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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week -- Tom Wheeler. I'm back y'all. It's been a month. I think that you've probably enjoyed not hearing my voice on the radio, but unfortunately for you I am back home after a long sabbatical so let's let's kick off a show on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and that's climate action planning.

And joining me to discuss climate action planning is Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities or CRTP. And we're also joined by Caroline Griffith, the executive director of the North Coast Environmental Center.

All right So we're gonna be talking about climate action planning -- in particular the climate action plan that is being developed by the County of Humboldt and other jurisdictions within Humboldt County, such as the city of Eureka or the city of Arcata. So a climate action plan -- I say this with all capital letters because it is a distinct thing -- it is a thing that exists in the law. Colin, can you help our listeners understand? What is a climate action plan? What are we trying to do in a climate action plan?

COLIN FISKE:

Yeah, so at its most basic level, a climate action plan is laying out the actions that a local government, or in this case, a group of local governments, will take in order to meet the climate targets that we have set. And so that means, how are we going to reduce climate pollution over a certain period of time in order to avoid catastrophic impacts in the future? What measures are we going to take to do that? And you said legal, and there's different varieties here. It's possible to adopt a climate action plan that has no legal weight, but we're trying to avoid that and go a more rigorous route.

WHEELER:

So, to talk about that and this debate that we've had before about a qualified climate action plan, what would this more legal, formulistic plan, what would it provide? Why would we go about doing that?

FISKE:

So what we call a qualified climate action plan is one where the targets are essentially set by the state. And so the plan has to show, using substantial evidence, that the measures that are adopted will lead to reductions that are in line with the state targets. And so when you do that, there are a number of advantages from a climate action perspective. I think the thing that a lot of us are really concerned about, this provides some amount of accountability to ensure that the local governments actually follow through on these things. And it requires that they revisit and make sure that they're making progress towards the targets. It is also appealing to a lot of agencies because it then allows future projects or plans to streamline part of their environmental review so that if they can show that they are consistent with the climate action plan, they don't have to go through a whole lot of other rigmarole to assess their climate impacts. And so that's what we call a qualified cap and something that we've been talking about now for a number of years here in Humboldt.

CAROLINE GRIFFITH:

Yeah, and I guess I want to just like under underline what Colin said about substantial evidence, you know, and that idea to like, this is a, this is a framework that lays out like exactly what can happen to reduce emissions. So it's not just like, hey, we want to reduce emissions. And here's some like loosey goosey ways to do it, there needs to be actual measures with evidence that that will reduce emissions. So to be able to say, by providing this many bus passes, we could reduce emissions this much by converting by providing incentives to convert this many homes to electric, we could reduce emissions this much versus just saying, we'll have an energy fair and people will learn about stuff and then we'll encourage them to shift to electric. All right.

WHEELER:

The Climate Action Plan, it's been in the news recently because our groups were upset with the direction that it is going. But I think to understand why we're upset, it's useful to understand some of the history. Colin, you and I were in a meeting in 2018 with Mike Wilson and Plane Director John Ford, and that was the impetus to get the Climate Action Plan started. Can you outline this long history of the Climate Action Plan and why this long history is a frustration for us?

FISKE:

Yeah, so I guess I should start by saying that the climate action plan in its current form sort of originates in the general plan update that was adopted in 2017 by the county, and that plan admitted that it was going to have significant greenhouse gas impacts, and one of the things that it said it would do is adopt this regional climate action plan. And so then starting in 2018, as you mentioned, the environmental organizations started to put the pressure on to make sure that that actually happened and that it was a meaningful plan, and I would say we've been trying to do that ever since. It's been more than five years now, and I think part of the frustration is that the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to achieve our goals with climate action. The longer we wait, the higher the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, the more wildfires, the more sea level rise. The impacts are happening now, and we can't really afford to wait for five years, as we already have, to start taking coordinated and serious...

WHEELER:

I think it's also a frustration based on inadequate resources being directed towards the completion of this Climate Action Plan. The first draft was produced by an AmeriCorps intern. And the county who has been kind of the lead in developing this document, even though it's a multi-jurisdictional document, hasn't ever really devoted sufficient resources to get it done. And so this is part of the delay. It's been five years of waiting around for this document. We had a draft document last year, and now we're being told that this draft document isn't sufficient for the county. And so the county needs to make significant revisions to it. So to understand some of the county's concerns and the proposed changes, I think it's useful to understand how a Climate Action Plan works. The first part of that is understanding baseline emissions and what we are trying to measure our reductions against.

GRIFFITH:

Yeah. And, and so, and I will say, so I wasn't involved when this first started. So I want to thank you all for pushing for it. And I have the entire time that I've been at the NEC, this is something that we've been talking about and wondering, where is that climate action plan? What is actually happening? And one of the things that we brought up when we finally saw a draft and putting in comments on that was that, you know, it was taking so long that by the time we actually had a qualified cap, our targets would be out of date. And, and also we're currently using emissions inventories that come from 2015. So we're already talking about emissions accounting that came from eight years ago. So on the one hand it does, I think many of us are like, yes, we should have a, you know, more up-to-date cap with better emissions reduction strategies. We just can't have it take as long as it did.

And so the accounting from 2015 kind of shows where our emissions come from. And this might not come as a surprise from folks, but of the majority of them in Humboldt County are from transportation, but it shows exactly where those reductions could be made. And we need to reduce those emissions by 45% from 1990 levels. And so something that has been kind of a point of contention throughout this whole thing is whether or not to include industrial point source emissions, which on the surface, a lot of folks are like, yeah, absolutely. We should, we should always be watching those emissions, but we actually legally aren't allowed to. That is not something in the purview of the County to do so.

WHEELER:

Yeah. So, so I just want to stop here and kind of emphasize this point because we have the Humboldt Bay generating station, the methane powered power plant on Humboldt Bay. That's obviously generating a ton of emissions. We have the biomass plant down in Scotia, again, a ton of emissions coming from that. So it seems kind of illogical to some folks to exclude these, but Humboldt County as a jurisdiction, the jurisdictions within Humboldt County, we lack the authority under state law to regulate these sources of emissions. So the state has in their guidance on how to develop climate action plans has said, kind of ignore this category of emissions because you can't do anything about it. And we're considering it through other processes at a statewide level. Like think about things that your local jurisdictions can do to, let's say, reduce vehicle miles traveled and tackle transportation emissions.

GRIFFITH:

Right. Right. To focus on things we actually can make changes. Yeah. Yeah. And also the fact of the matter is in 1990, we had a lot more polluting industry around Humboldt County. And so we actually have lower emissions because of that. So counting in those industrial point source emissions is also really taking credit for reductions that have already happened. And we see that as kind of a tricky accounting, right? We would like to see actual changes made to things that we can regulate here in the county. Like Tom said, vehicle miles traveled to reduce the amount that people have to rely on personal vehicles to get around, to actually make changes to reduce emissions versus just shifting the way that we're accounting them to make it seem like we did something.

FISKE:

I think also it's important to recall that this plan was supposed to be, I mean, initially it was envisioned to be adopted in 2020 and be a 10-year plan for 2030. It still is a 2030 plan as we get closer and closer to 2030. But after 2030, we're going to have to meet much more ambitious targets. We're going to have to get, according to the state, to net zero emissions by 2045. And so if we pretend that we have reduced a bunch of emissions already and therefore don't do much of anything before 2030, we're going to be really in a bad shape when it comes to what we do after that. We're going to have delayed all of the hard work and then sort of put it off for future decision makers.

WHEELER:

So this brings us to the present moment. So we've talked about the history of developing the cap. It's been this like long and tortured history of trying to push the county to move a little faster, to try to ensure that they weren't going to fundamentally weaken the cap by considering things that they shouldn't consider. We are now theoretically at a moment where the county is doing environmental analysis on a draft. And we, we enviros, we get word from friends within various jurisdictions that some hinky stuff is a foot and it brings us to our present controversy. Colin want to tell us what we heard at the end of summer about the direction of the cap and what was at risk.

FISKE:

Yes, so what we heard was that the county was proposing to include those industrial point sources that we were just talking about in the cap, despite the state's guidance. And, you know, the effect of that would be to relieve the pressure to take serious climate action now and in the years before 2030. And it also, I mean, essentially including those would have made it look like we already met the 2030 goal. And that would have been really dangerous, both from the perspective of relieving us of responsibility to take action now, but also in the sense that future projects could have potentially evaded significant responsibility for reducing their own emissions by saying that they were consistent with this plan that had no real teeth to it.

WHEELER:

By including these points for submissions, the county or all of the jurisdictions could have said, well, we don't actually have to do EV charging stations. We don't actually have to transition our fleet to all electric. We don't have to do all of these various things contained within the cap because we've already met our goal, right? So these are just advisory. They are non-binding. We want to see a document that holds jurisdictions' feet to the fire so that we can ensure that we're actually getting this stuff done because we know that some of this stuff is going to be controversial. It's going to be costly. It's going to be difficult. It's going to take staff time. It's going to be things that are outside of the business as usual, right? We aren't currently purchasing, let's say, electric vehicles for our fleets. And so it forces jurisdictions to reconceive the way that they've always done things. And that's hard. There's a lot of inertia in government. So that was the risk. And so our organizations sent a letter, a public letter concerning this. Caroline, can you talk about this public letter and the reception that it had?

GRIFFITH:

Well, yeah, I mean, we sent lots of public letters. So I think it was kind of, you know, part of our MO, right? Just calling out the county for this proposal and also just calling for like real climate action now, even if they weren't proposing to change the way they're doing things. We've been waiting for five years for this to happen. So they definitely needed a nudge in that right direction. And putting this out to folks who've been paying attention to this, we, not just our followers and members, but this is something that a lot of people in the area care about and want to see something happen. And they've also been watching it for five years. So a lot of folks agreed they did not want to see industrial point source emissions included in this. And they wanted to see actual emissions reductions measures as soon as possible.

WHEELER:

So we heard from county supervisor that over 700 people contacted them to voice their concern. So it was a great outpouring of support. And a ton of thanks goes to 350 Humboldt, the NEC, CRTP, RCCER, all of the groups that pushed folks towards this petition. So thank you. Humboldt Waterkeeper. Humboldt Waterkeeper. Thank you, Jen. We're talking about the Climate Action Plan and controversies around it. So we had a big outpouring of concern, and thankfully, it seems to have done something. Caroline, I want to talk about what John Ford presented to the Board of Supervisors recently, because this was different than what he was talking to local jurisdictions about just a couple months before.

GRIFFITH:

Yeah. Well, you know, as it came out that the consultants who are working on the draft EIR were looking at it and noticing some of the things that we had noticed in our comments of these targets and these goals need to be substantial. There needs to be evidence behind them. And in order for there to be a qualified cap, we need to hit those targets. So what they are proposing is to take the funding that was to be used for the EIR and rework some of the aspects of this draft cap, updating the greenhouse gas inventory, which would be great to know what we are at currently versus eight years ago, updating the forecasts of certain policies that would be in there, making sure that what were the targets are actually using defensible and practical and consistent measures and goals. And to come back with this draft by March to the board of supervisors to kind of keep the process moving forward. In that reworked greenhouse gas inventory, though, there is some certain things will be left out of that, you know, like the discussion before about what is regulated by the state and what is regulated by the counties. And they are discussing taking out ag emissions from the inventory. So that's related to all agricultural, you know, methane of all of our feedlots and dairies, things like that, that the state doesn't actually have right now ways to quantify emissions reductions from those.

WHEELER:

So this on its surface could sound Concerning right because we're we are messing with the inventory We're we're impacting the baseline and so then it might kind of change the amount that we have to reduce But this is this proposal to take out agricultural emissions is better than the previous proposal to to include Points for submissions things like power plants Colin. Do you want to break down the nuance here?

FISKE:

And this is an area where there's probably some amount of disagreement among the community. But I guess I would say that, as we said earlier, the emissions that should be included in a climate action plan for local governments are ones that they have significant influence over. So that's why they shouldn't include the point sources, and thankfully they are not. So that's a big win. There's a similar argument to be made about agriculture in that the state does most of the regulation of agriculture, and so the county and the cities have limited authority. They do have more authority over agriculture than they do over point source emissions. And so there's a bit of a concern that in the future, say after 2030, we may have to go back and deal with agriculture and agricultural emissions in some way. But I would say that this does allow the local governments to focus on what they have the most control over, which are transportation and building-related emissions. And I want to also make maybe a little bit of a nuanced point on the transportation emissions, which is that part of the problem with the current draft is that it relied really heavily on adoption of zero-emission vehicles and electrification of the transportation system. And electrification is great, but that's also an area where local governments have somewhat limited influence. They can install charging stations, and they should. They can have regulations about charging infrastructure and new buildings and that kind of thing. But really where most of the influence over transportation emissions comes from is in land-use regulations and the design of streets and roads and encouraging people to use lower carbon modes of transportation, like walking and biking and public transit. And so that is one area that is going to have to be, it's going to have to see a lot more focus probably in the coming iterations of the Climate Action Plan.

WHEELER:

I also like, perhaps, the exclusion of ag, because I think it solves a political problem with the Climate Action Plan. The Climate Action Plan is itself a bit of a political document. Everything is politics, right? And initial drafts of the Climate Action Plan were critically received by the agricultural community, who were afraid that under the guise of climate action, we're going to prevent people from eating hamburgers or other silly things that have been right-wing memes about climate action. We never had the ability to do that in the first place. But there was a fear that, oh, we're going to come and take your cows, right? Hopefully, the exclusion of ag then helps to relieve some of these concerns and reduces the number of people who are then opponents of climate action within our county. But maybe that's wishful thinking. Well.

FISKE:

I think that's a good idea. Well, I guess we'll see how it shakes out. But one thing that I want to emphasize is that in the discussion about this at the last Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Arroyo really underlined the fact that they will still be including advisory measures around agriculture. And so for folks who are concerned about that, like I would say I am, because agriculture is a significant source of emissions, there will still be measures in the Climate Action Plan to encourage better management, sequestration, composting, all of those kinds of things will be in there, but they will just be more advisory rather than binding. And so hopefully we can turn around some of this political opposition in the intervening years while we promote these more voluntary measures.

GRIFFITH:

I think kind of along those lines, I view this document and this plan as an opportunity to do things differently. I think there are folks who see it as somewhat punitive, right? And that idea to like government telling me what to do versus the idea that like this is, we're going to look at it through rose-colored glasses, climate change is an incredible opportunity to do things differently and to look at the way our systems work and don't work and work to make them more equitable. And so there is a lot of opportunity here for there to be not just those voluntary measures, but incentives to help people do things differently that actually will end up being better in the long run for people. And also in many cases for the businesses that folks are trying to run, right? Like people want to do things more efficiently. This can actually lead to better practices, but specifically not just thinking about the agriculture, but our largest source of emissions being transportation, you know, and as Colin alluded to the idea that we now, we have this opportunity to change the system so that it works for everybody that uses it. And not only are vehicles polluting, they're incredibly expensive and not everybody can drive one. So how can we shift our systems of transportation to accommodate the people who already are not able to use personal vehicles, make it easier for folks who to choose not to use personal vehicles, which actually can just make for a better world where people can get where they got to go. They don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a month to do so. And they get to interact with people while they do it. So I think that there are a lot of things potentially in this that if they're viewed the right way and the right amount of staff is put towards implementing it, this can be a really, really positive thing for the community. That isn't just, oh, the government telling us what we can and can't do.

FISKE:

I'm just going to say the sort of techno speak where it is co-benefits, right? But, but yeah, I think that's important. Like we could, these measures, if they're well implemented, we'll save people money, they'll make people healthier, they'll make people happier. It'll, it'll be a better world and better communities that we're creating.

WHEELER:

I will give a shout out even as a vegan to the Humboldt County dairy industry here, we, we do it a lot better here than, than other places. We have pasture dairy primarily. So we're already kind of doing the thing that is the least greenhouse gas producing form of animal agriculture, or at least of dairies. So right on Humboldt County. So after this Kumbaya moment, I'm going to bring us back down for a sec. It's 2023. It's the tail end of 2023. We're probably not going to get an actual finalized climate action plan until 2025. We then have five years to do 10 years worth of work to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. After 2030, the rate of greenhouse gas emission decline actually will need to be steeper than this five years. So we really have our work ahead of us. And so this is perhaps a plea to local elected that we don't need to actually wait for the climate action plan to do the work. Right. And this has been a frustration of mine in particular is that I feel like we've been waiting around for this climate action plan because it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, and we haven't done really sensible, simple things to start doing what we need to do. I know that electrification of our transportation infrastructure is not the be all end all, but like how easy would it be to just say, Hey, when we're buying new vehicles, we're not going to buy internal combustion engines, right? Like it's such a little step. And it also shows leadership at our jurisdictional levels, right? If we are all being asked to do things, do our part for the climate, it should mean that like we get EVs instead of internal combustion engines. I think that that's like a real simple, obvious thing, but we're just not doing it. And so perhaps this is a plea to local electeds, like go do something, find something to do that, make it a pet project and like get it done because our planet is on fire, right? Like it, we are in like a severe crisis mode and we need to treat this like a crisis.

FISKE:

And I would say if you're looking for something to do, something to make your pet cause, feel free to reach out to us. We have lots of ideas.

WHEELER:

Yeah, that's for sure. So future threats, the climate action plan, something that has been also repeatedly coming up is this idea that maybe we should try to quantify things like natural lands in the, the inherent climate sequestration that Humboldt County has, that there's been pushback by folks, particularly conservatives within the County, that we're not a net producer of greenhouse gas emissions. We're a net sequester of greenhouse gas emissions because of all of our forest land, because of all of our working land, I think that this is going to be one of the future threats that we're going to have to guard against in the climate action plan, because how convenient would it be for local governments to realize that, Oh, we actually don't need to do things that are going to be politically difficult or costly if we can just say that, Oh yeah, our forests are doing all the work for us. Right. So this is something that is going to come up. And again, I think that our exclusion of ag lands is conceptually helpful in this regard to keep forest sequestration out of the climate action plan, because the County really doesn't have any ability to regulate forestry. So it would be a joke to say that because of the County's actions, but for the County or, but for our jurisdictions, we have this like net sequestration from, from forest lands, it's also incredibly difficult to, to quantify carbon emissions from forestry. So let's just try to keep this whole thing out of the discussion, because I know that conservatives are going to try to bring it in because this is the way that Humboldt County could not really have to do anything and call ourselves a leader in climate action.

GRIFFITH:

Well, I think that one, yes, let's maintain and keep our forest healthy. Yes. But yeah, let's keep that out of the conversation, because that again, is taking credit for things that we're not doing. We actually have the responsibility to make changes to our systems, right? So yes, let's keep our forest healthy. And then also, let's reduce our vehicle miles traveled. And let's make that count.

FISKE:

I just wanted to raise two quick things about sequestration that I think are important. One is that the state has these new targets, we mentioned net zero by 2045, and specifically 85% of that has to come from emissions reductions. So the state will not allow us to rely super heavily on sequestration. And I think that's important for us to acknowledge. And secondly, a lot of folks, particularly in forest management who claim to be sequestering are already getting credit for that from state mechanisms. And so we can't double count that for our local emissions reductions. Just wanted to point those things out.

WHEELER:

Thank you, Colin. All right. So, Caroline, you said before that we anticipate March 2024 is when we will have an updated draft from the Climate Action Plan. If folks want to keep involved in the conversation about climate action planning, what should they do? How should they go about that?

GRIFFITH:

I would say you should check out the county's website for the Climate Action Plan, but it's very, very out of date. So I would say maybe reach out to any of us, EPIC, the NEC, or CRTP, and just say, hey, what's going on with the Climate Action Plan? Because we will be keeping tabs on our supervisors who said that they're going to move this forward, and there will hopefully be updates regularly in the Board of Supervisors' agenda, just about where we are at in this process.

WHEELER:

And I would say sign up for all of our emails. And because CRTP is perhaps the smallest among us in terms of total membership, I want to really direct people to how great CRTPs email is. It's weekly comes out every Friday. The collector really terribly informative. Check out the coalition for responsible transportation priorities and give Colin and Caroline at the NAC some love. All right, well, thank you everybody for joining us on this show and thank you listener and join us again next week on this time channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.