Berkeley: Environmental activism and 'risk management'

Berkeley has announced its Chief Resiliency Officer (CRO), as part of its membership in the '100 Resilient Cities' program, which was started by and is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.  With the appointment of Timothy Burroughs as Berkeley's 'CRO', some twitter accounts with ties to the 100 Resilient Cities program have been promoting Berkeley's participation in the 'resiliency' program. 'Resiliency' and 'risk management' are heavily used buzzwords in press releases and promotional material regarding the Rockefeller Foundation's '100 Resilient Cities' program.  One of the major themes for the program is to evaluate the risks associated with Global Climate Change; for what it's worth, the program does not claim to deny climate change.  However, plans of action and decisions made to address climate change are being led by big development companies, and major multi-national corporations.
http://www.cityofberkeley.info/City_Manager/Press_Releases/2014/2014-07-16_CITY_APPOINTS_ITS_FIRST_CHIEF_RESILIENCE_OFFICER.aspx

The Mayor of Berkeley, Tom Bates, wants to use the resilient cities program to push Berkeley's Climate Action Plan.  The Climate Action Plan is controversial, because it calls for for increasing the presence of biotech companies, or companies that have dealings in biotech.  The British Petroleum UC/LBNL lab, which opened in 2012, was lauded as the cornerstone of the revitalization Berkeley's downtown, even though the building drew heavy criticism during BP's gulf oil disaster.  Even prior to the 2010 oil disaster, there were concerns over privatization of research, as per condition to BP giving the UC the $500 million dollar lab, BP was granted control over research done in the lab.  After the BP oil spill, a UC/LBNL scientist claimed that oil-eating microbes was eating the oil plume at an unprecedented rate, to the point that the plume was undetectable.  It was not long before the UC was criticized for releasing such an obviously false report.  While normally, UC development does not need much approval by city council, due to the placement of the lab on land newly acquired by the UC/LBNL in downtown Berkeley, the mayor of Berkeley lobbied at city council meetings for the lab as part of the Climate Action Plan.  The mayor and city council also debated the placement of a UC biotech lab near adjacent to bay-side Aquatic Park, a very ecologically sensitive area for birds.  The plan was defeated due to public opposition to biotech near the waterside, and near Aquatic Park.  The are many unknown risks associated with biotechnology.  The annual SynBio Watch Conference takes place at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, hosted by biotech whistleblower Becky McClain.  The conference helped raise opposition to the biotech lab near Aquatic Park.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/24/us-oil-spill-microbes-idUSTRE67N5CC20100824
http://www.synbiowatch.org

While Berkeley city government has been trying push for biotech, it has not actively promoted urban farming.  Because of California's drought, and other effects of climate change, many agricultural areas in California are coming under stress.  However Berkeley is not as dry as other parts of California, due to coastal fog, and overall lower temperatures compared to inland areas.  As such, there could be made a strong case to make for using land in Berkeley for sustainable agriculture, horticulture, and businesses based on conservation or the documentation of nature.  There is an opposition to Berkeley Climate Action Plan, due to the lack of attention to local sustainability.  There is opposition to lose of open space to allegedly green development, and the potential harm to local wildlife by allegedly green tech with known biological/ecological risks.  Coastal fog is not a phenomenon that could be reproduced in inland areas.  The mild "Mediterranean" climate is a valuable natural resource that makes Berkeley very suitable agriculture for food production, or horticultural businesses to sell flowers, tree saplings, etc.  As Berkeley is an urban environment, bio-remediation can be used as a business model.  There are cities in the interior of the greater SF Bay Area that would be more suitable for biotech; cities in the valley regions that are not near the more ecological sensitive waterside, where biotech accidents can be more easily isolated and contained.

When it comes to 'risk management', and identifying challenges to Berkeley's Climate Action Plan, resources available to city government through '100 Resilient Cities' will allow the tracking of activist groups, the disruption of opposition politics, and manipulation of media.  One of the corporate partners in the '100 Resilient Cities' program is Palantir, a surveillance corporation with strong ties to government surveillance and military agencies, and with a history of spying on activists and journalists.    Despite representing the home of the Free Speech Movement, Berkeley government has not expressed any concerns over Palantir's ties to '100 Resilient Cities', nor has it been transparent as to type of data collection and data analysis acheived through the  information infrastructure provided to '100 Resilient Cities' by Palantir.  Berkeley's entrance into the '100 Resilient Cities' was not a democratically chosen decision.  Building up to Berkeley's initial application to join the program there were not city council meetings to address conditions and ramifications of participating in '100 Resilient Cities'.  Joining the program was a decision made - without opportunity for public debate - by the mayor and local government officials loyal to the mayor's politics and Climate Action Plan.  The city of Berkeley now has access to advanced tool-sets, through Palantir, to break up environmental activism that challenges the current agenda to develop Berkeley into a biotech hub.  Environmental activism is considered terrorism by government agencies; one of the goals of Berkeley's Hazard Mitigation Plan (part of the resiliency program) is to address the threat of terrorism in Berkeley, which leaves open the potential for environmental activism to be seen as a perceived 'risk' to Berkeley's 'resiliency'.