Tag Archives: Climate Emergency

Councilmembers back call for community benefit ‘commitments’ on Aggie Square

September 18, 2020 | By Felicia Alvarez | Sacramento Business Journal

Two Sacramento city councilmembers, Jay Schenirer and Eric Guerra, are backing a call to prevent gentrification near Aggie Square.

Aggie Square is the University of California Davis’ planned satellite campus in Sacramento. The $1.1 billion, 25-acre project would fill land the university owns near Stockton Boulevard and Broadway with over 1 million square feet of research, wet lab, commercial space and housing.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2020/09/18/councilmembers-back-community-benefit-aggie-square.html

Click here to read the full article.

As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’

By Peter Baker, Lisa Friedman and Thomas Kaplan | September 14, 2020 | The New York Times

The Environmental Council of Sacramento was mentioned in the New York Times! Our Board President Ralph Propper was quoted regarding Trump’s denial of climate change as California burns.

Mr. Trump flew to California after weeks of public silence about the flames that have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, wiped out communities and forests, burned millions of acres, shrouded the region in smoke and left at least 27 people dead. But even when confronted by California’s governor and other state officials, the president insisted on attributing the crisis solely to poor forest management, not climate change.

…

“Raking the leaves and forest floors is really inane. That doesn’t make sense at all,” said Ralph Propper, the president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento. “We’re seeing what was predicted, which is more extremes of weather.”

Click here to view the full article.

Photo from publicdomainfiles.com.

a red sunset

Smoke still hurting Northern California air quality, but LNU Fire isn’t main culprit

By Michael McGough | August 31, 2020 | The Sacramento Bee

Smoke has sullied the skies in Northern California for two weeks, ever since dozens of large fires and hundreds of smaller ones sparked during a powerful thunderstorm that brought down thousands of lightning strikes.

For much of that stretch, Sacramento’s air pollution has come primarily from the LNU Lightning Complex, which as of Monday had scorched more than 375,000 acres in parts of Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Yolo and Lake counties west of the capital. That fire continues to output smoke as it is 63% contained, Cal Fire said Monday morning.

But now the poor conditions are coming from the August Complex, a 220,000-acre blaze that’s been burning in the Mendocino National Forest since Aug. 17, according to a special smoke statement issued Sunday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the mid Central Valley, which has since been extended through Tuesday.

Click here to read the full article.

Photo by enakshi mukhopadhyaya from Pexels

Give Your Input on the Sac County Climate Action Plan

Posted: August 31, 2020 by Sacramento County

Current Deadline: September 25, 2020

Sacramento County Communitywide Climate Action Plan Update
Work is resuming on the Communitywide Climate Action Plan (CAP) in earnest! County staff has developed an ambitious schedule to bring the CAP to the Board of Supervisors by July 2021. Following the extensive public outreach conducted from 2016-2018, a focused stakeholder group has been formed to work with the County and our consultant Ascent Environmental on drafting GHG reduction and carbon sequestration measures based on all the feedback received.

Staff’s goal is the successful and timely adoption of an implementable CAP that provides meaningful and equitable climate action, enhances resiliency and provides a transparent and public pathway for future plan performance and adaptive management.

Be Involved

Although County staff previously conducted extensive outreach from 2016-2018, we want to provide another opportunity for additional public input since two years have passed and new ideas may be out there. Please submit written suggestions on topics to be covered in the CAP, new ideas in greenhouse gas mitigation, or other thoughts to climateactionplan[at]saccounty[dot]net by September 25, 2020. Presentations from past public workshops and Board of Supervisors meetings that give examples of some of the concepts under consideration are available at https://planning.saccounty.net/PlansandProjectsIn-Progress/Pages/CAP.aspx.

What’s Next?

The County and Ascent will prepare revised GHG reduction measures and develop a draft CAP document over the next two to three months.

When the draft CAP document is complete, it will be published for a 30-day public review period during which the County plans to host a virtual public meeting. Information regarding the date and time will be provided as that time draws closer.

Stay Informed

We encourage interested parties to subscribe to the CAP topic to stay informed and receive future status updates.

Sacramento City Council embraces ‘slow streets,’ electrified buildings to fight climate change

August 26, 2020

Members of the Sacramento City Council Tuesday embraced the recommendations of the Mayors’ Commission on Climate Change and voted to move forward immediately on 10 first-year action items, including creating ‘slow streets’ for pedestrians and people-pedaled vehicles only and crafting an ordinance to require future buildings to run entirely on electricity.

Click here to read the full blog post from Mayor Steinberg’s office.