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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to The Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. We are going to be talking this week about climate action and climate action on the local level and what we can do to try to stop this climate crisis that is impending. And we have great experts here joining the show. We have EPIC's climate attorney, Matt Simmons. Hey, Matt. We also have the Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, or CRTP, Colin Fiske. Hey, Colin.

COLIN FISKE:

Hello, Tom and Matt.

WHEELER:

All right. So we are talking about local climate action. And when talking about local climate action, that means we're going to be talking about the Climate Action Plan, this thing that has been in development seemingly forever or at least seemingly forever to me, because I've been working on it seemingly forever. Colin, let's start off. What the heck is a CAP? And then we can go into the history of. Of where we've been and where we are now.

FISKE:

So a Climate Action Plan is a document that a local government can adopt that basically lays out what actions they're going to take to reduce climate pollution in order to help avoid future climate chaos. And a Climate Action Plan can take a lot of different forms and oftentimes they are just sort of voluntary documents that are not subject to any enforcement or any mandatory measures. But in California we also have this thing called a qualified Climate Action Plan which does have to show quantitatively that it is in line with the state's greenhouse gas reduction targets. And so in that case, which is what we're talking about here in Humboldt, it has to get a little bit more specific about what it's going to do and how.

WHEELER:

So, as I said, this is something that you and I, Colin, have been working on for what feels like forever. What's the kind of history or the genesis of this Climate Action Plan?

FISKE:

So the Climate Action Plan comes out of Humboldt County's last general plan update back in 2017, and it was built into the general plan update and the environmental impact report for that update essentially because the general plan otherwise produced a significant amount of climate pollution, significant amount of emissions, and this was one of the main ways that the county said that they were going to mitigate that was to adopt a Climate Action Plan and specifically a regional one that included not just the county itself but other local governments and agencies. So that was back in 2017, and I think you and I, Tom, started actively advocating for it in early 2018, so it has been pretty much forever.

WHEELER:

Well, I will never forget the first meeting that we had on the Climate Action Plan. It was you, me, Mike Wilson and planning director Ford. We said, look, it says here that you have to make this Climate Action Plan. And Mike Wilson, John Ford said, yes, we agree. All right, well, let's do something about it. And I felt then when they agreed that we were moving quickly and that this was this great thing. And now seven years later, it's hard. It's hard because we've we've just kind of done seemingly not that much over the last six, seven years. And here we are. So actually, well, here we are. Where are we, Matt Simmons? What what is the status of the Climate Action Plan?

MATT SIMMONS:

Yeah, so over the past several years there have been several iterations of the plan. This has been slowed down considerably by the fact that the county has had to repeatedly go back to all the individual jurisdictions within the county, so all the cities, and re-present the plan to them. But we now have what is presumably a final draft because the county is sort of out of money to work on drafting, and so it'd be really hard for them to continue changing this draft. And that public draft is currently out for public comment. The public comment deadline was extended to September 20th, so actually by the time you hear this, the public comment deadline will have probably just ended. But there's been, yeah, several opportunities to comment on the Climate Action Plan over the years.

WHEELER:

Yeah, and we've had previous episodes about previous drafts of this plan. It's gone through, as you said, a number of iterations. But all those iterations kind of say the same thing in some respect, right? We know where our climate emissions are coming from. There are a limited range of options of what to do to reduce those emissions. So we've known this playbook for a while. And one of the frustrations is we've known the types of actions are going to be necessary. But I think local jurisdictions have often not completed those actions because we have this CAP and it's going to be released and it's going to be final eventually. And so we've had this kind of time delay issue where we're not actually taking climate action that we know that we need to take because we've been waiting for the completion of the Climate Action Plan. So I said that we've kind of known the the emissions categories and the relative harm that we are suffering. Colin, I'm throwing this question to you because this is your specialty. What is our number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in Humboldt County?

FISKE:

It is transportation. And actually, that's now the biggest source in the state of California and in the entire United States. The biggest contributor is the transportation sector. And I want to preface this briefly by saying that the Climate Action Plan does not include in it all sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Humboldt. And the reason is that some of those sources are not within the power of local governments to influence or regulate. They're regulated more by state or federal sources. And so that would include things like our big power plant emissions. But for those sectors where the local government has some influence, the latest numbers estimate that 73% of the local Humboldt County climate pollution comes from transportation. And most of that is from individual passenger vehicle drivers.

WHEELER:

So I think that we kind of have two strategies here when thinking about what to do about transportation, right? We can try to reduce the total vehicle miles traveled, the total amount that people are moving themselves in big, heavy machines from place to place. So we can try to reduce vehicle miles traveled through a variety of ways, right? And we can also attempt to reduce the carbon intensity of those vehicle miles traveled. So right now, if you're clunking around in a V8 Ford SUV, you're going to be emitting more greenhouse gas emissions per mile than if you were to be driving around in your Chevy Bolt, for example. So talk to me about these kind of two strategies to reduce vehicle emissions.

FISKE:

Yeah, so all of the credible models and projections show that we're going to need to do both of those things. We're going to need to convert our vehicles to zero emission. And that primarily means electric vehicles, especially for passenger vehicles. And we're also going to have to reduce the amount of driving that we do pretty significantly because for a variety of reasons, but, but one of them is that we just won't be able to get rid of all gas and diesel powered vehicles in a timely enough manner to, to get the pollution down and, and avoid the worst climate impacts. And so I think the vehicle electrification gets a lot more attention in the news.

And people, I often hear people tell me, well, it's not like we're going to not drive any cars. They're just going to be electric cars. And to a certain extent that is true, but we do also have to drive a lot less. And so that's an area where actually local governments arguably have more influence over the amount of driving that people do than they do over the vehicle technology. So, you know, they can do things to encourage electric vehicles. They can have incentive programs. They can install EV chargers and that sort of thing. But they also have a lot of influence over what mode of transportation people choose in the first place by providing better public transit and having land use patterns that put people closer to their jobs and their grocery stores and their schools and providing safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

And so a lot of that needs to be done and needs to be done pretty quickly if we're going to meet these targets. And just to say the targets for this plan are 2030. When we talked about the timeline earlier, the initial idea was this would be roughly a 10 year plan adopted in 2020 or so. We have 2030 targets and it will now be adopted hopefully in 2025, but we'll have less than five years to meet those targets and then we'll have to think about meeting the much more ambitious targets for 2045. And so there's not a lot of time to do this.

SIMMONS:

Well, and Colin sort of touched on this, but I want to highlight it. I think people have this tendency to picture this transition as all or nothing when it's really going to be sort of a spectrum. Right. And so just because we're saying you'll be driving a personal vehicle less doesn't mean you would like never drive a personal vehicle. And I think all of us sort of are already trying to live this in our lives. Right. So like Tom takes public transportation all the time, but sometimes needs to get somewhere quicker or someone that's inaccessible by public transportation and takes a car. I've been trying to ride my bike a lot more, but sometimes, you know, the weather's really bad or I can't for some reason and I'll drive a car. And so don't think of it as sort of all or nothing. Think of it as trying to shift like the entire population to more trips that are taken either by public transportation or by bike or other alternatives to cars.

FISKE:

Thanks, Matt. That is a good point. Although I do want to say, I think it should be, people should be able to choose not to have a car if they don't want to. And right now that's very difficult. And obviously, it goes without saying, but not having a car reduces your vehicle miles traveled a lot. So it's totally true. Not everyone has given up their vehicle or anything, but we should have a system and communities where people have that option.

WHEELER:

which brings us back to last week's episode about Measure F and designing communities that are possible for you to exist without cars and the importance of infill development in that future. So, Colin, one thing that's somewhat disappointing, though, about the CAP is that we have previously adopted as a regional, regional government, a regional transportation plan that was perhaps more ambitious than this Climate Action Plan. Can you talk about that?

FISKE:

Yeah, we have a regional transportation plan which is adopted by the the Humboldt County Association of Governments. They are Humboldt County's regional transportation planning agency and that plan includes a lot of very ambitious and I would argue necessary targets for reducing the amount of driving that happens, increasing the amount of walking and biking and public transit trips, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. And so that was something that we worked really hard on getting in that plan and really pleased that it's there.

But the proposed targets relating to transportation in the Climate Action Plan are not nearly so ambitious as those other targets that are already adopted. Just as one example, one of the primary measures for increasing walking and biking and transit and decreasing driving they calculate would reduce the amount of miles traveled by 0.2 percent. And so that's probably not even enough for us to measure it, let alone for it to make a significant dent in the long term. And so we really think that those measures need to be upgraded, made more robust, and actually there are plenty of things that could be in there that would encourage lower transportation emissions that are not currently there. And so we're readying comments to suggest those things.

WHEELER:

To the eco news, we are talking about the forthcoming Climate Action Plan. So we've talked a fair amount about transportation. Matt, are there other parts of the CAP, the Climate Action Plan? I keep calling it the CAP, right? CAP Climate Action Plan that stand out to you that you would like to talk about.

SIMMONS:

Yeah, so the next big sort of chunk of emissions in Humboldt County come from building heating. This is people burning natural gas or sometimes still wood stoves in order to heat their homes in the winter. These emissions, I think, are pretty exciting to talk about reducing because they'll both have a climate benefit and then also a really significant public health benefit.

I don't think people know this, but burning carbon to heat your home is like not the safest way to do it. And we now, with the invention of these technologies like heat pumps, have much cleaner ways to heat your home and make sure that your family is safe. It's also, these aren't exactly the same, but tied in with this is like home cooking, right, switching to electric stoves, having electric appliances instead of gas-powered appliances, all these sorts of things, which I think after transportation are going to be the changes that people start to notice in their day-to-day life, right? Like what happens off at some power plant is sort of removed from you, but the way that you heat your soup on the stove, people will notice. And so this is another thing that the plan sort of incentivizes in several places, but doesn't go quite far enough, I would argue, in terms of like really trying to force the change to electrification.

But, you know, I think the state of California and the country, frankly, are moving in this direction anyway. And so Humboldt's going to get sort of towed along regardless of local concerns.

WHEELER:

So in previous versions of the Climate Action Plan, we had pushback from folks in rural areas of the county saying, well, this is just not feasible for me, right? It's something like home electrification. My house is off grid. I'm 30 miles up some dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I'm living off of solar already. I have trucked in gas every once in a while to run my stove. What's the problem with that? Trying to force this one size fits all solution on us doesn't work. And so the county in this more recent version attempts to take this concern seriously. It doesn't require rural areas to have the same rules as urban areas, but there's still kind of this problem in their rural-urban divide. Matt, can you talk a little bit more about this rural-urban split and classification of land problem that we're experiencing?

SIMMONS:

Yeah. So the current draft splits the County into urban and rural areas, which on its, on its surface, makes sense to me that people living in more urbanized areas like Eureka, like Arcata would, these places are closer to being able to achieve, especially the transportation related and some of the electrification stuff you just mentioned, Tom, measures that the CAP envisions. And so because these places, it's more feasible, the CAP holds them to a stricter timeline and, and standard. I think where the CAP goes wrong is that their definition is far too narrow, right? So that the current draft of the CAP basically says that the cities of Arcata, Eureka, and I believe Fortuna are the only urbanized places in all of Humboldt County and that everything else is rural. So that includes parts of the unincorporated County like McKinleyville and Myrtle town that are really just suburbs of neighboring cities.

WHEELER:

Oh, I wouldn't even say that there's suburbs. If you're in Myrtle town, it's difficult to see where Eureka ends in Myrtle town begins.

SIMMONS:

Okay, so they're just neighborhoods.

WHEELER:

his neighborhoods. Yeah, this is Eureka greater metropolitan area, right?

SIMMONS:

Yeah. And then it also includes small cities, right. That are actually dense enough and Colin, you probably speak better about this definition than I do, but, but everyone is sort of living within walking distance of each other already. Right. So like Trinidad is, is rural in the sense that it's separated from the rest of the County, but it's not that big of a place. Right. And so everyone can walk or bike around the town if they need to get around locally. And so that's, that's sort of, we, we believe, and we argued in our comments that this definition right now is doing a disservice, both in terms of giving some jurisdictions too easy of a time, right, I also just think it's unfair to the person who lives one block over from Myrtle town in the city of Eureka to hold them to such a higher standard than the person who lives one block over in Myrtle town, just because of where the County line is. It doesn't really make sense.

FISKE:

Yeah, I think we could endlessly debate where people think urban and rural areas are. But luckily, there are some authoritative definitions that already exist. And I would refer to the U.S. Census Bureau has a definition of urbanized area, and they've applied it to everywhere in the country, including Humboldt. And so we can look at those boundaries, which are based on population density and other factors and apply a more sensible definition than is currently in there. And I think that something else to remember is it's not just that the rural areas are sort of excused from more of the ambitious climate actions in the document. It's also that they would get less investment. And so if you think that, like I do, that a place like McKinleyville or Myrtletown or Cutton should also be getting good bike and pedestrian infrastructure, should also be getting better transit service and all that kind of stuff, we should classify them as what they are, which is urbanized areas and not rural.

WHEELER:

So Climate Action Plan has a number of these implementing measures. To what extent are these measures, the Climate Action Plan itself, binding on local jurisdictions, Colin?

FISKE:

It's a good question. So because, and I sort of alluded to this earlier, this is what is called a qualified Climate Action Plan, which means that it attempts to demonstrate that the measures are, achieve the same kinds of emissions reductions that are required by state targets and state laws. And so what that means is that the local jurisdictions, the cities and the county will be able to rely on this document to streamline their environmental reviews of future projects if those projects are consistent with the Climate Action Plan.

So in other words, if you can show by checking some boxes that a project is consistent with this plan, they won't have to do an individualized climate impact analysis. They'll still have to do all the other environmental review that they normally would, but they won't have to do an individualized analysis of the climate impact of each project, which can be helpful and save projects money in their environmental reviews. But as a result of doing that and of relying on this Climate Action Plan for that purpose, it really does mean that the county and the cities and the region as a whole has to abide by the plan to make it legal. So there is, whereas in some places you'll see these climate action plans that don't have any real teeth to them, this does have a little bit more of an ability to enforce or at least some legal mandates to abide by.

WHEELER:

There's a stick, let's say, in case they don't abide by it. One of the problems or one of the difficulties that looking forward to the future in implementing this Climate Action Plan is that. We're out of money, right? Humboldt County as a government has reporting a multimillion dollar projected loss and is cutting services, has hiring freeze. And yet and yet we are needing to do more as local governments to combat the climate crisis. Can you talk about the the need to invest in in climate action and how the Climate Action Plan conceives of this work getting done?

FISKE:

Yeah, so the plan calls for the creation of a new regional climate committee, which would be in charge of coordinating and implementing most of the actions that are required. It doesn't really specify who would make it up or where it would be, this committee, but the environmental community has been advocating that this most logically should go under the Humboldt County Association of Governments, which is an existing organization where all the cities and the county are all represented already and also is in charge of regional transportation planning. And because the vast majority of these emissions, the climate pollution in the region comes from transportation, it really makes sense to have the same agency coordinating and overseeing transportation planning and climate planning.

But as you were alluding to, Tom, it's not as simple as just creating a new committee under HCAOG, the Association of Governments. We also have to staff it and fund it and provide the resources to make that actually happen. And that is really not just the county's responsibility, but a regional responsibility. And I think luckily, there are a lot of state and federal grant funds potentially available to support climate action if we have the staff to apply for them and the will to carry them out. But we do need to commit some local funds, at least to get the ball rolling, to have the staff to apply for funds and implement grants.

WHEELER:

And a reminder, check out our show about Proposition 4, which is the state's climate bond measure that would pay for things like this. You can find a link to that show in the show notes on the Lost Coast Outpost dot com. Uh. Yeah, Matt.

SIMMONS:

Look, the CAP doesn't specifically talk about this, but one of the measures that we need to do is allow more people to live closer to goods and services. And that sort of upzoning could actually make our jurisdictions some money by increasing development and land values. And so not every single CAP measure comes with a cost. Some of them are actually going to come with a financial benefit. And so I just wanted to throw that out there, that I think when we talk about climate change, yes, there is a big cost to shifting our entire economy to meet it, but there are also going to be some benefits.

FISKE:

Yeah, that's a really good point, Matt. And also, I would say almost all of these measures come with economic benefits, more broadly speaking. There are, you talked about this earlier, but most of these measures will keep people healthier and will save a huge amount on healthcare costs. Most of them will, like, for example, allowing people to walk and bike more has a huge public health impact. A lot of these things will spur job creation. And so there's definitely, I would, I would expect for most of these that the economic benefit is much greater than the cost, but of course, that benefit doesn't all go directly into local government coffers, so the local government has to have some way to pay the upfront cost for some of these things so that we can all see the benefits.

WHEELER:

Well, I will continue the yes ending, and I will say that there are going to be times in which there are going to be politically difficult votes, where it's going to be a choice between different investments in our community, between the climate investment and maybe an investment in some other form of infrastructure, the street repaving program, for example. And in those times, I think that we as environmental voters need to continue to push and exercise pressure on our local governments to make those sorts of investments that are going to keep our climate safe. If I have one problem with local Humboldt County politics is that we have a lot of politicians that say the right thing to you and then vote the wrong way from the dais. We've seen that on a number of projects this year. So environmental voters, if you want environmental action to actually happen, this is also kind of a call to action that you need to get involved. You need to go to your city council meetings. You need to know your city council members or your county supervisors and really push them to do the type of work that we need to see done. Anybody last reflections on the Climate Action Plan before we call it a show?

FISKE:

I just want to reflect, we talked about at the beginning how long it's been, and we've talked a lot about some of the flaws in the plan, and certainly it should be strengthened, and we hope that it is. But it's important for us to get a plan on the books so we can get moving and start accomplishing some of the things we need to. The climate crisis is upon us. You see the impacts all over already, and it would have been great if we started doing this five years ago, ten years ago, but today is the next best time.

SIMMONS:

We tried to, but also I was going to say that, and I don't know if we emphasize this or not, this plan is really just for the 2030 targets that California has set out, and there are stricter 2045 targets. And so if you feel like you missed out, this is the first time you're hearing about the Climate Action Plan, and you feel like you missed out on this process, don't worry, because before you know it, we'll have to start planning for the 2045 goal and thinking about how we can design a Humboldt County that has zero emissions. And so this is just because the plan is going by doesn't mean that we aren't going to all stop thinking about this and ways to reduce our emissions.

WHEELER:

Matt, that's a great point. It, it's been six years since this plan was first, since we first put staff hours to making this plan, it's less than six years until 2030. So we should probably just immediately roll into our next planning effort, shouldn't we? Oh boy. All right. Well, I know that we will have a lot to work on for the next six years. Thank you so much to Matt Simmons and Colin Fisk for joining us on this EcoNews. Thanks for having us. Yeah, there we go. All right.

SIMMONS:

on your voice.

WHEELER:

All right, join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.