 Transmission Plan, CAISOanalysis of how TAC rates would increase over time with the 2024-2025 proposed projects (shown at left), and saw that socialized transmission rates would increase by $1.78 each year, starting in 2025, reaching a projected maximum of $21.37 in 2036. Separately, the two identified 2025-2026 projects that in-part were justified from data centers load growth have individual costs (in millions of dollars) of $260M (DeAnza 115kV

Substation), and $104M (Monta Vista Transformer Bank), totaling $364M. Although the draft 2025-2026 plan doesn’t include TAC analysis due to methodology revisions, the 2024 estimated long-term rise in socialized transmission costs implies that more transmission projects will also result in significant TAC charge increases.

Ongoing Debates About Data Center Impacts on Electric Affordability This discussion begs the question: should data centers be powered by on-site generation and batteries, as opposed to formally connecting to the grid and triggering grid upgrades? This is one of the many active debates surrounding data centers in the energy industry: co-locating generation on-site with large loads. Data centers have considered colocation due to desires for guaranteed uninterrupted energy delivery for 100% uptime, avoiding the years-long backlog and high costs of grid interconnection, and concerns about shifting the cost of transmission and grid infrastructure to non-large load ratepayers, especially for stranded assets (infrastructure built for load that fails to materialize). However, co-located loads rarely exist completely off-grid due to energy reliability concerns, so data centers that seek grid interconnection without the use of transmission FERC raised concerns that co-located large loads maintain an unfair advantage in avoiding the transmission charges that usually follow generation interconnection, thus contributing less to overall socialized transmission charges borne by remaining ratepayers. On the other hand, keeping data centers connected to the grid and having them pay for transmission access charges can possibly induce lower rate pressure by absorbing fixed socialized grid costs, since data centers draw such a large amount of energy from the grid (the MWh denominator enlarges compared to fixed costs in the numerator of socialized transmission costs). Using this logic, PG&E’s own estimates state that “every 1,000 MW of new data center demand could lower all PG&E customer bills by 1–2%”. Downwards rate pressure from data centers still requires a lot of empirical observation before accepted as a reliable outcome of grid connection.

Data centers’ impacts on electric affordability for all ratepayers on the grid also extends far beyond conversations of grid interconnection and transmission. As one example, FERC is set to address whether it is “unduly necessary” to apply new rate structures exclusively to data centers, since there have been fragmented state approaches to data center energy rates (particularly with Virginia proposing a new rate class for data centers, though other states are yet to follow suit).

Conclusion: Developments and Emerging Solutions to Address Cost Shifts There are already a few policy responses for mitigating data center transmission cost shifts across several grid footprints, with PG&E’s Rule 30 residential tariff being directly applicable to CAISO’s above projected TAC costs.

Although currently implemented as an interim tariff, according to PG&E, Rule 30 “would require large transmission-level customers to prefund up to 100% of the cost of facilities built to serve their new load”, and would require developers to “advance payment for the cost of all transmission network facilities before CAISO’s cost allocation applies”. This means that data centers that trigger grid upgrades or require their own transmission lines would be responsible to pay upfront to build the grid infrastructure instead of ratepayers. Nevertheless, cost allocation and cost causation stances are still in development, following an ongoing CPUC proceeding.

Outside of its Rule 30 tariff, PG&E’s CFO Carolyn Burke has cited that the investor-owned utility is no longer proactively building transmission to attract data centers due to three-fold focus on upgrading existing assets, investing in safety and reliability, and working to improve PG&E’s credit rating. This is significant because investorowned utilities have a regulated rate-of-return where higher approved consumer electricity prices can translate to higher profit from the utility’s electricity sales. This usually creates a perverse incentive to “gold-plate” grid infrastructure projects to raise their demonstrated cost and justify higher electricity rates, so PG&E’s decision to build infrastructure for existing data centers rather than proactively has the advantage of protecting consumers by not

shifting grid costs before it is proven necessary.

California Public Advocates Office. “Transmission Data Dashboard.” Dec. 2024, www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.

Beyond data centers and to return to the original gov/-/media/cal-advocates-website/files/presspremise, transmission lines are necessary for the grid’s room/reports-and-analyses/241023-public-advocatesfunctioning overall and to bring in more renewable office-transmission-data-dashboard.pdf. power, and thus its essential that grid reliability projects Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE). are socialized per normal with projects that are the most Improving Transmission Financing in California: cost-effective and responsibly financed as possible.

Alternative Models and Policy Strategies to Increase Affordability. UC Berkeley School of Law, Oct. 2024, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law and Equitable Energy www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/archive/ addresses transmission financing in their whitepaper 2024/10/Improving-Transmission-Financing-intitled Improving Transmission Financing in California, California-CLEE.pdf. and via case studies and a simple scenario analysis, they Clavenna, Scott. “The Rules around Data Center Cost find that public financing methods (such as state-issued Allocation Are Getting Clearer.” Latitude Media, 26 Feb. bonds, and public-private structures) are more likely to 2025, www.latitudemedia.com/news/the-rules-aroundresult in cost-competitive overall transmission costs than data-center-cost-allocation-are-getting-clearer/. utility-built infrastructure. This robust paper also Clean Air Task Force and Net Zero California. Wired for includes several international case studies of Savings Nationwide. Clean Air Task Force, Dec. 2024, transmission projects built by third-party developers, cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/01211402/wiredwhich together with other research (i.e. Brattle), has for-savings-nationwide.pdf. contributed to developing a compendium of best Eisenberg, Stephen. “Can Regulators Protect Small practices for the US to follow. Future analysis on the Customers from Rising Transmission Costs for Big Data implementation and efficacy of state transmission Centers?” Johns Hopkins – Ralph O’Connor Sustainable agencies (such as Colorado’s CETA and New Mexico’s Energy Institute, 12 Dec. 2024, energyinstitute.jhu.edu/ RETA), as well as California’s new Transmission can-regulators-protect-small-customers-from-risingInfrastructure Accelerator (a new public-private transmission-costs-for-big-data-centers/. transmission financing initiative), would be helpful in Jacobs, Mike. “Data Centers Are Already Increasing further illuminating real-world performance and learning Your Energy Bills. We Have the Receipts.” The lessons.

Equation, Union of Concerned Scientists, 29 Sept. 2025, blog.ucs.org/mike-jacobs/data-centers-are-alreadyTransmission projects built cost effectively, whether for increasing-your-energy-bills/. data centers or remaining rate classes, are economically Murphy, Ryan. “Why More Residents Are Saying “No” efficient and should be sought after. But first, we have to to AI Data Centers in Their Backyard.” NPR, 17 July defend ratepayer affordability and ensure that data 2025, www.npr.org/2025/07/17/nx-s1-5469933/virginiacenter transmission costs aren’t shifted to consumers. data-centers-residents-saying-no.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company. “Electric Rule No. Works Cited 30—Transmission-Level Interconnections.” PG&E Tariff Book, 2026, www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ Abraham, Roshan. “Louisiana Hands Meta a Tax Break ELEC_RULES_30.pdf. and Power for Its Biggest Data Center.” WIRED, 22 Penrod, Emma. “PG&E Avoids “Big Bets” as Data Sept. 2025, www.wired.com/story/louisiana-hands-meta- Center Demand Softens.” Utility Dive, 27 Oct. 2025, a-tax-break-and-power-for-its-biggest-data-center/. www.utilitydive.com/news/data-center-pge-earningsCalifornia Independent System Operator. “2024-2025 wildfire/803766/.

Transmission Plan.” Revised Draft, CAISO, 14 May Peskoe, Ari, and Eliza Martin. “Extracting Profits from 2025, www.caiso.com/documents/revised-draft-2024the Public: How Utility Ratepayers Are Paying for Big 2025-transmission-plan.pdf.

Tech’s Power.” Harvard Law School | Environmental & California Independent System Operator. Draft - 2025Energy Law Program, 5 Mar. 2025, 2026 Transmission Plan. 7 Apr. 2026, stakeholdercenter. eelp.law.harvard.edu/extracting-profits-from-the-publiccaiso.com/InitiativeDocuments/Draft-2025-2026how-utility-ratepayers-are-paying-for-big-techs-power/.

Transmission-Plan.pdf.

design by NATALIE SU

Pfeifenberger, Johannes, et al. “Contrasting Competitively-Bid Transmission Investments in the U.S. and Abroad.” The Brattle Group, 13 May 2014, www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/6031_ubs _-_brattle_competitive_transmission_presentation_ 051314.pdf “Powering San Jose’s Tech Future: New Agreement with PG&E Unlocks Growth for Data Centers.” SJ Economy, City of San José, 21 Aug. 2025, www.sjeconomy.com/ Home/Components/News/News/6865/4678.

Queued Up…But In Need of Transmission. US Department of Energy | Office of Policy, Apr. 2022, www.energy.gov/documents/queued-upbut-needtransmission.

Shreve, Nathan, et al. “Fewer New Miles: Strategic Industries Held Back By Slow Pace Of Transmission.”

Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, 15 July 2025, cleanenergygrid.org/portfolio/report-fewer-new-milesstrategic-industries-held-back-by-slow-pace-oftransmission/.

Silverman, Abraham. “Can Regulators Protect Small Customers from Rising Transmission Costs for Big Data Centers?” Utility Dive, 11 Dec. 2024, www.utilitydive. com/news/regulators-protect-small-customers-risingtransmission-costs-data-centers/735155/.

Wayner, Claire, Kaja Rebane, and Chaz Teplin. “Mind the Regulatory Gap: How to Enhance Local Transmission Oversight.” RMI, 2024, rmi.org/insight/mind-the-regulatory-gap/.

2025-2026 Staff Editors-in-Chief

Design Staff

Indra Deshmukh Milo Davis-Bonk

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