City Urged to Take Actions to Reduce Locally Generated Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The League of Women’s Voters of Pasadena is urging the city to declare a climate emergency and to take actions to reduce locally generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in response to the current climate crisis being faced by the country.

During the meeting of the Environmental Advisory Commission last Tuesday, October 12, the league presented 10 action points and processes, developed by LWV United States Climate Action Task Force, to reduce GHG emissions.

The 10 actions and processes is a framework for climate action which focuses on the most effective specific actions that cities can adopt. The following are the actions identified by the league:

• Terminate fossil fuel purchase contracts and enter only into renewable energy contracts.

• Permit new construction only without fossil fuel energy.

• Retrofit or build municipal structures for renewable energy supply and energy efficiency.

• Require or create incentives for, retrofit of private buildings for renewable energy supply and energy efficiency.

• Offer incentives for and facilitate residential, neighborhood and commercial rooftop solar.

• Offer community solar programs to enable renters to enjoy the benefits of low-cost renewable energy.

• Replace fossil fuel municipal vehicles with renewable energy powered vehicles.

• Install or incentivize the installation of electric vehicle charging stations in public and private parking lots and convenient locations.

• Offer incentives and rebates for electric vehicles and electric appliance purchases.

• Reduce vehicle miles traveled by planning measures and incentives to use public transportation.

The league also identified the setting of annual GHG reduction goals, the establishing of consequences for failure to meet these goals, assigning authority and allocating budget, linking plans to affordable housing and utility bills, integrating climate actions with building codes, embracing public transparency at all stages of planning and using of climate action plans (CAPs) for GHG emissions reduction.

In urging the city to adopt the framework, President of League of Women Voters Pasadena Area Martha Zavala stressed the need to confront climate change as she noted that extreme weather disasters such as flooding, hurricanes and wildfires are plaguing the country.

“We do urge that framework. We need to make sure that the city supports it in making this transition.”

She said declaring a climate emergency is a necessary first step.

“We hope that there will be a city-wide declaration of an emergency in order for us to go ahead and make that transition not for the city alone but all of its residents also.”

“We really believe that it has to be ‘all hands on deck’ response from the city but it does need to be led by the city and supported by the residents, because everybody is going to go through a lot of change,”  Zavala said.

During the meeting, LWV member Cynthia Cannady cited cities which made initiatives to address climate change.

According to her, Aspen, Colorado and Burlington, Vermont have already transitioned to 100 percent renewable energy. She said Houston, and Atlanta, Georgia have transitioned to almost 100 percent renewable energy for their municipal energy needs.

The cities of San Jose, San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Gatos and Sacramento have banned fossil fuel in new construction while the cities of Chicago, Boulder, Milwaukee and Denver issued rooftop solar incentives, according to Cannady.

Cannady said she hopes Pasadena can be included among the list of cities which made initiatives to fight climate change.

During the meeting, commissioners discussed their concerns about the city’s Climate Action Plan (CAP). Commissioner Daniel Rossman was among the commissioners who expressed his concerns about this as he claimed that the CAP is not driving policies.

“Many times, the CAP is not capturing or driving the policy. I’m wondering whether or not this is the appropriate place to put our energy. Why spend time creating a great CAP if that’s not what’s driving the policy?”

Commissioner David Cutter, along with other commissioners, raised the importance of getting a sustainability officer that will focus on concerns relating to sustainability services and programs of the city.

“We need to have a sustainability officer. We used to have one and I agree that the way the current CAP in Pasadena is set up is distributed over several departments and of course the people who are overseeing whatever action, they have several responsibilities,” said Cutter.

“Maybe one place we could put our energy into is trying to get the city council to have a sustainability officer,” he added.

Meanwhile,  Commission chair Jonathan Levy said the Environmental Advisory Commission will soon meet with the Planning Commission to discuss updates to the CAP.

“I’m hoping we can get them to put more specific and measurable goals into the update so that way we can get city council and departments to integrate the points of CAP into the decisions that we make.”