Community Climate Action Plan

In 2006, all the city councils and the Board of Supervisors in Sonoma County, CA, endorsed a community (county)-wide greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 25% below 1990 levels by 2015. An effort is now underway to develop an action plan to reach that target...and beyond.

The Climate Protection Campaign White Paper Download AP_INVEN.pdf (1140.0K) is being used as a starting point for the technical development of the plan. The Climate Protection Wiki will be used as a repository and working document for the plan.

It is anticipated that the plan will ultimately focus on four areas: transportation, land use, local renewable power and agriculture. The plan will detail a sequence of projects in each of these areas that must happen to put Sonoma County on a trajectory to stop the growth in emissions and begin reductions in less than ten years.

This is an ambitious, and in some ways, unprecedented project. I believe it is important because there are actions that must be taken at the local level in order to stabilize atmospheric CO2. The actions that can be taken internationally, nationally and at a regional level simply do not add up in terms of providing emissions reductions that must occur. That is why I think that a necessary part of the solution to stabilizing atmospheric CO2 at less than 550 ppm lies in 1) voluntary action taking place at the local level in "developed" countries, in particular, the United States; 2) "developed" nations (Kyoto Annex I) aggressively transferring dollars, technology and know-how to China and India (and other rapidly "developing" nations) to assist them to "step over" the need for fossil fuel and go directly to efficiency and renewables.

I think that the solution to global warming lies in revolutionary action by the people, at the grass roots. People in the developed world must redevelop local self-sufficiency, based on personal responsibility.