Tag: climate action

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Forests, Habitats, Sustainable Living, WildlifeTags , , , , , ,

A look at the $10B climate bond (Prop. 4) California voters will decide on in November

Manola Secaira, CAPRADIO

In November, California voters will decide whether to approve of a bond that would fund state climate initiatives.

Proposition 4 on Ballotpedia

Legislators announced the $10 billion bond will appear on the November ballot as Proposition 4 earlier this month. Dozens of environmental groups advocated for it, especially in light of state budget cuts made earlier in the year that impacted climate programs.
Fred Greaves for CalMatters
Big cuts, no new taxes: Gov. Newsom’s plan to fix California’s budget deficit

Many advocates are optimistic voters will approve of the bond, citing a PPIC survey published earlier this month that found 59% of California voters would likely vote “yes.”

Assembly member Lori Wilson was one of the legislators who introduced the measure. Before it came together, she said she’d been working to introduce a bond measure that would focus on agriculture. But she and other legislators eventually decided they’d see a better chance of success if they pooled their bond proposals.

“Once we started to see the cost of inflation, just the impact that the voters were feeling, we knew there really wasn’t an appetite for multiple bonds on the ballot and there would have to be consolidation,” Wilson said.

The bond would be paid off by California’s general fund, which is supported, for the most part, by tax revenue. The state’s legislative analyst’s office says the estimated cost to repay the bond would be $400 million a year over the course of 40 years.

Supporters say the bond would provide much-needed funds to accomplish California’s ambitious environmental goals, like its commitment to conserving 6 million acres of land by 2030.

Read more at https://www.capradio.org/articles/2024/07/23/a-look-at-the-10b-climate-bond-california-voters-will-decide-on-in-november/

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , ,

Every Sonoma County city has pledged action on climate change. What’s Next?

Will Carruthers, NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN

Rohnert Park became the last city in Sonoma County to formally pledge immediate action on climate change earlier this month, making the county the first in the nation where all jurisdictions pledged action to curtail the unfolding, worldwide crisis.

At its March 9 meeting, Rohnert Park’s City Council unanimously approved a “climate emergency resolution,” a document which acknowledges the ongoing and future damages of human-driven climate change and pledges the city to help implement a new framework recently passed by the Regional Climate Protection Agency (RCPA), a countywide agency tasked with confronting climate change.

On March 8, the RCPA board of directors approved a Sonoma Climate Mobilization Strategy which states the goal of making the county carbon-neutral by 2030. The RCPA’s new goal is more aggressive than the state’s current goal of reducing emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The RCPA began work on the document in late 2019, after the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors passed an emergency resolution of its own.

Read more at https://bohemian.com/every-sonoma-county-city-has-pledged-action-on-climate-change-whats-next/

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Air, Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable LivingTags , , ,

How we can build a hardier world after the coronavirus

Bill McKibben, THE NEW YORKER

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed one particularly shocking thing about our societies and economies: they have been operating on a very thin margin. The edifice seems so shiny and substantial, a world of silver jets stitching together cities of towering skyscrapers, a globe of soaring markets and smartphone connectivity. But a couple of months into this disease and it’s all tottering, the jets grounded and the cities silent and the markets reeling. One industry after another is heading for bankruptcy, and no one knows if they will come back. In other words, however shiny it may have seemed, it wasn’t very sturdy. Some people—the President, for instance—think that we can just put it all back like it was before, with a “big bang,” once the “invisible enemy” is gone. But any prosperity built on what was evidently a shaky foundation is going to seem Potemkinish going forward; we don’t want always to feel as if we’re just weeks away from some kind of chaos.

So if we’re thinking about building civilization back in a hardier and more resilient form, we’ll have to learn what a more stable footing might look like. I think that we can take an important lesson from the doctors dealing with the coronavirus, and that’s related to comorbidity, or underlying conditions. It turns out, not surprisingly, that if you’ve got diabetes or hypertension, or have a suppressed immune system, you’re far more likely to be felled by COVID-19.

Societies, too, come with underlying conditions, and the two that haunt our planet right now are inequality and ecological turmoil. They’ve both spiked in the past few decades, with baleful results that normally stay just below the surface, felt but not fully recognized. But as soon as something else goes wrong—a new microbe launches a pandemic, say—they become starkly evident. Inequality, in this instance, means that people have to keep working, even if they’re not well, because they lack health insurance and live day to day, paycheck to paycheck, and hence they can spread disease. Ecological instability, especially the ever-climbing mercury, means that even as governors try to cope with the pandemic they must worry, too, about the prospect of another spring with massive flooding across the Midwest, or how they’ll cope if wildfire season gets out of control. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service announced that, owing to the pandemic, it is suspending controlled burns, for instance, “one of the most effective tools for increasing California’s resiliency to fire.” God forbid that we get another big crisis or two while this one is still preoccupying us—but simple math means that it’s almost inevitable.

And, of course, all these things interact with one another: inequality means that some people must live near sources of air pollution that most of us wouldn’t tolerate, which in turn means that their lungs are weakened, which in turn means they can’t fight off the coronavirus. (It also means that some of the same people can lack access to good food, and are more likely to be diabetic.) And, if there’s a massive wildfire, smoke fills the air for weeks, weakening everybody’s lungs, but especially those at the bottom of the ladder. When there’s a hurricane and people need to flee, the stress and the trauma can compromise immune systems. Simply living at the sharp end of an unequal and racist society can do the same thing. And so on, in an unyielding spiral of increasing danger.

Since we must rebuild our economies, we need to try to engineer out as much ecological havoc and inequality as we can—as much danger as we can. That won’t be easy, but there are clear and obvious steps that would help—there are ways to structure the increased use of renewable energy that will confront inequality at the same time. Much will be written about such plans in the months to come, but at the level of deepest principle here’s what’s key, I think: from a society that has prized growth above all and been willing to play fast and loose with justice and ecology, we need to start emphasizing sturdiness, hardiness, resiliency. (And a big part of that is fairness.) The resulting world won’t be quite as shiny, but, somehow, shininess seems less important now.

Read more for interview with Bill McKibben: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/how-we-can-build-a-hardier-world-after-the-coronavirus

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags

Sonoma County supervisors declare climate emergency, pledge to make climate change priority

Tyler Silvy, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Sonoma County supervisors on Tuesday declared a climate emergency, but for many activists and even a majority of the supervisors, that formal measure doesn’t go far enough, with no specific call for action that would show regard for the climate crisis as a true emergency, critics said.

The three-page declaration designates the county’s response to climate change a top board priority, and directs county staff to reevaluate existing policies “through the lens of the climate emergency,” which it says threatens humanity and the natural and built environments.

“We have to stop acting like business as usual is cutting it, because it’s not; we need a transformation,” said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, whose district covers the Sonoma Coast. “It’s critical we pass a resolution and follow that up with meaningful change. We need to act like our planet is on fire because it is.”

The board’s action comes ahead of a planned weeklong climate strike, in which youth of the world are expected to demand action on climate change starting Friday.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/a1/10057981-181/sonoma-county-supervisors-declare-climate?

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , ,

Sonoma County climate activists to join in worldwide call for action

Will Schmitt, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Joining an international day of youth-led environmental strikes, local activists are planning to walk out of school and work later this week to rally support for efforts to fight global climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions.

Strikes are set for Friday in Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Petaluma, San Francisco, Oakland and dozens of other cities and towns around the world. The events, timed just ahead of a United Nations climate summit, are the latest in a series of weekly Friday events in which young people speak and act out in the name of saving the planet.

“This is a very hopeful and action-driven event,” said Franchesca Duval, a Sebastopol chicken farmer helping to organize the Santa Rosa strike. “It’s not just ‘Come out and get scared.’ It’s come out and let the world know that we as Californians are supporting the global community, that we need to be making these changes.”

More than 500 people, including students from Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State University, and Analy High School, are expected to participate Friday, Duval said.

Santa Rosa’s event will begin at 9:30 a.m. on the junior college campus. A march to Old Courthouse Square will begin at 11 a.m. A rally will follow at noon, and “opportunities for action” also will be available on the square after the rally.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10058368-181/sonoma-county-climate-activists-to?sba=AAS

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , , , ,

Open letter from a distressed climate scientist

Javier Hernández, Director of the Climate Research Center, Sonoma State University

I am addressing this open letter to the Sonoma County government government officials, the California governor, and to all policymakers in the world, especially to those in areas where climate change-related phenomena (extreme heat, droughts, wildfires, heavy rainfall, floods, hurricanes, sea-level rise, storm surge, tornadoes) and other geophysical processes exacerbated by climate change like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. are already causing ample biophysical, social and economic devastation.

More recently, scientists like myself, are confirming that climate change-related processes are happening much earlier than expected and that urgent and massive emergency action must be undertaken.

Climate change accentuated phenomena are impacting us now and their frequency and intensity are set to increase even if all anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions are stopped today. For this reason, even though stopping anthropogenic GHG emissions and drawing down existing carbon in the atmosphere at maximum speed is still very important to mitigate climate change, it is paramount to deploy deep climate adaptation strategies in order to better cope with our present and future climate reality. Deep climate adaptation means to undertake all the necessary economic, structural, organizational, societal, etc., transformations to minimize the impact of climate change vulnerabilities particular to each region.

This open letter is not intended to convince anyone on whether climate change is happening or not, or whether is occurring because of natural forces, mostly human activities or a combination of both factors. The aim of this open letter is to discuss the most important problem related to climate change, the issue of living in a world where climate change enhanced phenomena are impacting us now and will become the norm in our very near future.

I’m a very distressed climate scientist that has done research on extreme weather and its relations to climate variability and change. I’ve experienced firsthand the devastating impacts of climate change accentuated phenomena, with more powerful Hurricanes impacting my homeland of Puerto Rico and more frequent and larger wildfires in California where I currently live. I am in the front lines of the climate change apocalypse.

The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) Report of October 2018 presented a dire state of the climate which, in reality, understated the true, even more disastrous, state of the climate. The Report claimed that with global CO2 emissions reductions of 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 and zero emissions by 2050, the average global temperature increase above pre-industrial times would likely stay below 1.5º C. The exclusion of the self-reinforcing climate change amplifying feedbacks (f.i. ice sheet disintegration, loss of albedo effect, heat storage by the oceans and release of methane from melting permafrost) in their climate change models, makes those suggestions irrelevant and misleading. The Report suggests that there is still a “carbon budget” that safely allows for more GHG emissions, which is not supported by the more realistic models that include the amplifying feedbacks, and by the now almost constant extreme and usually “unprecedented” climate change-related events happening around the world. There is no safe carbon budget left.

Because of those amplifying feedbacks alone, the increase of 1.5ºC is going to be surpassed significantly sooner than 2030, even if all anthropogenic GHG emissions are stopped immediately. The current global average temperature increase is close to 1.2º C and many areas of the Earth are already beyond a 1.5º C increase. For instance, Canada is at about 2 times the global average temperature increase and the Arctic Region (including Northern Canada) is at about 3 times the average.

The already major activation of the self-reinforcing climate change amplifying feedbacks, as a consequence of anthropogenic GHG emissions, makes the existing climate change mostly irreversible and leaves a short, but difficult to quantify, time for humans to mitigate further climate change aggravation by stopping all GHG emissions and removing GHG from the atmosphere, before a runaway climate change gets established.

As a scientist and as a being of this world I argue that we must stop debating whether we act or not on climate change. My position on the issue is clear, we must take bold climate action to prepare our societies for a more extreme world at the brink of societal collapse. We must embrace the fact that more devastating climate change effects will occur in the near future, so we must quickly begin our deep adaptation process to live in this new more climate extreme world.

If we don’t want to witness the end of organized civilization as we know it, we must act now. For that reason, I urge local, state and federal/national policymakers to accept the scientific consensus and the empirical reality that climate change is impacting us now and that it will continue to impact us in the immediate and long term future. After acknowledging our climate reality, I ask policymakers at all levels to issue official climate disaster state of emergency executive orders to make all resources available to deal with the climate change crisis which, ultimately, has the potential for the extinction of humanity.

I urge our governments to develop emergency measures that would allow us to prepare all of the infrastructure (roads, dams, buildings, parks, bridges, emergency-response infrastructure) and essential sustaining systems like farming, water supply, and health care, in our communities to the impacts of climate change. If we take bold action now, we can employ every able person in our communities in the 100% renewable energy transformation, infrastructure resiliency efforts and environmental restoration measures that would allow us to be better prepared to cope with climate change impacts now and in the very near future.

The impacts of climate change will not stop in the near future, even if we dropped all of our GHG emissions to zero. For that reason, I urge policymakers to focus on developing a more just and resilient local, national and global society that would allow all of its members to have a dignified life under our current and future climate reality.

In order for all of this to happen, policymakers need to accept one very important fact, we cannot continue with our current unsustainable economic activities that view the Earth as merely a collection of resources to be exploited in eternity for the sake of never-ending economic growth and wealth accumulation. Our voracious economic growth since the industrial revolution, almost exclusively dependent on fossil fuels, is what brought us here and it needs to stop if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

If we want to avoid the worst of the very likely climate apocalypse in our horizon, we must act now and work together to build a more just and resilient world for us, our children and all of humanity. It is impossible to put a brake on all of the climate change impacts that will threaten us now and in the very near future, but we can still mitigate Climate Change, build more resilient communities, restore key ecosystems and relinquish old unsustainable practices that would allow us to live a dignified life in a more climate extreme world.

Sincerely,

José Javier Hernández Ayala, PhD
Assistant Professor and Director
Climate Research Center
Geography, Environment and Planning Dept.
Sonoma State University
jose.hernandezayala@sonoma.edu

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , ,

Sonoma County high school students organize to demand action on climate change

Nashelly Chavez & Kevin Fixler, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

High school students from across Sonoma County walked out of classes Friday and converged in Petaluma, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa to join youth-led demonstrations worldwide demanding action in what activists call a global climate crisis.

Tens of thousands of students across the country are expected to participate in the coordinated March 15, grassroots rallies, NPR reported.

In Santa Rosa, about 150 students from across the North Bay and supporters waived homemade signs during a noon march from Old Courthouse Square to City Hall. An open mic session preceded the short, chant-filled walk, where organizers and others skipping school sang songs, read poems and gave environmentally-charged speeches to encourage protecting the earth and accepting the science behind climate change.

“It’s ridiculous, we’ve got to face the facts,” said Lea Fabian-Davies, 17, a senior at Petaluma High School. “We need to save the bees. We need clean oceans. Every small step counts.”

Four local teens, all part of a fellowship program run by the Bay Area chapter of 350, a global environmental group that supports reducing carbon dioxide emissions and investing in clean energy, organized Sebastopol’s rally planned for the town’s Central Park at 12:30 p.m., said Eleanor Jaffe, 17, one of the organizers.

“We need to act fast and have huge action to ensure a future for generations to come,” said Jaffe, a senior at Analy High School. “I think Sebastopol has long been a hub for environmental change and people in our community are excited and engaged about what’s happening environmentally.”

Momentum for today’s protests began last summer with Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, who during a speech at the United Nations climate change summit in December told a group of world leaders that they were not doing enough to stop climate change.

Another driver of the youth rallies in the United States is garnering support for the New Green Deal, legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in February that aims to combat climate change by transitioning to sustainable energy.

Source: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9394979-181/sonoma-county-high-school-students?sba=AAS

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , , ,

Op-Ed: A year later, still no true accounting for County’s greenhouse gas emissions

Jerry Bernhaut, SONOMA VALLEY SUN

In July of 2017 ruling on a lawsuit filed by River Watch and attorney Jerry Bernhaut, a judge rejected Sonoma County Climate Action Plan (CAP) for reducing greenhouse gases. Here’s his update.

The primary basis for the lawsuit was that the accounting method used in the CAP grossly under counted greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from road, air and sea travel beyond county borders and nearby regional destinations generated in the course of the global export of wine and other local products, and travel to and from local tourist venues. This means millions of metric tons of GHG emissions, which would not have occurred but for the issuing of permits for hotels, event centers, vineyards and wineries, were simply not counted.

Since the judge issued her ruling, the Regional Climate Protection Authority and the County have completely disregarded her findings. They have repeatedly referred to the lawsuit as “unproductive” and have never responded in a substantive manner to the grounds for the judge’s ruling.

shutterstock_234239257-1-2-390x285The County has recently proposed a resolution, adopted by the Supervisors, which updates the County’s GHG Inventory and recommits the RCPA to policy goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The stated intent of the resolution is to “achieve the same policy impetus behind climate action as would have the Climate Action 2020 Plan, notwithstanding the setback from the lawsuit.”

But he RCPA once again refuses to include emissions from trans-boundary travel. This is a fiction which can only be maintained by excluding the thousands of tons of GHG emissions from 7.5 million tourists per year and billions of dollars in wine exports.

Each local community must take responsibility for its decisions that permit and enable activity that results in emissions that contribute to global warming. Each community must account for the environmental costs of its land use decisions. So far, Sonoma County elected officials have showed no inclination to take that responsibility, despite the decision of an experienced, highly respected superior court judge overturning the CAP.

Read more at http://sonomasun.com/2018/09/06/a-year-later-still-no-true-accounting-for-countys-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Local OrganizationsTags ,

North Bay groups team up for climate mobilization

SONOMA COUNTY GAZETTE
climate-march
Stressing the need for action at the international Climate Change Talks COP21 this December in Paris, three North Bay environmental organizations have teamed up to encourage Sonoma County residents to join in a national climate mobilization campaign. 350 Sonoma County, Sonoma County Conservation Action and the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club are pooling their resources to provide bus transportation to the NorCal Climate Mobilization march and rally in Oakland November 21.
In addition, 350 Sonoma County is inviting residents to participate in the  “Redwood Revolution Community Climate Art Project” which will produce a ”forest” of redwood shaped recycled cardboard signs to deliver messages of hope and action at the Oakland rally.
The Paris Climate talks offer the greatest opportunity in years for new international government action to address climate change. New Obama Administration climate policies, China’s willingness to begin new climate programs, the incredible moral force of Pope Francis, as well as increasing occurrences of climate disruption set the stage for real action in Paris.
Without massive citizen action however, governments will not go nearly as far as necessary  in signing  serious binding  commitments to  curb global warming. The  November 21 Climate Mobilization and similar events around the country and world will tell our leaders that significant action is needed now.
Local Mobilization to Attend
The three North Bay groups have teamed up to rent buses that will leave from the Federal Building in downtown Santa Rosa and Sonoma State University. Buses will leave from the Santa Rosa Federal Building at 9am and return at 4pm on Saturday, November 21st. Roundtrip bus tickets are $20.  In addition, the Sierra Club is sponsoring a special bus for Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University students at a reduced rate of $5. The bus will pick up and return students to the Santa Rosa Federal Building and the SSU campus.
To purchase bus tickets go to http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2414149
Go to: 350SonomaCounty.org, sierraclub.org/redwood/sonoma, or conservationaction.org for information about organizing for the rally and other local climate organizing and activism opportunities.
Source: North Bay Groups Team Up for Climate Mobilization

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & EnergyTags , , , Leave a comment on China-U.S. climate accord goals achievable; policies are already in place

China-U.S. climate accord goals achievable; policies are already in place

Henry Fountain and John Schwartznov, THE NEW YORK TIMES
For all the pronouncements about the United States and China reaching a historic climate pact, the agreement they announced Wednesday does not signal a seismic shift in policies by either nation, experts said.
The United States and China should both be able to meet the stated goals by aggressively pursuing policies that are largely in place, these analysts said. For the United States, those include the Obama administration’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, which would go into effect in 2017. Experts said that in practice it should be possible to wring more emissions cuts from that and other climate-related measures without adding to costs.
“We think that the tools are there to meet this target,” said David Doniger, director of the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Politics, of course, may get in the way — Republicans in Congress vowed to fight the power plant proposal even before it was introduced in June, and some, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is set to become the majority leader next year, have already sharply criticized the China pact.
Policy analysts said a changing energy mix for China, including a buildup of renewable energy sources and nuclear power, had been in the works for some time. “What China is pledging to do here is not a lot different from what China’s policies are on a track to deliver,” said David G. Victor, who studies climate policy at the University of California at San Diego.
Wang Yi, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said experts in China had reached a consensus that the 2030 date was achievable for its targets, and that 2025 would be a more ambitious goal.
The agreement, announced during President Obama’s visit with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, calls for the United States to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. That represents a significant acceleration in the rate of reduction from the president’s earlier pledge to cut emissions 17 percent by 2020.
Read more and see infographics via Climate Accord Relies on Environmental Policies Now in Place – NYTimes.com.