Episode description

After weeks of torrential rain storms that have flooded communities, toppled trees and brought on huge economic devastations, Yana Garcia joins Inside the Hive to share how environmental justice will play a role in recovery.

For weeks, a battery of atmospheric rains has bombarded California, destroying roads, triggering mudslides, and flooding homes and farms — all that following months of drought, and before that, wildfires. This week, Inside the Hive is joined by Yana Garcia, California’s Secretary of Environmental Protection, who describes the damages wrought by these extreme storms, and explains what California is doing about it — including facing off with oil companies over the fossil fuel emissions the state argues have intensified weather events in California and beyond. Garcia was an environmental justice lawyer before becoming head of the state’s environmental protection agency, and a native Californian, describes the weather changes she’s observed first hand growing up in Oakland, and the way forward in the fight to correct the climatological balance (plus, she tells us what her mysterious tattoos mean).