AUDIO:

The following is a rough machine transcript. Click the words to skip to that point in the audio.

TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is my friend and colleague, Matt Simmons, Climate Program Director here at EPIC. Welcome to the Econews.

MATT SIMMONS:

Hey Tom, thanks for having me.

WHEELER:

We are also joined by our friend and colleague Colin Fiske, executive director of CRTP, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Hey Colin!

COLIN FISKE:

Hello, Tom and Matt.

WHEELER:

So if I have these two folks together, you bet I'm gonna be talking about climate change. And today's show, we are focusing on the Humboldt County Regional Climate Action Plan, or we might call it the CAP or the RCAP throughout this conversation, just for ease of not having to say Humboldt County Regional Climate Action Plan over and over again. So be aware. And I guess this, I guess we should start off by just describing or defining what the heck a climate action plan is. Matt Simmons, can you tell us what is a climate action plan and how did we get to start constructing one in the first place?

SIMMONS:

Yeah. So in order to prevent climate change, we have to reduce our fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. But that takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of planning. And so a climate action plan is a document or a jurisdiction plans how they are going to reduce their emissions. They have to be in line with California state goals for reducing emissions. So California has goals for 2030 and goals for 2045. And so this is the document where Humboldt County says this is how we will achieve those emission reduction goals by those dates.

WHEELER:

And so this also only does a consideration of things that are within the county's ability to potentially influence. There's a lot in this world which is preempted by the state of California or the federal government. Colin Fiske, you wanted to jump in.

FISKE:

Yeah, I just wanted to point out, we're talking about the county, but the way this is set up is, it's not just the county itself, it's also all of the cities and also some of the other agencies like the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, the Humboldt Waste Management Authority and other folks. So it's not just what the county can do, but sort of what local agencies more generally can do. Just wanted to make that point.

WHEELER:

Yeah, so not not the Humboldt County as a government, the Humboldt County as a geographic area. It is the climate action plan for all the governments or all the incorporated governments within within Humboldt County.

SIMMONS:

That's where you get regional, regional....

WHEELER:

All right, so as I said before, not all things are able to be tackled by Humboldt County because so many things have been preempted under state and federal law, things like regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from Humboldt Bay Generating Station, our natural gas burning power plant here on Humboldt Bay. That is outside of the ability of our local jurisdictions to regulate, and because of that, emissions from it are excluded from the Climate Action Plan. But there is a whole host of other emissions that we can control here in Humboldt County that we can address using zoning codes, other regulations passed by local governments, and that's where the Climate Action Plan is targeted.

Colin Fiske, as part of the RCAP, the document goes through it and it catalogs our baseline emissions, what we are putting out into the atmosphere right now. I am obviously asking you this question for a reason, but what is our number one source of greenhouse gas emissions here in Humboldt County?

FISKE:

It is transportation.

WHEELER:

All right, transportation. And what do we mean by transportation in this context? Is it like, is it big trucks? Is it planes? Is it, what is transportation?

FISKE:

So it excludes aviation, but it includes pretty much mostly around here, what we would think of as on-road transportation, cars and trucks. And the Climate Action Plan identifies that about 73%, so almost three-quarters of emissions that are covered by the plan come from on-road transportation. And most of that is from just individual privately owned vehicles. You know, some of it is from bigger trucks, but the bulk of it is just from people driving around.

WHEELER:

And so we have other pre-existing planning efforts around regional transportation. The regional transportation plan, which is currently under development. What is that plan and how does it interact here with the regional climate action plan?

FISKE:

So the regional transportation plan is another state required planning document. It gets updated every four years and it's a 20 year plan. So right now they're updating it for 2026 to 2046. And I should say, so it's, it's built by the Humboldt County Association of Governments and it, HCAOG, people know it as, and HCAOG is governed by a board made up of representatives of the county and all the cities, similarly to the climate action plan coordination. And about four years ago, the last time this was updated, CRTP and other stakeholders worked with HCAOG to make sure that there were specific targets, not only for climate, but also for safety and other important things in the plan so that, you know, we have quantitative measures that we can make sure that we're addressing this enormous source of, of climate pollution locally.

And there, so the current plan does have those quantitative, ambitious targets that we need to, to reduce climate pollution from transportation. And it also clearly identifies climate change as a crisis, as we all do, I think, and government agencies and scientists around the world do. Unfortunately, this current version of the regional transportation plan that's, that's out for public comment right now, kind of backslides on some of these things and removes the word crisis from the plan, so it doesn't call climate change a crisis anymore. It delays some of these key targets for reducing climate pollution. And it kind of walks back from the idea that HCAOG would even hold itself accountable in terms of the projects that it funds to those climate and safety goals. So we're seeing, unfortunately, some backsliding in the regional transportation plan that we are really trying to address.

WHEELER:

And so I think that perhaps a recurring theme of this show is going to be a little bit of disappointment to local governments with their treatment of climate change, the seriousness in which they take this subject, because the regional climate action plan has itself been significantly delayed. So this is a plan that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Matt Simmons, it's December 2025. How many years is it until 2030? Four. Four years. And it still hasn't been passed yet by by our local governments. So we have four years, in theory, then to reduce 10 years worth of emissions. This is 10 year planning horizon. And we've been in development of this plan, I think, for about eight years. Why is this such a struggle to get across the finish line? Matt, do you have any thoughts? Yeah.

SIMMONS:

I mean, we've seen pushback from sort of economic development folks about the plan. We've seen pushback from more rural areas of the county about the plan. I think preventing climate change inherently involves changing patterns of development and behavior and people might have to bike to work rather than drive to work and things like that. If you don't want to change a plan that says, this is how we will make the change, you're going to be opposed to that plan.

WHEELER:

But I will also point out, though, that the Climate Action Plan is more carrot than stick in its operation. Colin, can you explain what I mean by that?

FISKE:

Yeah, so the Climate Action Plan has a lot of targets for reducing pollution through, like Matt was talking about, encouraging people to walk and bike more, encouraging people to take the bus more, all these low-carbon forms of transportation. Also in the non-transportation sectors, encouraging folks to switch out gas-powered or wood-powered heat and water heating for electric and all kinds of things like that. But the vast majority of those things are incentives or encouragement or education. There's not a whole lot of sort of requirements or punishments for not doing things. And part of that is because the local governments have limited ability to impose those kinds of punishments or sanctions. But part of it is because, you know, we want to bring people along with us. We want people to choose to do these things. And most of those things are associated with all sorts of other benefits, better health for people, more happiness, economic development, just making our lives better in general. So hopefully the carrots can help bring people along a little bit.

WHEELER:

All right, Colin, I'm gonna go back to you again. So if the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions is transportation, what are the kinds of solutions proposed by the Climate Action Plan? And do you think that these are going in the right direction? Or do you have any sort of concerns that the Climate Action Plan is failing to address?

FISKE:

Yeah, so in terms of transportation, there's really kind of two buckets, if you will, of types of things that you can do to reduce transportation emissions. The one that most people might think of first is transitioning gas and diesel powered vehicles to zero emission vehicles, primarily electric vehicles, but also some hydrogen and other things around here. So there are measures in the plan to install a lot more public charging stations and other zero emission vehicle infrastructure, and the goal there would be to encourage people, again, to encourage people to buy zero emission vehicles. The only sort of requirements, so to speak, in the plan to buy zero emission vehicles are for the public agencies themselves, the cities and the county, and they actually are already required to do that by state law. So that's sort of how the zero emission vehicle side of it goes.

The other bucket of actions that you can take for transportation emissions is just to get people to drive less, and we know from modeling of the on-road fleet and from emissions modeling that we can't just transition to zero emission vehicles and get to our goals that way, partly because there's a lot of newish gas cars on the road and they're not just going to be thrown on the scrap heap. It takes a while to turn them over to new zero emission vehicles, and so we also have to drive a lot less. So within that bucket, we have things like building better bike and pedestrian infrastructure, funding better transit service, but also changing the way we develop so that when we build new homes and new jobs, we're building those things close together. We're putting things in areas that have distances that are walkable or bikeable and that have densities that can allow us to provide good transit and actually have people ride it.

So I would say that's the overall summary, and in terms of concerns that I have, I think these are all things we need to do. It's generally headed in the right direction. I would say the overall concern is that things are not going far enough. We are trying to, as you mentioned, fit 10 years of action into four years, and then we'll immediately have to increase our ambition to hit the 2045 goals. The one specific concern that I'll mention, just something that CRTP has been advocating over in the last year or so, and it's going to get a little bit wonky, but there's a specific definition of infill development in the plan.

In other words, let me even think of it as low carbon development because it's development that allows people to get around without a vehicle, and we want to make sure that that definition is strong and that it actually is focused on places where people can get around without driving, but also that that policy is applied uniformly across the whole county because there's some wording in the current plan that suggests that rural development might kind of get a pass from that requirement, which would mean that not only would they not be required to be consistent with the Climate Action Plan, but they also might get a pass on their environmental reviews and not have to analyze their own emissions and mitigate them, and so we want to make sure that that doesn't happen and that everybody is held to climate pollution reduction standards.

WHEELER:

So through an unintentional loophole, perhaps the Climate Action Plan could have the effect of releasing more development on rural lands with less environmental analysis as a consequence.

FISKE:

Right? I think that's right. And, you know, we've had this discussion with the county and with the planning commission, and it's not clear to me what's going on exactly. I don't think this is intentional, but we do want to make sure that the language is completely clear before it's adopted.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. Focusing on the Humboldt County Regional Climate Action Plan. And joining me is my friend and colleague, Matt Simmons and Colin Fiske. We might call it the CAP or the RCAP throughout this conversation, just for ease of not having to say Humboldt County Regional Climate Action Plan. So it sounds as if there are significant concerns with the Climate Action Plan. Yet, Matt, EPIC is calling for folks to tell the board to approve the Climate Action Plan. Can you explain why, if this is a flawed document, we would want this to still be approved?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, I mean, you said it earlier, right? We only have four years until 2030. And every day that goes by that we're not making these changes delays the emission reductions that we need to see. And so even if it's an imperfect plan, it is better to be moving towards the goal that you're working towards, rather than not moving towards it at all. And I should say, because this is a 2030 plan, and we will need a 2045 plan. We're all going to be back at this in four years. And we'll have four years of data about what is and what is not working. And that will be a great time to bring up some of the concerns that we still have. And hopefully, we will be in a political situation where folks are willing to listen.

WHEELER:

I mean, given that we were going to need a 2045 plan starting in 2030, we should probably get working on it now since it took us eight years to get this plan.

FISKE:

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. And I did want to point out just, just for emphasis that this plan is divided into three phases of implementation. And this is the current draft, which is not the first draft that was developed, but the current draft is divided into three phases. The first phase is supposed to be 2024 to 2026. So here we are entering 2026. The phases have not begun because the plan has not been adopted. So there's some urgency to this.

WHEELER:

There's some urgency to this too, because we want the Climate Action Plan to help inform other pretty important land-use planning decisions that are going to come up. So in California, we have this thing called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, where the state of California tells each area of the state, each county of the state, how much total housing needs to be planned for within their bounds within the next, what is it, seven, eight-year period, and then that housing amount is then allocated across all the various jurisdictions within that county. So we are coming up to our next Regional Housing Needs Allocation, and it would have been really nice if we had the Climate Action Plan in place, because the Climate Action Plan would direct more clearly that housing should go into urbanized areas.

And if you've been following the Lost Coast Outpost and other places, you might have seen that the environmental groups are not happy with that Regional Housing Needs Allocation process. Too much housing is going to be given to the county, which would then presumably be sprawl. Carbon-intensive, wildlife-killing sprawl. So the needs to get this thing done are great, and flawed as it may be, warts and all, this will still be an important document for local governments to use. We haven't really meaningfully begun our climate action work here in Humboldt County at the local level, because in part we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for this document to be finished.

FISKE:

I do want to give credit where it's due to say that in terms of planning for lower carbon development, we have seen some meaningful improvements in the last few years, both in Arcata and Eureka, also within the county in the McKinleyville Town Center plan. So I think some of the jurisdictions are doing some of this action, but one thing that I think will be a big difference when the Climate Action Plan is adopted is that it includes a commitment to convene a regional committee that's focused solely on climate and also to hire a staff person, at least one staff person, whose job is just to work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

And that's something that we just don't have. We don't have a political body that's dedicated to this and we don't have a staff that's dedicated to it, and that by itself I think will make a significant difference in putting some of these actions at the top of the priority list, recruiting funding, just getting things done.

SIMMONS:

And that's true of actually quite a few things in this plan, right? So like the plan also calls for more electric vehicles to be used. Humboldt County can't require people to buy electric vehicles. It can maybe build more like charging stations, right? And so this is one of those things that the county does not have direct control over. And so while EPIC submitted comments to the county and to the planners saying, we think you should not rely on this false climate solution, we still feel that passing the plan because we are desperate to get to work on climate change in the next four years is a step in the right direction.

WHEELER:

So, Matt, in addition to asking the Board of Supervisors to pass this, there are some substantive changes that EPIC and the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities are calling for before the Board of Supervisors. This is gonna come up for a vote next week on Tuesday to approve. What are the changes that you hope to see made in this document?

SIMMONS:

So the first one, and you'll have to excuse me because I'm a lawyer and I'm about to get a little bit wonky when it comes to legalese. The first change is one that we want the Board of Supervisors to undo a last minute change that the Planning Commission made at their October 16th meeting. And to understand this change, you have to understand how the California Environmental Quality Act works. So under the California Environmental Quality Act, jurisdictions have to mitigate significant environmental impacts. But you need some way of measuring whether or not an impact is significant. And so as part of a environmental review process, you set a threshold of significance, a amount of impact, and you say over this amount, this impact will be significant, and then we'll start caring about it and mitigating it.

At the October 16th Planning Commission meeting, the Planning Commission took the threshold of significance that had been recommended by the consultants hired to draft the Regional Climate Action Plan, and they increased it by 50%. And they said, look, we think that this recommendation is too low and that it'll be too hard. It'll influence economic decisions in a way that we don't like. And so therefore, we want to allow more emissions before we start considering them significant. Now, if the entire point of a Climate Action Plan is to reduce emissions, then making a last minute decision to allow 50% more emissions in a project before you consider it significant is completely counterproductive to the plan.

Moreover, answering the question, when does this project become environmentally significant by saying this will make it harder to develop something, is not, it doesn't follow, right? Like it's not a relevant point to answering that question. And so in order to establish thresholds of significance, you need findings of substantial evidence that support that claim, and the Planning Commission didn't make adequate findings. And so what I would like to see the supervisors do is undo the Planning Commission's recommendation, go back to the thresholds of significance that were originally proposed by the consultants, because they did an analysis where they considered what would be a significant impact, and they looked at other Climate Action Plans, and they said, this is what other jurisdictions in the state of California are doing, and that is a better, more defensible metric to use rather than arbitrarily increasing it by 50%. So that is my main ask for the Board of Supervisors before they approve this plan.

FISKE:

I got to say, too, just to be clear, the thresholds that you're talking about only apply when a project is not consistent with the climate action plan. Because if a project is consistent with the climate action plan, then it will be assumed in the CEQA review process to not have a significant impact on climate. So this is for projects that are already inconsistent with the climate action plan. So I just think that's important to point out.

WHEELER:

All right, so we are asking folks to come out before the Board of Supervisors to tell them to improve the Climate Action Plan, one, but ultimately, two, to pass the Climate Action Plan, that its passage is going to be important. So the Board of Supervisors is considering this next Tuesday. I believe that is the 16th in chambers. Colin, do you have anything else to add about advocacy before the Board?

FISKE:

I think it's important for folks to speak up, to come to the meeting if you can. You can also make comments on Zoom, or if you can't make it to the meeting, to email your supervisor ahead of time and let them know what you think. And I also want to make sure people know that we are also in the middle of the public comment period for the regional transportation plan. So you can go to HCAOG's website, hcaog.net, and find out how to comment on that. And in that case, we do not have to encourage them to adopt the plan because they are required by law to adopt it. We just have to encourage them to make it as strong as possible and acknowledge the climate crisis.

WHEELER:

It feels weird that we have to continually hold our good progressive local governments to account on climate change, but it's something that we have not yet had to deal with as local governments. And I think that we are kind of breaching the dam here, that this is this is the first time that local governments are going to have to meaningfully consider climate change, and hopefully this will just become part of their normal ordinary working order, in the same way that if you're a city government, picking up the trash and cleaning up parks and whatever else is part of your ordinary work, that climate change will become part of the ordinary work of local governments here. So hopefully, the next Climate Action Plan won't take eight years to produce and we will have more ambitious targets and take a larger bite out of our local climate emissions. All right, well, thanks again to my guest, Matt Simmons, Climate Program Director here at EPIC and Colin Fiske, Executive Director of CRTP, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Thanks.

SIMMONS:

Thanks, Tom.

WHEELER:

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