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The Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG) yesterday issued a press release inviting locals to “help shape the future of mobility in Humboldt County.” 

That’s HCAOG’s main deal: transportation. It’s a Joint Powers Authority comprising the County of Humboldt and all seven of its incorporated cities (Arcata, Blue Lake, Eureka, Ferndale, Fortuna, Rio Dell and Trinidad). And the guiding document for HCAOG’s governing board on this front is the Regional Transportation Plan. 

As a policy document, the RTP guides transportation priorities and funding decisions, influencing everything from road maintenance and safety improvements to public transit, bike and pedestrian facilities and planning for zero-emission vehicles, as HCOAG explained in its recent press release.

While that may sound like the greenest of environmental agendas, local enviro group leaders are raising a skeptical eyebrow toward HCAOG after getting a look at the latest Regional Transportation Plan draft.

The RTP gets updated every four years, and HCAOG recently released a draft of its latest version, which has been given the zippy title, “Varieties in Rural Options of Mobility (VROOM) 2026 – 2046.”

The public comment period on this document is now open, and will remain so until Monday, Dec. 29. An HCAOG official tells us that an online survey — accessible through this link — had received only 100 responses through Wednesday afternoon, and the agency is urging more people to weigh in.

“Community input — whether made in-person, by email, or through the online survey — will directly inform strategies to make travel safer, more efficient, and more accessible for everyone but especially for vulnerable users such as seniors, youth, people with disabilities, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders,” the agency said.

The draft plan identifies more than $1 billion in funding needs for local streets and transportation infrastructure projects such as road rehabilitation, trails, bridges, interchanges, roundabouts and bike lanes. The agencies of HCAOG hope to increase the frequency and availability of public transportation and modernize the fleet of public vehicles.

So why are environmental groups upset? Because, for one thing, the new draft of the RTP eliminates every prior instance of the phrase “climate crisis.” As shown in the image above, each reference to “crisis” has been crossed out and replaced with “change.”

While that editorial choice may strike many as subtle, groups including EPIC (the Environmental Protection Information Center), CRTP (the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities) and 350 Humboldt all see it as a rhetorical downgrade that minimizes the urgency of human-caused climate upheaval. And they say there’s evidence to support that argument elsewhere in the document.

Screenshot of another edit to the RTP’s wording.

“The watering down of the plan’s language is matched by backsliding on Safe and Sustainable Transportation,” the groups say in a joint press release issued yesterday. “The plan proposes an unnecessary and harmful delay to HCAOG’s target for the construction of non-car-dependent housing, as well as delays to electric vehicle charging station targets and other needed climate actions.”

The groups identified a more fundamental concern, too: The new plan would eliminate a policy calling for “project funding consistency.”

“In other words,” they say in their press release, “HCAOG is removing the only policy that held it accountable for the projects it funds being consistent with its own climate and safety goals. Without implementation, a plan is just words on paper, and funding consistency is one of the key reasons for a regional transportation plan to exist. To ensure that the region’s transportation projects save lives and help stabilize the climate, HCAOG must put its money where its mouth is.”

As for the edits to terminology, an HCAOG staff report on the draft RTP acknowledges switching all references of “Climate Crisis” to “Climate Change.” It says that change was recommended by the authority’s Transportation Advisory Committee “based on [a] desire to use more conventional language.”

The Outpost recently emailed HCAOG Executive Director Brendan Byrd for more information. He stressed that, since this is a draft document, the change is only a potential revision. He also elaborated on the reasoning proffered by the technical committee members thusly:

[O]ne of our committee’s recommended that the Board consider the change from ‘Climate Crisis’ to ‘Climate Change’, the thought being that ‘climate change’ is more conventional/familiar language, is more consistent with other planning documents, and that the wording may reach or speak more directly to a broader cross section of our many stakeholders as we seek to address this critical issue through our RTP.

Colin Fiske, executive director of CRTP, said in an email to the Outpost that he doesn’t think this explanation stands up to scrutiny. From Fiske:

The claim that “climate crisis” is not conventional/familiar language is contradicted by its widespread use in documents and public statements from local, state, national, and international agencies for the last several decades. It’s become so common in recent years that the current AP style guide recognizes it for use in news coverage.

The claim that it is more “consistent” with other documents to omit the term “climate crisis” is curious, since it’s never been specified which documents it should be consistent with and why such consistency in language would matter. Furthermore, terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “climate crisis,” and others are all commonly used in planning documents at all levels. …

The claim that the term “crisis” is polarizing and doesn’t appeal to all stakeholders deserves a little more consideration than the other two justifications, but in the end doesn’t make much sense either. Polarization on this issue has already reached such a point that the federal government is literally scrubbing all references to climate science from federal documents and websites, no matter what terms are used. Will HCAOG’s next move be to follow suit and erase all references to climate in local government documents to pander to federal science deniers? Euphemisms can only get you so far. In the end, we have to acknowledge reality, and the reality is that climate change is a crisis of massive proportions.

The biggest problem here is that HCAOG has for years accurately acknowledged the climate crisis, and now wants to reverse itself. That decision is even more damaging than other documents and agencies that fail to use the word “crisis” in the first place, because it suggests to the public that:

(a) climate change used to be a crisis, but isn’t anymore, which is the opposite of the truth; and/or

(b) that HCAOG isn’t taking climate as seriously as it once did.

Our biggest concern is that the second interpretation may be accurate, because the RTP update seems to back up that interpretation with other changes that weaken its climate commitments.

The link at the end, there, takes you to a letter to HCAOG leadership from the three environmental groups.

To reiterate, HCAOG is inviting local residents to submit their own feedback on the draft RTP. Here, again, is the link to the draft document, and here’s the link to the community survey.