Climate Action Team (CAT) Convenes

Time To Get On The Innovation Train

Our fair city has held the heavy mantle of environmental progressivism in the United States for over three decades.

In that time, we’ve received commendations, awards, diplomats and laugh tracks from all over our planet (and probably beyond.)

But lately, there has been an overwhelming communal sense that we’ve been resting on our laurels.  Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The time for us to break forth with new innovations in community planning and sustainable policies, successful and otherwise, has come.  Earlier this evening, the Climate Action Team (CAT) convened to begin the process of identifying, prioritizing and putting into action new ideas to reduce our carbon footprint.

Forgive the link-free and abbreviated nature of this post, I’m a little tired from a full day of work plus 4 hours of doing my civic duty.  Apropos to that disclaimer, don’t be surprised by the addition of local advertising to this site next week to help defray the costs of maintaining an active presence in the blogosphere.  Hopefully, that additional income will help fund more in-depth, investigative work to improve our civil dialog.

After the jump, a quick wrap up of tonight’s proceedings.

Thanks to city staff, tonight’s proceedings were broadcast live on the interwebs.  Also, it will be broadcast on Davis Community Television.

The focus of the CAT is to serve as a conduit for community input and action to reduce our carbon footprint.

Pierre duVair presented a thorough and interesting history on “California, Climate Change, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”  This presentation will be made available on the soon to be unveiled CAT website.  Following are a few bullet points from my notes:

• Transportation is the largest source of anthropogenic GHG emissions in CA at 39%.
• Climate change effects on agriculture should not be underestimated.  Small variations in temperature can wreak havoc on our food (and wine) supply.
• Extreme heat days are on the rise, thus putting our must vulnerable citizens at risk.
• The City of Davis will be participating in the CA Climate Action Registry.
• Gov. Schwarzenegger has set the goal of reducing CA’s GHG emission levels in 2020 to 1990 levels, in 2050 they should be at 80% of 1990 levels.

The City of Davis is completing a baseline study of our city’s 1990 GHG emission levels to have a starting point to measure our progress.  Christa Clark Jones has been sifting, calculating and extrapolating data for months.  Her presentation will also be available online.

Apparently, city services only make up 3% of our total carbon footprint, thus, the heavy lifting must come from individual citizens (with some communal prodding).  Following, is a  simple breakdown of GHG emissions by sector:

• 57%  Transportation
• 23%  Residential
• 20% Commercial

Mitch Sears, City Sustainability Coordinator, concluded the meeting by commenting,

“We could spend 6 months debating just the life cycle of plastic water bottles. It is imperative that we focus on the big picture and identify, then prioritize a list of action items that our community will embrace.  There is a lot of good work to do here that we are all excited about.”

We must do this not only for our community, but also because many other communities across the world look to Davis to set the standard for community sustainability anew.  In the coming months, the Davis Voice will offer up many opportunities to join in this endeavor to mix it up and make our community and planet more sustainable and livable.