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In this blog and in my book Reality Check, I’ve frequently complained about science-denying politicians pushing policies which are in direct conflict with scientific evidence and reality: the creationist agenda in public schools, distorting history to serve the religious extremists, or acting on behalf of their energy industry donors to deny the reality of climate change and attack the EPA, NASA, NOAA, the NSF, and legitimate scientific organizations. So it gives me great pleasure to praise public figures who stand up for science and science-based policy, and pass laws that benefit people and the environment, rather than powerful special interests and the science deniers of every stripe. Nowhere is this more apparent than my home state, California.

Immunizing Children

Last week, the state legislature passed, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a no-nonsense measure that made childhood vaccinations mandatory except for extraordinary medical circumstances. No more will the anti-vaxxers in my state be able to use their “personal beliefs” to endanger other children through their own foolishness and believing debunked garbage from the internet. The problem was a severe one in our state, with its huge population and large number of anti-vaxxers driven by Hollywood celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. The medical community has been battling the anti-vaxxers for years with limited success, until serious outbreaks of measles at Disneyland, and other deadly outbreaks of rubella and whooping cough started killing people. But State Senator Richard Pan, M.D., who sponsored the bill, managed to get it through both houses of the Legislature by big majorities (despite a handful of GOP naysayers who thought in impinged on “personal freedom and privacy”). Then Gov. Brown signed it as soon as it reached his desk, and the bill is now law.

Anti-vaxxer parents will no longer be able to send their disease-prone kids to infect the rest of us, and herd immunity should improve quickly. This is particularly serious, because unvaccinated kids are a deadly threat to children too young to be vaccinated, or those with compromised or weakened immune systems. Naturally, the anti-vaxxers have been angry and strident in their reactions to the measure, and our state legislatures have to have armed guards thanks to death threats from the science deniers. But starting next year, they can no longer send their unvaccinated kids to public schools, and must either do the right thing, or homeschool their kids.

Confronting Environmental Challenges

California has long been at the forefront of environmental issues and legislation, with strict laws that govern most polluting industries. (As a consulting paleontologist, I have to be very aware of the CEQA—California Environmental Quality Act—that governs nearly all industry and development). We have the toughest air-pollution standards in the country, and as a consequence, the horrible smog I remember as a child growing up in Los Angeles no longer occurs. Stung by two major oil spills off the Santa Barbara Coast, California tries to regulate these dangerous polluters more than any other state, although as the recent oil spill demonstrates, there are always slip-ups. This has been true no matter which party rules in Sacramento, and both Republican (Schwarzenegger) and Democratic (Gray Davis, Jerry Brown) governors have pushed California to become one of the greenest states in the union, with many anti-global warming bills passed and green-energy measures in place. A few days ago, Governor Brown met with Pope Francis over their common goals of battling climate change and curbing environmental damage by greedy corporations, and on July 8 he gave a strongly worded speech in which he called the climate deniers “troglodytes.” This is no mere posturing. California’s huge population and size is matched by incredible economic power, from the tech wizards of Silicon Valley to the center of the entertainment industry in Hollywood and environs (movies, TV, and music especially) to the immense wealth in oil and agricultural products. California’s Gross Domestic Product (over $14 trillion) is larger than all but seven countries in the world, so if California were a nation by itself, it would be the world’s eighth largest economy. Brown’s speech was given at a conference where California is collaborating with nations and organizations around the world to battle climate change. This is moving forward, even as Washington is paralyzed by climate deniers who currently run the show and doing all they can to cripple federally-funded climate science at the NSF and NASA and NOAA, while trying to stop the EPA from doing its job.

Shouting from the Rooftops

But I want to particularly highlight an impressive example of how we get things done here. Three years ago, my good friends Tony Barnosky (professor of paleoecology at UC Berkeley) and Liz Hadly, his wife, and professor of paleoecology at Stanford, got an unusual call. As they recount it, they got a one-line email from Governor Brown asking that they call him. Thinking it was a prank, Tony called the number and left a message, and a few hours later the Governor was on the phone with Tony. Brown was interested in their newly published paper in Nature documenting how humans were causing the greatest mass extinction in earth history. The paper had gotten decent media coverage, but Brown asked Tony and Liz: “Why aren’t you guys shouting this from the rooftops?” “We thought we were,” recalls Hadly. Brown then asked them to rewrite their paper as a consensus statement for policy makers. The language of the report soon became part of the climate pact between California and other places, such as Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, as well as the IPCC. Tony and Liz worked on it for more than a year, forced to think about the practical consequences of their scientific research. As reported in Nature:

“The consensus statement is more valuable than anything else I’ve done in my career,” says Hadly. “We never could have guessed the reach this paper has had.”

Before the document could help to inform international negotiations, Barnosky and Hadly had to transform the seven-page paper they had written for scientists into a document aimed at world leaders, policy-makers and the public. Already on sabbatical to write a book, Barnosky took the lead in writing the 46-page statement. He and Hadly discussed the structure while working on it at night and weekends from their home in Palo Alto, California. Barnosky would write draft sections in intensive bursts and send them around to Hadly and the 14 other co-authors. The hardest part, he says, was summarizing the 126 cited studies—without using any scientific jargon. It took 21 iterations to nail down the wording.

This was new territory for them, but they had a guide. “Governor Brown taught us how to do this. He told us what kind of format he needed, not just to understand, himself, but to present to policy-makers,” says Hadly.

The politician had not input on the substance of the document, but he was instrumental in crafting the clarity of its presentation, from the simple font, to the necessity of bullet points and a one-page opening summary, to the choice to highlight “scientific consensus” in red.

Then Tony and Liz, with Brown’s help, got the document signed by 522 top scientists around the world, to make the nature of the consensus more clear. In May 2013, Brown held a press conference with Tony and Liz to give this information publicity that no scientist can command in normal circumstances. As the article continues:

400 business, government and civic leaders packed into a conference room at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, for a conference on sustainability technology.

The two scientists were out of their element, with Barnosky in a rarely worn suit and Hadly feeling a bit odd in high heels and a new purple dress. They presented the governor with the report, officially called Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century. … In his address to the crowd, Brown chastised the media for its anaemic coverage of climate change. He said that a different approach was required to achieve the critical mass needed to create change—something like the consensus statement. … As the report’s roll-out continued, it was not uncommon for Barnosky and Hadly to receive urgent requests from Brown’s office. One day they got a call asking for hard copies of the consensus statement that the governor could take to southern California for a meeting with President Obama and President Xi Jinping. They went to a printing shop, ran off two dozen copies, then Barnosky and his daughter drove the reports to Sacramento, a six-hour round trip.

During this frantic period, Hadly and Barnosky found themselves devoting up to half of their time in support of the release. It seems to have been worth it. All of this collaboration between research scientists and the Governor has had extraordinary impact, far in excess of the normal reach of scientists filtered through the media. Together, Brown, Hadly, and Barnosky have worked hard to convey the substance of the document to political leaders in Norway, Japan, Mexico, Israel, Malaysia, and Nepal. Barnosky argues this reach could not have been achieved without Brown’s involvement: