Sacramento County doesn’t postpone 2030 climate goal — for now

Kristin Lam | July 12, 2023 | Capital Public Radio

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday didn’t postpone a carbon neutrality goal after dozens of climate activists pushed back against proposed changes.

County staff had recommended the board change the goal from 2030 to no later than 2045 in order to match state plans, make the timeline more achievable and reduce the risk of lawsuits.

Instead of approving or rejecting the suggested update, the board asked staff to present another version of the climate emergency declaration in late September or early October. In a 3-1 vote, with Supervisor Sue Frost abstaining, the board requested revisions including adding a requirement to measure progress on reducing emissions every five years.

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Why tires — not tailpipes — are spewing more pollution from your cars

July 9, 2023 | By Kasha Patel | The Washington Post

For decades, scientists and health officials have warned drivers of the harmful pollutants coming from tailpipes. But as car exhaust systems have become cleaner, pollution linked to heart and lung disease has increased from a different source: tires and brakes.

In fact, wear and tear on tires and brakes have been shown to produce increasingly more particle pollution, by mass, than car exhaust systems did in several real-world and test scenarios. Some of the particles are large enough to see with our eyes. Others are fine particles (known as PM 2.5, with diameters up to 2.5 microns) and ultrafine particles (known as PM 0.1, with diameters of 100 nanometers), which can enter through our bloodstream and harm our organs.

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Wildlife Wonder, by Brad Branan, Jul 2023, Sacramento Magazine

“It is the world that suburban development replaced in Naomas. But suburban development also helped protect some of these areas…”

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Green Building: David Chipperfield says “From a sustainability perspective and a resource perspective, we will be working much more with existing buildings. . .”

Mar 7, 2023 | PBS

From a sustainability perspective and a resource perspective, we will be working much more with existing buildings, not just monumental ones, and not just the obviously significant ones. But I think we are going to change our attitude towards the reuse and the refurbishment and the refitting of more ordinary buildings.

And I think this will be a big shift in the next 10 years.

Click here to read the article in full: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/renowned-architect-receiving-prestigious-pritzker-prize-questions-his-industrys-impact

Sacramento is at a tipping point. What’s the future of housing, sprawl and racial inequality?

June 12, 2023 | By Ryan Lillis

The Sacramento region is at a tipping point. And the next few years will determine what shape we leave it in for the next generation. The region’s housing is less expensive than California’s coastal cities, a selling point that motivated thousands of new residents to move inland since the start of the pandemic. Yet housing prices and rents have skyrocketed the past three years, and fewer than one-third of residents here can now afford to buy the median-priced home. Within the past few months, the Sacramento area became a “minority-majority” region, meaning white residents now make up less than 50% of the population. Still, substantial racial disparities in income, education and access to housing persist, even after the racial reckoning of 2020. Many commercial corridors remain starved for investment, especially those running through lower-income neighborhoods.

Green Building: Why The Built Environment?

From https://architecture2030.org/why-the-building-sector/

We must eliminate all CO2 emissions from the built environment by 2040 to meet 1.5° Climate targets.

The Built Environment

The built environment generates 40% of annual global CO2 emissions. Of those total emissions, building operations are responsible for 27% annually, while building and infrastructure materials and construction (typically referred to as embodied carbon) are responsible for an additional 13% annually.

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