By John Lawrence
The City of San Diego has developed an elaborate Climate Action Plan (CAP), the goal of which is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The County of San Diego has one too as does the City of Chula Vista as does the Port of San Diego as does SANDAG as does the University of California at San Diego as does the San Diego County Water Authority. In fact, as mandated by the state, almost every political jurisdiction in the state has developed a CAP. The CAPs in general are long on bureaucracy and time frames and short on specific mandates and orders for compliance.
In a recent opinion column in the San Diego U-T, San Diego interim mayor Todd Gloria said in response to an earlier column by climate change naysayer Steven Greenhut:
If you accept that climate change is both real and caused by humans — and the scientific evidence for both of these propositions is overwhelming — then we need a game plan. Everyone should play a role, including local government. We have a fundamental responsibility to this planet and all the future generations who will inhabit it.
The city of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan provides a road map to help our city meet its moral responsibilities in the decades ahead. Mr. Greenhut suggests the plan will saddle local businesses and residents with expensive regulations. This is misleading. In reality, the plan sets a wide variety of targets and goals. Some of these goals — such as making our streets more bike-friendly and encouraging people to make their homes more energy-efficient — will actually help San Diegans save money in the long run.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty about what the CAP calls for. Later we can decide if any of it will actually be accomplished or will it remain on the drawing board and be debated ad infinitum while lobbyists put the kibosh on the whole thing as being too expensive and too much of an inconvenience to implement. The CAP comprises both adaptation (how to deal with the results of climate change that can’t be prevented) and mitigation (how to change business as usual in order to reduce greenhouse gases and prevent the negative results of climate change).
According to the CAP, San Diego will transition from business-as-usual growth and development practices to a clean, low-carbon economy. According to landmark legislation at the state level, cities are mandated to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CEQA, or the California Environmental Quality Act, is a statute that requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible. The key words here are “if feasible.” Lobbyists will attempt to prove that feasibility, insofar as reducing GHGs is concerned, is dubious.
There are three target dates: 2020, 2035 and 2050. 2020 is sufficiently far away that politicians will have ample time to bloviate to excess while accomplishing very little. Based on the 2010 community-wide baseline inventory, the City of San Diego emits approximately 13.1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases emissions annually. In order to reach its goals, the City will have to reduce emissions to approximately 11.1 million metric tons by 2020 and down to approximately 7.6 million metric tons by 2035.
Changes in local policies, ordinances and building codes will be fought every step of the way by the building industry. For instance, Matt Adams of the Building Industry Association (BIA) of San Diego County maintains that ““It’s getting more and more expensive every day just to build houses…” Therefore, the implication is that the CAP requirement that all new residential and business construction be pre-wired for solar panels and pre-plumbed for solar water heaters is impractical.
According to the CAP:
The City will incur costs to implement many of the implementation mechanisms. These include initial start-up, ongoing administration, and enforcement costs. While some actions will only require funding from public entities, others will result in increased costs for businesses and residents. However, most of the implementation mechanisms provide substantial savings in the long term. The City will be diligent in seeking strategic funding opportunities and the use of partnerships to share the cost.
The CAP puts forth five strategies for reaching its goals:
- ENERGY & WATER EFFICIENT BUILDINGS
- CLEAN & RENEWABLE ENERGY
- MULTIMODAL TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS
- ZERO WASTE MANAGEMENT
- URBAN FOREST & LOCAL FOOD PRODUCTION
The BIA has already declared number 1 to be impractical and adding too much to the price of residential housing and commercial buildings.
As far as transportation is concerned, there is no attempt to expand trolley lines or otherwise encourage public transportation. Platitudes about building new housing projects near transit hubs lack any enforcement mechanism or positive incentive for doing so. At the very least the trolley system should be expanded. While there’s no money for that, there’s plenty of money for building ever more freeways thus adding to the major source of greenhouse gases (54%) in San Diego.
What is needed is a light rail system in the major freeway corridors such as I-5, I-15 and I-8 with incentives to increase ridership. Instead, freeway construction continues apace, and there is more than ever stop-and-go traffic and freeway bottlenecks which add to greenhouse gas emissions due to all the idling motors.
The CAP is long on bureaucratese and short on specific mandatable proposals. There is much ado about monitoring and building superfluous databases so we can track and measure the results of a bunch of lightweight proposals. There is nothing with any teeth in it that won’t be lobbied to death with the result that none of these so-called goals will probably ever be met. It’s so much pie in the sky, but the words emanating from politicans’ mouths about climate change sound good as long as it isn’t your ox that is being gored.
For instance, a plastic bag ordinance is supposed to go into effect in 2014, and there is already movement afoot to implement the removal of plastic bags from the City. But will the City Council finally vote for the ordinance which councilwoman Sherri Lightner has championed?
According to the U-T:
As part of a growing push to cut litter and conserve landfill space, San Diego could join some of California’s biggest cities in outlawing plastic checkout bags over the next year.
The proposed bag ban would eliminate disposable plastic bags from San Diego retail stores such as markets and pharmacies, encourage shoppers to bring reusable totes and require businesses to charge 10 cents for each paper bag.
“The objective is to wean ourselves from temporary bags,” said Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, who shepherded the ordinance through the Rules and Economic Development Committee, which approved the draft rule last month.
The ban could eliminate 348 million single-use plastic bags from San Diego each year, the Equinox Center estimated in a report that coincided with the committee vote. It could save the city $160,000 per year in bag cleanup costs, preserve precious space at Miramar Landfill and keep plastics out of the ocean, the report concluded.
But the proposed rule has sparked opposition from some retailers who say its provisions would hurt mom-and-pop markets and their customers.
Mark Arabo, president and CEO of the San Diego-based Neighborhood Market Association, which represents small markets in California, Arizona and Nevada has already started a campaign against the banning of plastic bags claiming that the cost of purchasing a paper bag (10 cents) would hurt poor people. Of course poor people and others are free to bring their own reusable bags to market. Another irksome thing is that hardware stores such as Home Depot would be exempt from the plastic bag ban. That sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it, as Home Depot is one of the largest commercial operations and largest perpetrators of plastic bag proliferation in San Diego.
The CAP purports to encourage job creation in San Diego especially green job creation. However, there is no recommendation for feed-in tariffs or any other mechanism that would really spur green job creation. San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) will see to that. Feed-in tariffs would hurt their bottom line. So a bunch of lip servive will be given to job creation without any identifiable legislation or tax incentives that would incentivize it. The City’s ideas about job creation are limited to the following: “Create a Sustainable Workforce Engagement Public Advisory Committee to evaluate and make recommendations on equitable green job creation.” More committees and more evaluation! The net result: more wasted taxpayer money and more jobs for consultants such as the one that created the CAP in the first place and more talking points for politicians while in the meantime there is more inaction.
If the City and County were really serious about reducing GHGs, they would do something about transportation which is responsible for 54% of them according to the CAP. Here are some of the helpful things the report suggested:
- Increase Commuter Mass Transit Ridership
- Increase Commuter Biking
- Increase Commuter Walking
- Support SANDAG’s GHG Reduction Targets
- Reserve Parking for Electric Vehicles
- Reduce Vehicle Fuel Consumption
- Increase Electric Vehicle Miles Driven
- Increase Municipal Zero Emissions Vehicles
- Convert Municipal Waste Collection Trucks to NS
While all well and good, there are no teeth here. Nothing about expanding the trolley system. Nothing about light rail in the major freeway corridors.
The keys to all these proposals are the implementation mechanisms. While we will write more on this next time, here is an example:
“Adopt a Residential Water and Energy Conservation Ordinance by 2015 to require building energy consumption disclosure at time of sale or lease.”
This proposed mechanism will, however, do absolutely nothing to reduce GHGs. It is mere window dressing, and there’s too much stuff like this in the CAP. I get the uneasy feeling that the CAP is a feel good document meant to appease environmental concerns and cover politicians’ asses. I wonder how many of the City Council have even read it. A good question for the mayoral candidates, Faulkner and Alvarez, is “HAVE YOU READ THE CAP AND DO YOU SUPPORT IT?”
When I lived downtown from 2000 to 2005, I was elected to the Center City Advisory Commission (CCAC), an advisory group to the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC). What I oberved was that it was common for the City to outsource a study to a consultant group in the way that the CAP was outsourced to Krout Associates, pay them $100,000. or whatever and then have a nice report on hand which nobody does anything about. I saw this happen with the “Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness.” Somebody was paid a lot of money for a worthless piece of paperwork which has accomplished absolutely nothing.
I heard interim mayor Todd Gloria mention the CAP recently on the KPBS local news and also defend it in print so I have some hope that he, at least, will fight for it. The rest of the city council has to too. It’s up to the citizens of San Diego to pressure them to implement it as much or more than the lobbyists probably will to sideline it.
John Lawrence
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John- thanks for taking the time to go through what should be a blueprint for action. Was there any mention of sea level rise?
Yes, Anna. there was some mention of setbacks from the ocean for new construction.
FYI, the San Diego Sierra Club successfully sued the county of San Diego over their insufficient CAP. The Sierra Club-favorable ruling by Judge Taylor this spring is being appealed by the county.
Taylor’s comments made it clear the proposed plan lacked concrete action to meet the required 2020 reductions and other goals. And despite the even shorter timeframe for compliance, the County is proceeding with an appeal, financed by us taxpayers.
So they are not only fiddling while the County burns, literally, from climate change related fires, they are charging taxpayers admission to the concert.
See- http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/18/countys-climate-action-plan-lacks-teeth/
The County’s CAP is a separate issue from the City’s CAP. So far nobody has sued the City. However, they all need to get together and have a unified CAP for the whole county and all the cities in it. Right now there are several CAPs for several different jurisdictions within the County.
Remaining Climate Blame Believers;
When you look your child in the eyes and tell them science agrees a crisis will happen for them it becomes a moral judgment for science has NEVER agreed it will happen. It’s just you and news editors and politicians agreeing it WILL be a crisis. Prove us wrong and find us one single IPCC warning that agrees beyond “could be” a crisis.
Believe all you like but do as science does and NEVER say a crisis WILL happen, only could.
Get up to date:
*Occupywallstreet now does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded and corporate run carbon trading stock markets ruled by politicians.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Obama had not mentioned the crisis in two State of the Unions addresses.
Deny that.
Not sure what your point is.
Whats missing from all of these plans is a strategy for making our neighborhoods green and incorporating strategies that the public can participate in and that re energizes our communities. Neighborhood greening should be an eligible cap and trade investment and ll the money needed can be made available without additional private sector or public capital outlay.
There is mention in the CAP of tree planting in the neighborhoods and local food production. I didn’t go into that too much in this piece, but will cover it more next time. Here’s a sample:
“Close to 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas and depends on the essential ecological, economic, and social benefits provided by urban trees and forests. (USDA 2010). The City of San Diego recognizes this and has prioritized the expansion of the urban forest as a critical strategy to reduce GHG emissions.”
Its more than trees John. A lot more. Did you read my article about the work of the Woodbury architectural students who did a comprehensive co2 emissions design for Greater Logan Heights. They delve into solar, open space, traffic patterns, even some unique technologically advanced treatment of “hot spots” cause by free way traffic etc. The green of communities needs a comprehensive approach and much more than trees although that would be nice too. They even developed strategies for greening junk yards in Logan which is proposed “third way” to achieve healthy standards for the botched land use patterns there now.The current Sandag, Port, nor City or County action plans addresses this opportunity and is very, very slim and expensive because they do not link the work to cap and trade investment. You might
want to check out the recent SDFP article (October)
As mentioned in the article, one of the main concerns of the CAP is “Urban Forest and Local Food Production.” There is quite a bit of content there. I just didn’t have time to go into it in this article.
John,
San Diego’s goals are commendable and certainly doable in a two-step pathway to targeted CO2 reductions as proposed. It’s essential to unite in effectively and efficiently implementing the mitigation technologies and practices in the key sectors outlined in CAP. Time is not on the side of Earth people in addressing global warming and the climate change impacts that are increasing in scale and severity.
CAP’s first step of taking CO2 emissions from 13.1 million tons in 2010 to 11.1 million tons in 2020 means reducing annual CO2 emissions on the average by 200,000 tons or about 1.5% a year. For San Diego, this means going from 10 tons per capita in 2010 to about 7.8 tons per capita in 2020. This compares well with current U.S. per capita emissions — the highest in the world by far today — of 17.0 tons vs. EU per capita emissions of 7.2 tons.
CAP’s second tougher step of taking CO2 emissions from 11.1 million tons in 2020 to 6.7 million tons in 2035 means reducing annual CO2 emissions on the average by 233,300 tons or about 3% per year. For San Diego, this means going from 7.8 tons per capita in 2020 to about 4.4 tons per capita in 2035 — mounting to an impressive 56% reduction in CO2 emissions per capita between 2010 and 2035!
These pathway targets should be closely measured and reported against shorter-term interim targets vs. actual results. This is to insure the two-step targeted pathway to CO2 reductions is on course in making effective progress toward low-emission growth.
Studies conclude the U.S. must reduce CO2 emissions 4% annually through 2050 — or in steps of 3% and 5% — to stay in a cumulative GHG emission budget consistent with a 450 ppm CO2eq stabilization target for 2050, so critical to keeping the global mean temperature increase from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius. On a national level, delaying reductions until 2020 would then require a faster CO2 reduction rate of at least 8% per year. Relatively the same would apply if SanDiego didn’t stay the course.
ALEC is already trying to stop solarization as this article points out so we’ll see how smooth the sailing is for San Diego to follow the CAP.
John,
Fortunately, ALEC (American Legislation Exchange Council – financed by special oil-coal-gas interests) has been unsuccessful in their nation-wide legislative lobbying attempts to repeal the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) now in force in 30 states. Like California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2005, RPS legislation requires state utilities to produce some of their power from solar, wind, biomass, etc. in a certain timeframe. I believe California’s legislation mandates that electricity companies source at least 33% of their power from renewable sources by 2020. That’s magnificent!
ALEC, in reaction to losing its RPS repeal actions, is now focusing on weakening clean energy standards and severely curbing EPA’s power to limit GHG emissions from fracking and from existing and future power plants — knowing the latter produce over 40% of GHG emissions! ALEC has gone so far as to dumbfoundedly fallaciously claim that strengthening emission standards for power plants will increase electricity prices 80% and seriously damage economic recovery. Complete NONSENSE! The aim here is, as one authority stated, “ALEC doesn’t want the EPA to regulate GHG emissions.”
ALEC is also stepping up pressure on state legislatures to role back federal tax credits for solar and wind power. This includes looking at how homeowners with solar panels are compensated for surplus home energy that is fed back into the grid system. This in turn has resulted in ALEC finding ways for state legislatures to charge onerous fees to discourage homeowners who plan to install or have already installed homebased solar panels. In a case concluded in November, ALEC pressured for legislative approval in Arizona for a $100 monthly fee to customers installing solar panels. This would have killed solar panel sales. Arizona compromised and ended up being the first state to pass a $5 monthly charge.
In the words of Gabe, Director of the Energy and Policy Institute, “They (editor’s note: ALEC representatives in concert with state legislatures) are trying to eliminate pro-solar policies in states to protect utility industry profits.”
In words of ALEC’s John Eick, “Direct generation solar customers are essentially
“freeriders” on the system. They are not paying for the infrastructure they use … but they should be paying to distribute the surplus electricity.”
When will we Americans ever learn to come together on such obvious threats as near term ecosystem and human extensive extinction from a 50% chance of the Earth overheating above 2 degrees Celsius, possibly 4 degrees Celsuis, by 2050 … if we continue to pursue the “behavorial and fossil fuels as usual” path?
These arguments (like those of ALEC) that Frank describes will go on ad nauseam until we change the economic model in this country. Ie, until businesses across the board are motivated by something other than profit, nothing will change quickly because the people whose job it is to run these corporations will use their enormous financial resources to fight progress on climate change tooth-and-nail. The fact that ALEC is financed by oil and gas interests tells the whole story to me. I don’t need to hear any more. Knowing this tells me that “coming together” won’t happen without change on the constitutional level restructuring the reason businesses exist. There are many efforts in this direction now that I won’t enumerate here, but a constitutional amendment would go along way toward providing cohesion to these efforts.
Addition: 3rd from last paragraph, 1st sentence: In the words of Gabe Elsner …
Hang out!
Did you know that if every household in Southern California hung out one load of laundry a week to dry in the sun and the air for free, we wouldn’t need to build any of the new power plants? and sun kills more germs than anti-bacterial soap…
Simple solution to reduce your own electic bill!
Don’t count on the bureaucrats to save you, or the planet!
I’m with you on this one Micaela. It is interesting that many Home Owner Associations (HOA’s) do not permit hanging out clothes. It is considered déclassé. Those of us who hang out our clothes evidently reek of proletarian ignorance.
I hang out my clothes– cuelgo la ropa–and remember my mother, who knew that sunlight was cheap and that the breeze made everything smell fresh and good.
I take down the towels, stiff on the line, press my nose into them, and remember my mother. And do one small thing for this incredible blue marble that we call home.
Hi John, Good article that reinforces much of what I already know about Tucson “green” proposals : they don’t have any “teeth”, the studies usually from out of Tucson firms are endless and never implemented, many workshops are only for bureaucrats to “toot their own horns” and money talks when it comes to opposing any serious measures that would actually be effective. What are we waiting for? I guess when the outdoor temps are 120 and you can only cool your house to 95 degrees….that is if the electricity is running …then maybe we will see a change. Of course by then it will be way too late. Sad state of affairs! Grace Rich