Carmel Unified School District’s governing board will hold a special open session meeting Tuesday morning to discuss ways to include the community in the district’s selection process for its next superintendent.

Scheduled for 11 a.m. at the district office, 4380 Carmel Valley Road, the board will “create a plan for soliciting stakeholder participation regarding desired qualities and characteristics in the selection of a superintendent.”

The meeting will not be live-streamed or recorded.

“Historically, (Carmel Unified) has not typically live-streamed or recorded special meetings,” said Michelle Goncalves, executive assistant to the superintendent’s office.

The special meeting comes after several community members criticized the board for a lack of transparency and community collaboration over the selection of the district’s next superintendent.

The board approved a $770,000 separation agreement with Superintendent Ted Knight shortly after the school year started. Although Sharon Ofek has been acting as the interim superintendent since the spring, the board has been divided over how to move forward with the district’s next leader.

In September, Carmel Unified’s board agreed to postpone engaging in a search for the next superintendent and instead voted to consider appointing someone to the role in the future.

But when the agenda item appeared on the closed session agenda for the board’s Nov. 15 meeting, the public was outraged. Several community leaders – including Marcus Michie, the board’s student representative; Elizabeth Marsh, the Association of Carmel Teachers representative; and Lisa Brazil, the California School Employees Association representative – expressed disappointment in the board for a lack of transparency and disregard of community input.

Coming out of closed session at the Nov. 15 meeting, Board President Sara Hinds said the board did not take action to appoint a superintendent and would instead schedule a special open session meeting to discuss plans for including public input.

Tuesday’s meeting agenda says the board will be joined by Valerie Pitts from Hazard Young Attea Associates to “discuss possible options, methods and timing for obtaining community input.”

Southern Californians have much to be thankful for this holiday season as residents of a place that often feels the effects of climate change firsthand. The drought is over, for now, a relatively mild wildfire season is wrapping up and temperatures have been more moderate than in recent years.

But globally, people witnessed the consequences of a warming planet in 2023 like never before.

Scientists say massive wildfires in Canada, deadly flooding in North Africa and record heat waves in Phoenix, to name a few of the year’s extreme weather events, were all supercharged by climate change. This year will almost certainly go down as the hottest on record. One climate group reported that the global average temperature on Friday, Nov. 17 briefly reached more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialization levels for the first time — well above the 1.5-degree goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement to help us avoid more catastrophic effects. And a United Nations report out this week says the planet currently is on pace for nearly 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century.

Such news may not sound like good fodder for conservation at holiday parties or around the family dinner table. That’s why many people still lump climate change in with politics and religion, as topics to be avoided in social settings.

But advocates say if we stop thinking of climate change as a partisan issue, or as something most people choose to believe in, and instead start thinking of it as a fact of life that we all need to cope with, discussing it doesn’t have to be any more controversial than, say, chatting about how we’re gearing up for winter or retirement. More importantly, experts say discussing climate issues with family and friends can help to normalize such talk, clear up misconceptions and make people more empowered to act.

That’s why Fred Smoller, a Chapman University professor who co-founded the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon, said he won’t shy away from raising this “timely and important” topic over the holidays by throwing out ice breakers like:

“Did you see the movie ‘Don’t Look Up?’… What do you think the movie was about?” (Spoiler alert: It was a metaphor for global warming.)

Even if you don’t mention global warming over turkey dinner, we all have at least one relative or friend we can count on to try and stir the pot — and not the one with gravy inside.

So here’s a toolkit of sorts to help you navigate climate conversations this holiday season.

Use your ears

One of the most important ingredients for effective conversation on any thorny topic is already baked into most holiday celebrations, according to Emma Frances Bloomfield, a communications professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who wrote a book about climate skepticism.

Unlike battling strangers over the Internet, she said, “If you’re having a conversation with someone that you genuinely care about, and have a strong relationship with, I think those can be very powerful conversations.”

But Bloomfield said setting aside assumptions, and asking questions to learn more about why people believe what they believe and what they value, is key.

Connecting climate change to what people value is also a favorite strategy for Tori Goebel with the nonprofit group Young Evangelicals For Climate Action. That’s why, she said, “The first step is actually to stop and listen.”

When listening to skeptics express their feelings about the environment, Goebel said she’s heard people say they just have more immediate concerns, such as the health of their children. She then shares how the quality of our air and water are deeply connected to kids’ health.

“I think we can find a lot of common ground by doing that,” she said.

The common ground for family members of Brady Bradshaw, with the Center for Biological Diversity, is a love for the ocean. So he shares how “the oceans literally ‘take the heat’ for us,” absorbing some 90% of atmospheric warming. Bradshaw tells family members that making ocean ecosystems healthy again is a big part of mitigating climate change.

To drive the issue home for his Temecula family, Cooper Proulx, a UC Riverside student who just finished a sustainable home project, points to how air quality issues in the Inland Empire are causing a spike in the rate of childhood asthma.

Steven King, a clean air advocate for Environment California, also likes to share how global warming has affected his life.

“My family had to evacuate from our home in Agoura Hills because of a wildfire that reached our neighborhood,” he said. And with warmer, drier conditions fueling such fires, he notes, “these situations are only becoming more common.”

Responding to common claims

Climate skeptics tend to repeat many of the same arguments when they reject the science that says human activity is causing our planet is warm at an unprecedented rate. Here’s how to respond to a few common claims.

Claim: The planet has always had phases of warming and cooling.

Response: That’s true. Earth’s warming and cooling cycles that have unfolded over millions of years have long been caused by natural factors, such as our planet’s wobbly orbit around the sun and heavy volcanic activity that releases carbon dioxide.

But since humans started burning fossil fuels to power our factories and cars, NASA says global average temperatures have spiked 10 times faster than they did when the Earth was coming out of previous glacial periods. That means it took just 100 years for temperatures to rise 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, or as much as they did over more than 1,000 years during previous, natural warming cycles.

Scientists also know, after studying gases trapped in glacial air bubbles and chemicals in ancient fossils, that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere haven’t been this high since for at least 15 million years. Carbon from burning fossil fuels leaves a distinct chemical signature, so scientists can distinguish man-made changes from natural sources. And there’s simply no scientific way the Earth wouldn’t get warmer when there are more heat-trapping gases in its atmosphere.

Claim: So maybe we’re speeding the cycle up a bit. That doesn’t mean we should change our lives or spend billions trying to slow it down.

Response: Civilization as we know it didn’t exist the last time the planet gradually and naturally got this hot, more than 120,000 years ago. But scientists believe past temperature swings caused some species of ancient humans to die out, while triggering evolutionary changes in others and forcing them to migrate to survive.

If this warming continues to happen 10 times faster than it did in the past, will humans and other living creatures have time to evolve?

We’re already seeing climate refugees, forced to flee the Middle East, North Africa and other places as flooding, droughts and other side effects of climate change make their livelihoods untenable and towns unlivable. Those people have to go somewhere, which is why many political leaders see the warming planet as a national security issue.

Meanwhile, warming already is making disasters such as wildfires more frequent and devastating. The cost in terms of human life, public health and property damage that such disasters generate is difficult to quantify. But the solution is clear: stop burning fossil fuels. And if we don’t spend money now to make that change, those other costs are only going to escalate for the next generations.

Claim: The science on all of this just isn’t settled.

Response: You can seek out scientists who are outliers on any topic. And sure, scientists are still investigating fine points of climate issues. But more than 99% of climate scientists now agree that human activity is driving global warming.

They got there after considering a wide range of research over decades. That includes averaging temperature readings from thousands of weather stations, with that warming trend confirmed by observed changes such as birds migrating sooner, ice sheets melting and ocean acidification increasing. And scientists can see from testing tree rings, ice cores, fossils and lake sediment how modern conditions differ from past cycles.

What to do if the talk gets heated

“The moment you resort to getting upset, any productivity in the conversation has ended.”

That’s the first tip California Environmental Voters offers for navigating climate talk during the holidays. The group recommends staying calm and not taking things personally. But if the other person clearly isn’t interested in a serious discussion, it’s time to let that one go.

If the discussion gets too heated, Smoller said he pivots to the promise of the “sustainability sector,” such as electric cars and solar panels.

Focusing on all of the positive outcomes that can come with such solutions is a favorite move for King. He shares, for example, how climate solutions “also make our air and water cleaner and healthier, save money and strengthen our energy independence.”

How can anyone argue against that?

In September, Ann Soh Woods, founder of Kikori whiskey, hosted a one-night workshop in Downtown L.A.’s Arts District that highlighted koji. Woods chose the location, Baroo, a fermentation-driven Korean restaurant, and invited a Japanese koji expert for guests to learn more about this ancient ingredient. The conversation was paired with koji-infused bites such as katsu chicken and koji-fermented sourdough bread, along with craft cocktails made with Kikori whiskey.

The reason why Soh Woods felt inclined to expand people’s knowledge about koji was that it’s a crucial ingredient to creating Kikori.

“I talk a lot about koji. It’s so important. It’s essential to making Kikori,” said Ann Soh Woods. “I would mention digestive enzymes and aspergillus and mold. Then I would wait, and watch this glazed look fall across my audience. Whether that be a consumer, bar, restaurant, media, the distributor, it always happened.”

ALSO SEE: Koji, an ancient Japanese superfood, is having a moment

She didn’t want to lose her audience right then and there. So she came up with an idea.

“When I talk about this particular step in making Kikori, I’d talk about how we would take the rice and sprinkle it with fairy dust,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not that far off, actually, because koji is almost magical, mystical, and it’s definitely extremely versatile. … To kick start that conversion of the starch to sugar, we add that ‘fairy dust.’ ”

“It’s actually a mold called koji. We use white koji. We let it sit for about 24 hours before adding water and yeast. It sits for about 6 days and we add it to a second mash. Then it’s distilled in a stainless steel pot still to retain as much of that rice flavor as possible. Low temperature, low pressure. Then we barrel age in three different types: American, French and cherry casks for 3 to 8 years.”

Soh Woods wanted to showcase how miso and Kikori whiskey work well together at home so she shared this version of an Old Fashioned with us. Enjoy!

Kikori Miso Old Fashioned

INGREDIENTS

1.5 ounces Kikori Whiskey

0.5 ounces Miso-infused simple syrup (recipe below)

4 dashes aromatic bitters

Shiso leaf

Orange peel

DIRECTIONS

Combine all of the ingredients into an Old Fashioned glass and stir; add a large cube of ice or ice cubes. Garnish with a shiso leaf and orange peel.

Miso infused simple syrup

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1.5 oz red miso paste (Cold Mountain Kyoto Red Miso recommended)

DIRECTIONS

Combine the sugar, water and miso paste into a pot and put over medium heat, bringing it to a boil while stirring with a whisk every few minutes. Once boiling, turn down the heat and simmer for a few minutes, whisking to ensure everything is combined. Carefully strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth set in a strainer and refrigerate until use.

One day, Ayumi Takeuchi strolled into South Coast Plaza and inspiration struck. She saw a menu posted on the marquee at Populaire Modern Bistro. Listed underneath the duck dish description was the word: koji.

Takeuchi stopped in her tracks. Koji is one of the key ingredients in making miso. She works in marketing and business development at Marukome U.S.A., which was founded in Nagano, Japan in 1854. It’s also Japan’s number one miso company. In 2007, Marukome opened its stateside headquarters in Irvine. In addition to miso, Marukome produces different lines of koji for chefs and homecooks. It’s been available to American consumers for nearly a decade but most people are still unfamiliar with it.

After seeing koji listed on Populaire’s menu, Takeuchi asked to meet the chef. She wanted to learn more about how he was using koji in his cooking. It was especially interesting since Weber’s food isn’t Japanese. The menu skews French-inspired new American.

“I was using it to add umami and tenderize my duck breasts,” said Populaire’s chef, Nick Weber.

Weber has experimented with koji for a decade. Admittedly, he wasn’t using Marukome’s koji at first, instead he was fermenting his own.

“I started making miso at The Cannery,” Weber said, referring to an earlier chef’s gig. “I found out about koji through the Bar Tartine cookbook. Then I started experimenting.”

Weber used Spanish gigante beans (also known as white butter beans), garbanzos, and split peas to make his own California-driven miso. When he decided to open Populaire, he began fermenting more miso for the restaurant.

“It’s one of my own pantry ingredients that nobody else has and it just makes my cuisine unique,” said Weber.

He’s asked the Segerstroms for access to some of their lima beans that grow down the street. “I’m going to make a lima bean miso, so I can experiment with them for spring. Real local, down the street, local,” he said with a laugh.

Koji is an ancient Japanese superfood that most people have never heard of. In the past decade, it’s made headway in the U.S. and most people consume koji without even realizing it. It’s found in most Japanese foods. It’s a key component to making miso, and other fermented condiments such as soy sauce and rice vinegar. Distilled beverages including sake and Kikori rice whiskey also harness koji.

ALSO SEE: Recipe: How to use koji to make an Old-Fashioned

Marketing manager and miso master Toru Kuraishi led a tour at the Marukome U.S.A. factory in Irvine on Nov. 16. The building is distinguishable only by its red-hued logo, the company’s name positioned next to its Japanese cherub-looking ambassador. The subtle exterior hides what’s happening inside. This state-of-the-art, 3-acre factory is where ancient Japanese fermentation is executed at the industrial level.

Before entering the production facility where the steaming, fermenting and packing takes place, visitors and employees must pass through a decontamination room. In a closet-sized chamber, air jets remove unwanted particles from clothing.

Large glistening metal containers store miso in various stages. Workers dressed in disposable hairnets, face masks, jackets and booties transport the rice and soybeans in various states. The entire production — from cleaning the rice and soybeans to mixing, fermenting, aging, and packaging — all takes place in this facility.

Before the tour, Takeshi Azuma, president of Marukome, explained that though the company specializes in miso, there’s an increased interest in koji. It’s one of the key ingredients that goes into the miso, and the company has used it for centuries.

Los Angeles-based Kikori whiskey founder Ann Soh Woods hosted a koji workshop in September. She invited fermentation experts and bartenders to learn more about the fungi’s versatility. In O.C., chef Amy Lebrun had introduced diners to the ingredient and the book “Koji Alchemy” when she was previously at Fermentation Farm.

At Marukome U.S.A., koji is blossoming into big business. In 2024, the U.S. headquarters will open an interactive showroom. The space, which is currently under construction, will allow 10 guests at a time, to learn about koji and miso-making. Guests might sample cups of amazake, which is a rice-derived beverage without added salt or sugar, or learn about fermentation techniques that stem back thousands of years.

Kuraishi and chef Weber plan to show koji’s versatility in the space. Koji is the key element to making miso, but Weber has used it in creative ways. He enhanced his buttermilk sauce for his ebelskiver dish, which was ranked one of EATER L.A.’s hottest dishes to try in 2022.

Beyond the showroom, another addition to the company is a rice-based syrup.

“It’s like a sugar alternative,” said Weber.

The chef has used the golden-hued syrup, which has a viscosity similar to maple syrup or honey, to sweeten his rice pudding desserts. It’s called koji syrup but it’s simply a condensed version of amazake that’s been filtered and heated at a low temperature to draw out its natural sweetness. Marukome will start offering the koji syrup to consumers in 2024.

For now, Weber is gearing up for the showroom’s grand opening in January. “They want to do something, maybe a few dishes” said Weber. “Now I need to get with Toru to see what we can really do.”