Photo courtesy of robad0b

In his latest article titled, "How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System", published in The Nation, Pollan argues that while a cultural revolution has taken place in American’s perception of what and why we eat, little real change has taken place at the level of policy.

“The food movement has discovered that persuading the media, and even the president, that you are right on the merits does not necessarily translate into change, not when the forces arrayed against change are so strong,” says Pollan.

However, the food movement can take a page from the fight against tobacco in recruiting a powerful ally: the insurance industry. With the passing of Obama’s Patient Protection Act and Affordable Care Act, insurance and government agencies can no longer neglect individuals with preventable, diet-related chronic diseases.

“No longer allowed to cherry-pick the patients they’re willing to cover, or to toss overboard people with chronic diseases, the insurance industry will soon find itself on the hook for the cost of the American diet too,” writes Pollan.

Until now local, grassroots movements to improve food economies haven’t been able to compete with the lobbying efforts of the largest industry in America. But “as soon as the healthcare industry begins to focus on the fact that the government is subsidizing precisely the sort of meal for which the industry (and the government) will have to pick up the long-term tab, eloquent advocates of food system reform will suddenly appear in the unlikeliest places—like the agriculture committees of Congress," writes Pollan.

Wouldn’t that be a welcome change in season.

Water forecasting could be thrown off by a changing climate. Credit: Craig Miller

The severe flooding on the Mississippi River has left a lot of damage in its wake. It's an extreme event that government and insurance companies try to plan for by predicting the risk. But climate change is throwing a wrench in those calculations.

Most of us don't think about risk. We think about randomness. That's illustrated by a scene in the 1982 movie, "The World According to Garp", where Robin Williams is shopping for a new house with his wife. They're standing in front of one home when…a plane crashes into it.

Despite the crash, the Robin Williams character agrees to buy the house saying, "It's been pre-disastered! We'll be safe here."

That may not be a typical reaction, but climatologist Kelly Redmond says it reveals a lot about how we think about risk. "It has to do with how we describe rare things. We spend societally an enormous amount of resources and time and attention guarding against the very worst possibilities."

Listen to the QUEST radio story Insuring for Extreme Weather

You've probably heard of the "100-year flood." That's a flood so severe that it has a one in one hundred chance of happening every year. But how do we know that?

"About the only way we can get at how rare a rare thing is is by looking at a past record," says Redmond. So for floods, government agencies look into the historical record to see when floods happened in the past. They use that record to predict future flood risk.

But this relies on a very basic assumption. According to Redmond, the assumption is that the statistics of the future will look like the statistics of the past.

There's a fancy term for this – it's called stationarity. But there's a problem.

"What we don't know but what we suspect with changes in climate is that those statistics, especially about rare things, may change," says Redmond.

The US is already warming. Climate models show that western states could see more extreme weather as the climate continues to change. So, Redmond says, chances are good the future won't look like the recent past.

Jeanine Jones of the California Department Water of Resources agrees, saying "a lot of California's existing infrastructure was designed on assumptions that are no longer valid."

History of Water Forecasting in the West

Jones says using the past as a guide for the future is a huge part of water planning and building codes. The idea was first adopted in the 1940s and 50s, when dams and infrastructure were built at record speed in western states.

"Congress was looking at all these water development plans coming in from the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation and wanting a common standard to compare all the projects," says Jones.

So they forecasted flood risk and water supply by looking at historical data. "But they had very short data records. Maybe they only measured records of 20 years, 50 years. And that's not really very long," Jones says.

Today, everything from building codes to home insurance is based on this short window of data. And so is another critical forecast.

During the winter, surveyors measure the Sierra Nevada snow pack every month, so they can crunch the numbers and predict the year's water supply.

"It is very widely used by reservoir operators, by water agencies, by farmers who are looking at what are my chances for having a full water supply," says Jones.

But climate models show that more precipitation will fall as rain in California, instead of snow. And that means spring runoff could behave very differently. "At some point, conditions will change enough that we've reached a tipping point where those statistical approaches really aren't valid anymore," Jones says.

An accurate water forecast is crucial to California's economy. So Jones says water officials are looking at using computer models to forecast spring runoff.

But when it comes to updating flood risk and building codes to reflect climate change, Kelly Redmond says that could take decades. "We have to get a buy in from the engineering community, the city planners. Because there's so much expense to goes into building a bridge or a culvert or a building."

A New Breed of Insurance Company

There is one industry that's taking note of climate change – insurance.

"The increased variability in climate is going to start to dramatically affect the profits of corporations worldwide," says David Friedberg, CEO of San Francisco-based Weatherbill.

Weatherbill is something of a next generation insurance company. They start with computer models that simulate weather and climate patterns. "We then use those sorts of models to determine what sort of price we should charge for certain weather events occurring," says Friedberg.

Weatherbill works mostly with farmers, insuring them against extreme weather for between 40 and 400 dollars an acre. "There's a range of things that can occur and that range is certainly widening. And as a result we should start to charge more for those sorts of events when we're insuring them."

Friedberg says this kind of insurance makes sense to a lot of farmers they work with, who are already noticing changing weather patterns. Investor Vinod Kholsa and Google have also noticed and put millions into the company. They're betting new software will be the answer when today's methods no longer work.

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This week's local science event pick focuses on health care reform.

The idea for Kaiser was developed by Dr. Sidney Garfield way back in 1933. He established a prepayment health plan for 5000 workers building the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the Mojave Desert. Workers paid about a nickel a day to receive full medical care from Dr. Garfield. He emphasized prevention and early treatment to prevent more serious problems later.

Fast forward to today, the same issues of prevention to keep down costs are still being discussed today. Certainly, HMOs are not without criticism, but it is certainly a compelling story to trace the development of the modern system from a place of preventative care. Plus, it will be a relief to have a healthcare discussion without all the yelling.

Tom Debley is the author of The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care, the theme of his talk will be "The Long Quest for Health Care Reform: A Bay Area Doctor's Belief in Health Care as a Right." He will trace the story of Dr. Garfield's life because so much less is known about him than his co-founder, Henry J. Kaiser.

The Long Quest for Health Care Reform: A Bay Area Doctor's Belief in Health Care as a Right

When: Tuesday, August 25^th 2009

Where: Commonwealth Club, 595 Market Street 2nd Floor

Cost: $8 members, $15 non-members, Tickets

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Hi everybody. I want to let the QUEST community know that over at KQED’s Health Dialogues, we just launched a new project, called Healthy Ideas: Californians Weigh In on Health Care Reform.

In his 100th day press briefing a few days ago, President Obama reiterated his desire to enact health care reform by the end of 2009. The President has also put out a call to all Americans to submit our ideas on just how to do that. So, Health Dialogues decided that we’d let Washington know what Californians think.

Is the cost of new medical technologies worth the potential health benefits? What can we do to eliminate health disparities across socioeconomic backgrounds? Should everyone be required to purchase health insurance?

Healthy Ideas is a conversation among academics, health care professionals, policy think tanks and the general public about what kind of health care reform California wants and needs. During the next two months, you can join the dialogue by reading our authors’ weekly posts, rating them and contributing your own thoughts and questions. At the end of the project, on July 1, we’ll summarize your ideas and deliver them to California’s representatives in Washington, as well as the Obama Administration, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Edward Kennedy.

To contribute your thoughts and let Washington know what kind of health care reform you want, join the dialogue at Healthy Ideas: Californians Weigh In on Health Care Reform.

Thanks!
Nick Vidinsky
Producer, Health Dialogues

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