Climate Change Is Already Impacting SF. So Why Aren't the Mayoral Candidates Talking About It?

Housing. Homelessness. Public safety. Ethics scandals. San Francisco’s candidates for mayor loudly argued over each of these issues. But they have yet to have a clear conversation about how climate change alters the city’s fabric.

With Election Day just weeks away, it is bewildering why the candidates have largely avoided such a big topic for San Franciscans, especially since the city just this month roasted through its hottest heat wave in 85 years. That’s after enduring back-to-back years of flooding, as it faces an uncertain future because of sea-level rise.

“It is head scratching,” said Mark Lubell, a professor of environmental science and policy at UC Davis. “They’re not making it much of an issue, despite the fact that it’s important for all the issues they are talking about, and they could brag about it. They could have debated with each other about who’s got the strongest record.”

KQED asked each of the candidates about their policies, and they all largely agreed that focusing on climate change is imperative for the city’s success. Most are critical of Mayor London Breed’s climate record, claiming she has not done enough to prepare the city for extreme storms. Breed refuted these critiques, arguing she incorporates climate into all of her policies, from addressing a lack of housing to curing flood woes in the city’s most at-risk neighborhoods.

She used a similar argument to explain why she did not position the issue as a major part of her reelection campaign.

“We shouldn’t be talking about climate change as a separate issue from housing, transportation networks and infrastructure,” she told KQED. “It needs to be embedded in everything that we do.”

Still, climate policy experts said that not clearly talking about climate change as a focus in the race reflects how the next mayor will lead.

This is San Francisco, after all, and all the mayoral candidates have said that they believe in climate change. Many have created policies that affect San Franciscans, and any of the five candidates could be “a real sustainability rock star,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at UC Berkeley.

The challenge for the candidates during this campaign — and why Kammen said they’ve downplayed the issue of climate — is that the city has a “serious image problem” and needs to address “big ticket problems” like housing and homelessness.

“All of these issues are key, but if you don’t put climate at the center of your agenda and you’re trying to be the mayor of a major U.S. city, you are simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” he said.

By publicly focusing very little on their climate policies, most candidates, including Mayor Breed, missed a pivotal moment to convince voters that they care about the city’s future in a warming world, Kammen said.

“I don’t think there’s any excuse not to make this a lead story except that politics is all about the whac-a-mole story,” he said. “Climate is a simmering crisis, and with the recent heat wave, it’s literally and figuratively a simmering crisis.”

‘Real room for the candidates to differ’

The five leading candidates in the race — Mayor London Breed, former Mayor Mark Farrell, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Supervisor Ahsha Safaí and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie — told KQED climate change is an integral part of their campaigns. Lurie is the only candidate who lists climate change as a priority on his website and said, “It’s a shame” that none of his opponents have done so.

Lurie has centered much of his candidacy around issues of housing and homelessness, but he told KQED that “you can walk and chew gum at the same time. And we need to address crime and homelessness and protect our residents from both current and future climate threats.”

The candidates agree that whoever voters elect as mayor must lead the city in preparing for sea-level rise, protecting vulnerable populations from floodwaters and extreme heat. Read more about each of the candidates’ positions here.

Breed’s opponents have all found common ground in attacking the incumbent mayor, arguing she has not done enough to protect San Franciscans from the climate effects — especially flooding — that impact a large swath of the city.

“We need a mayor who is mature enough to take all of that into account rather than blindly going down one path at the expense of not considering all of the impacts that good science is already telling us about,” Peskin said.

Breed dismissed these criticisms and pointed to her creation of several clear climate policies. In 2021, she released the city’s climate action plan outlining 174 measures to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040. Her Environment Department secured more than $45.8 million in mostly grant funding for climate initiatives to reduce emissions from city buildings, energy efficiency programs and food waste. She said her recreation and park department planted more than 1,500 trees over the past year, and Breed helped establish a study with the Port of San Francisco researching how to reinvent 7.5 miles of the bayshore for rising seas.

But some of her opponents, such as Farrell, don’t think Breed has taken climate issues like “flooding seriously,” and that’s “symptomatic of the underlying issues at City Hall” under her leadership.

“It doesn’t appear to be a priority, planning for future extreme weather events,” Farrell said. “There has been talk, but no action on day-to-day climate issues that we can handle in San Francisco and that can make a difference in our residents’ lives.”

In early 2023, back-to-back atmospheric rivers flooded parts of the city. Extreme rainfall caused localized flooding, inundated streets and soaked homes and businesses. Storms regularly cause millions of gallons of wastewater to flow into the streets and the bay, an issue that has the city siding with fossil fuel and other industry groups against the federal EPA in hugely consequential litigation currently before the Supreme Court.

At the only mayoral debate in September, Safaí criticized Breed for getting on a plane “to go party in Las Vegas” during back-to-back atmospheric rivers that flooded the city in early 2023.

“I wouldn’t leave the city when we have the worst flood in over 75 years,” he said. “I would be on the ground with those impacted. Some significant sewer replacement projects need to be advanced and moved and implemented aggressively.”

Peskin doubled down on how Breed has addressed flooding and said she lacks “direct engagement with the communities that are ground zero” regarding flooding.

“What used to be 100-year floods are now 10-year floods,” he said. “The city needs to start putting together plans about whether or not it makes more economic sense to have an orderly retreat from those areas than to armor or artificially raise the heights of those areas.”

Breed told KQED her opponent’s criticism of how she has dealt with flooding is an “unfortunate assessment,” adding that the city is investing $634 million into capital projects to unclog flooding woes in three parts of the city: the Wawona area, the 17th and Folsom neighborhood and the area near Lower Alemany.

“These projects are well on their way,” she said. “We also understand that this problem in the past was neglected, and a lot of attention wasn’t given to it until I stepped in to ensure that we are making the adjustments and fixing it.”

Two reports in the past couple of years point out that the city’s infrastructure isn’t ready for the storms of the future. A 2023 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission study found the city needs to dramatically update its stormwater infrastructure to handle future deluges. In June, the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury released a report that argued bureaucracy is hindering the city from adapting to worsening flood risk due to human-caused climate change.

While Breed’s opponents are attacking her on her climate record, UC Berkeley’s Kammen said she’s done a lot to prepare the city for climate change, including launching the city’s climate action plan to help the city achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

He said whoever San Franciscans elect as mayor has an opportunity to build upon the positive work San Francisco leaders have already accomplished.

“There is meat on the bones,” he said. “San Francisco’s climate action plan is a key start. But there are so many things that the city has not done or the city’s behind on. So there is real reason and real room for the candidates to differ.”