Salem Political Snark

Salem needs to get past "blah, blah, blah" about climate change

As 2022 draws to a close, I'm hoping that 2023 is when Salem's city officials get past what climate activist Greta Thunberg calls the "blah, blah, blah" approach to reducing the world's greenhouse gas pollution.

Meaning, lots of talk, very little action.

The Salem City Council has passed a Climate Action Plan. It includes these goals:

• By 2035, GHG Salem emissions shall be reduced to 50 percent of the citywide greenhouse gas emissions for the baseline year of 2016, and
• By 2050, Salem should be carbon neutral.

But the Climate Action Plan isn't being taken seriously by city staff and the City Council. We're still in the "blah, blah, blah" stage. Lots of talk, very little action. 

For example, there's an effort underway to bring commercial air service back to the Salem airport, even though this has been tried several times with no success. 

Since air travel is one of the worst things people can do, greenhouse gas pollution-wise, the notion of bringing commercial air service to Salem should have been rejected by city officials as soon as it was raised.

But no, this bad idea is stumbling onward. Fortunately, our local 350.org chapter has started a petition, Oppose Costly and Polluting Commercial Air Service in Salem. I urge you to sign it. It'll just take a minute or two.

In the November 28, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert has a terrific story, "A Vast Experiment: The Climate Crisis from A to Z." The theme of the letter "B" is blah, blah, blah. Here's what Kolbert said:

On September 28, 2021, at the Youth4Climate conference, held in Milan, Greta Thunberg took the stage. Sitting near her was the city’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, wearing a mask. Thunberg, who is five feet tall, could barely be seen over the lectern. She had removed her mask and was smiling.

“Climate change is not only a threat, it is above all an opportunity to create a healthier, greener, and cleaner planet which will benefit all of us,” she began. “We must seize this opportunity—we can achieve a win-win in both ecological conservation and high-quality development. . . . We need to walk the talk; if we do this together, we can do this.

“When I say ‘climate change,’ what do you think of?” she went on. “I think of jobs—green jobs.” This received a round of applause.

“We must find a smooth transition towards a low-carbon economy,” Thunberg said. “There is no Planet B. There is no Planet Blah—blah, blah, blah; blah, blah, blah.” Her listeners, including Sala, started to realize that they’d been had. The applause died down.

“Build Back Better—blah, blah, blah,” Thunberg continued.

“Green economy—blah, blah, blah.

“Net zero by 2050—blah, blah, blah.

“Net zero—blah, blah, blah.

“Climate neutral—blah, blah, blah.

“This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words—words that sound great, but so far have led to no action,” Thunberg said. “Of course we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve now had thirty years of blah, blah, blah, and where has that led us?”

It was thirty years ago that the world’s “so-called leaders” gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the so-called Earth Summit. Everyone agreed that radical change was needed. To avert disaster, global CO₂ emissions, which were then running at around twenty-two billion metric tons a year, would have to be reduced, eventually almost to zero. How this would happen, no one really knew. Still, the goal of preventing “dangerous” warming was enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which President George H. W. Bush cheerfully signed.

“Some find the challenges ahead overwhelming,” Bush said. “I believe that their pessimism is unfounded.”

A follow-up conference of the parties, or cop, took place in Kyoto in 1997. By then, annual global emissions had risen to twenty-four billion tons. After much back-and-forth, it was agreed that something had to be done. The Kyoto Protocol, an addendum to the Framework Convention, laid out specific emissions-reduction targets for countries to meet.

“I am both determined and optimistic that we can succeed,” Vice-President Al Gore told the diplomats gathered in Japan.

After Kyoto, global emissions kept on rising, only faster. By 2009, they’d climbed to thirty-two billion tons a year. That fall, President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen for yet another conference of the parties—cop15. “I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat,” he declared.

By 2015, emissions had increased to thirty-five billion tons a year. At that year’s cop—No. 21—held in Paris, it was decided that, at last, really and truly, it was time to get serious. “The decisions you make here will reverberate down through the ages,” the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, told the delegates. Nevertheless, emissions continued to rise. In the past thirty years, humans have added as much CO₂ to the atmosphere as they did in the previous thirty thousand.

At some point during all the “blah, blah, blah”-ing—it’s hard to say when, exactly—climate change ceased to be a prospective problem and became a clear and present one. Since Rio, the Arctic ice cap has shrunk by two-fifths. Greenland has shed some four trillion metric tons of ice, and mountain glaciers have lost six trillion tons. Heat waves are now hotter, droughts deeper, and storms more intense. In some parts of the world, the wildfire season never ends.

One conclusion to draw from this pattern is that the world isn’t going to avoid “dangerous” warming. Global leaders will continue to gather at cops—this year’s, in Sharm el-Sheikh, just concluded—and to speak loftily about “net zero” and “a low-carbon economy.” But nothing will change, and, as a result, everything will change. There will be large-scale crop failures. The Greenland ice sheet will start to collapse—it may already be collapsing—and, owing to sea-level rise in some places and desertification in others, large swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable.

This conclusion is not, however, the one that Thunberg chose to draw when she spoke at the Youth4Climate conference. “Right now we are still very much speeding in the wrong direction,” she told the crowd in Milan. “But, of course, we can still turn this around—it is entirely possible.

“The leaders like to say, ‘We can do this,’ ” she went on. “They obviously don’t mean it, but we do—we can do this. I’m absolutely convinced that we can.”

Or, as Thunberg might put it, Blah, blah, blah.

Climate Action Plan not getting the respect it deserves

Today was a really hot day in Salem. My car's thermometer said 99 degrees when I headed downtown at 4 pm. When I left at 6 pm, I had a reading of 107 degrees after my car sat on a sunny side of Court Street for a couple of hours.

We need to get used to many more hot days, since the effects of human-caused global warming are becoming more obvious with every passing year. 

To its credit, the City Council pushed for a Salem Climate Action Plan, which was accepted by the council in February of this year. Since, an implementation committee has been meeting to make recommended actions in the plan a reality. 

Unfortunately, the Climate Action Plan isn't being taken seriously enough by City of Salem staff and the City Council. This is deeply disappointing. I expected more, since progressives have a solid 7-2 majority on the council. 

The always-interesting Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger wrote a terrific post on July 5, "Climate Action Plan Committee: Transportation and Passivity." He follows climate action goings-on much more closely than I do, so much so, his blog features a permanent reminder of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

If you care about preserving our planet for human habitation, and want Salem to do its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I urge you to read the Breakfast on Bikes blog post about how the $300 million bond measure to be voted on this November doesn't do nearly enough to meet the goals of the Climate Action Plan.

Here's some excerpts to whet your appetite for the entire post.

The approach to the bond - for the next decade, very nearly the period over which we are supposed to reduce our emissions by 50% in 2035, it must be stressed - does not adequately respond to our climate crisis and the need to reduce emissions from driving.

After all, the Climate Action Plan says to "complete Salem's sidewalk network." We should be doing as much expansion of sidewalk and bike lane as we possibly can, not deleting some sidewalk and bike lane to fund other sidewalk and bike lane. These kinds of projects need to be additive. It should be more, more, more, not "balance." Even when there are other funding sources available, "new grant sources," we should push for the maximum on these, not retreat to a false sense of balance.

...As we see with the sidewalk deletions, the bond isn't very well integrated into the Climate Action plan. There is, in fact, a weird theme of "alignment" and passivity in the prospective actions to discussed under agenda item 4, on transportation, at the Climate Action Plan Committee.

On the one hand, making sure the policy actions recommended by the climate plan aligns with other plans is a trivial element of mutual conformance. The multiple plans should be consistent and aligned.

But what is really happening, on the other hand, is that the Climate Plan concepts are being watered down in order to accommodate and align with the weakened concepts in Our Salem and other plans. This is a kind of passiveness and conformity, trying to fit in and not make waves.

And where there are stronger requirements, as seems likely with the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities rulemaking at the State level, from outside our own process, our Climate Action Plan is going to follow, not lead. (See briefly from May on the CFEC here and here.)

Consistently the Climate Action Plan concepts are framed up as aligning with the demands and standards of other projects. In other words, the Climate Action Plan is wholly in a secondary and subordinate position, always following the lead of other plans, and never primary, never driving action in those other plans.

Generally we are doing the least amount possible, and the Climate Action Plan is just too accommodating. It's too passive.

Hopefully the new City Manager for the City of Salem, Keith Stahley, will be a much more forceful advocate for the Climate Action Plan than the previous manager, Steve Powers, was. Climate was one of Stahley's responsibilities as assistant city manager for the city of Olympia, Washington, where he last worked.

Mayor Bennett accused of Climate Action Plan shenanigans

It's rare that I get to use "shenanigans," since that's an old-fashioned word. But it came to mind when I read what Salem Mayor Chuck Bennett is being accused of by our local 350.org affiliate, 350 Salem OR.

As you can read below, it does seem like Mayor Bennett is engaged in a devious, underhanded trick -- trying to undermine the Salem Climate Action Plan so NW Natural can continue polluting the atmosphere with dangerous greenhouse gases.

I've got more to say after the 350 Salem OR news release.

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January 26, 2022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact: 
Phil Carver, Co-Coordinator (503) 562-9878 [email protected]

350 Salem OR Calls on Mayor Bennett to Stop
Blocking Approval of the Climate Action Plan

Salem, Oregon – 350 Salem OR calls on Mayor Chuck Bennett to allow the City Council to consider the draft Salem Climate Action Plan. 350 Salem OR has learned that instead of allowing the City Council to approve or reject the draft Salem Climate Action Plan, the Mayor has directed the City Manager to recommend non-objectionable strategies from the plan to the Council for consideration in February.

Without Council approval, the draft plan won’t have official status in future City discussions. Also, Council needs to reevaluate the plan every few years to assess progress on the Council’s emission reduction goals. The draft plan is far more than just a list of short-term suggestions.

A report to City Council at their meeting on December 6th stated that “the final draft CAP will come to Council for consideration after the beginning of 2022”, but no action has been scheduled.

The final draft of the Salem Climate Action Plan, released in November, was the result of a year of work by a 42-person Task Force appointed by the Mayor. The Task Force was led by the Verdis Group consultants who were paid approximately $170,000 for their work on the plan.

350 Salem believes that the holdup is due to objections from Northwest Natural against elements of the plan that would reduce or eliminate the use of natural gas (fossil methane) in new developments. Houses built now will stand for 100 years and lock in decades of methane and carbon dioxide pollution. The greenhouse gas inventory completed in 2019 as part of the Climate Action Plan process showed that “stationary emissions,” (mostly from natural gas) comprised 16% of total emissions in Salem.

“We object to Mayor Bennett holding up final approval of the Salem Climate Action Plan because of objections from the fossil fuel industry,” said 350 Salem OR Co-Coordinator Phil Carver. “Northwest Natural has no right to veto Salem’s plan so that they can forever contribute to the climate-related harms that we are already experiencing in Salem.”

350 Salem OR began advocating for Salem to have a Climate Action Plan five years ago. Salem is the only major city in Oregon that does not already have an adopted Climate Action Plan.

Prof. Janet Lorenzen, an environmental sociologist at Willamette University explains, “I spent months volunteering my time on the Salem Climate Action Plan Task Force, we worked hard to prioritize both climate and equity, and now the Mayor seems to be caving to special interests who have a business model of unlimited growth and pollution. Residents on the side of clean air, climate resiliency, and racial justice don’t even get a hearing.”

“The Mayor’s approach will never get us to the Council’s adopted goal of cutting our emissions in half by 2035, just 13 short years away,” said Phil Carver. “He should consider his legacy in his last year in office. We ask: Will he stand on the side of the fossil fuel industry or on the side of our children and grandchildren?”

350 Salem OR is the local affiliate of international climate action organization 350.org. The mission of 350 Salem OR is to build an inclusive grassroots movement that targets keeping fossil fuels in the ground, advocates for a just transition to a renewable energy economy, and supports community-based resilience in response to the climate crisis. “350” refers to the safe level of carbon dioxide (ppm) in the air, a level that the world passed in 1988. Today the level is 417 ppm, the highest level in the last 3 million years.

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Note that the Climate Action Plan doesn't call for a ban on the current use of natural gas in Salem, just new hookups. That seems entirely reasonable. Natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Don't be fooled by the appealing term natural. Methane is a fossil fuel, just like oil and coal. But people prefer "natural gas" to "methane," even though they basically mean the same thing. 

So it might just be luck that gas came to be seen as “natural.” Some 76 percent of Americans view natural gas favorably, substantially more than for oil (51 percent) or coal (39 percent). While conventional wisdom once held that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” to a renewable-powered future, some now argue burning existing gas reserves would lock in dangerous levels of carbon dioxide emissions and endanger international goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. That’s not to mention the health effects of burning natural gas: Gas stoves, for instance, pollute homes and increase the risk of respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.

Take it as a sign that natural doesn’t necessarily mean “good for you,” no matter how nice it sounds. Americans love “natural” potato chips, but they’re still just deep-fried potatoes.

Hopefully Mayor Bennett's attempt to undermine the impact of the Climate Action Plan is limited to himself, and doesn't reflect a broader "revolt" among City of Salem staff.

Regardless, the City Council should make sure that the Climate Action Plan is officially approved at an upcoming city council meeting to ensure that the plan doesn't become a document that sits on a shelf and fails to achieve the goal of Salem doing its part to preserve the habitability of our planet for both ourselves and future generations. 

Salem Climate Action Plan: controversial and good

Tomorrow, December 6, the City Council is getting an informational report on the long-awaited Salem Climate Action Plan. No action is being taken on the plan for now, because parts of it have generated a lot of controversy. 

I see the controversy as a good thing.

If everybody was fine with the plan, there wouldn't be any controversy -- and there also wouldn't be any strong greenhouse gas-reducing actions specified in it, since those actions inevitably are going to be opposed by those doing the greenhouse gas emitting.

A call to curtail the use of natural gas in Salem is getting the most attention. I took a quick look at some of the many comments included as part of this agenda item.  It seems clear that NW Natural isn't happy with the plan, nor are builders and homeowners who believe natural gas is a wonderful thing.

Nonetheless, the plan singles out reducing natural gas use as a major factor in achieving the plan's greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Tonight I read quickly through the Climate Action Plan. I came away impressed. A tremendous amount of work and research went into preparing it. The plan is nicely laid out, well-written, clear, and filled with enough detail to keep climate change geeks happily engaged for a long time.

The Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger has followed the plan much more closely than I have. He has some cogent criticisms of it, which I basically agree with. You can read those posts by clicking on the links included in a recent post about tomorrow's City Council agenda item.

The blogger's overall assessment is nuanced and fits with how I see things.

It's hard to know exactly what is best here. The temporary goal is a strong plan. But the overall goal is emissions reduction, and it is possible that strong action with a weak plan is easier to accomplish, and that a strong plan might be vitiated politically and yield only weak action. The final goal is not to win a prize for an elegant and powerful plan.

Right on.

There's already plenty for climate change deniers and special interests to hate in the Climate Action Plan. Being too explicit about the concrete actions needed to reduce emissions in Salem could lead to a political backlash that would make those actions tougher to carry out.

What's going to be key is preserving the current progressive majority on the City Council over the many years that will be needed to implement the plan. Otherwise a conservative takeover of the council could lead to a beautiful looking plan that sits on a (metaphorical) shelf.

Another controversial action is to use downtown parking meters to reduce the use of parking spaces to about three-fourths of what's available. 

Some downtown businesses will support this. Others won't. Since downtown is thriving, on the whole, probably most businesses would survive the resistance from those who will refuse to go downtown if they have to pay for parking. 

On the plus side, putting parking meters in downtown will be a consciousness raiser -- letting drivers know that "free" parking doesn't exist. There are costs involved, including environmental costs, even if a driver is able to pull into a space and not pay anything. Maybe electric cars could be exempt from having to pay for downtown parking.

This proposal for downtown Salem is really appealing. It'd be great to have downtown more pedestrian friendly. 

I was pleased to see an action calling for the creation of an Urban Tree Commission.
And this seems like an excellent notion.

There's much more in the plan, of course. It's well worth reading, if only quickly.
Download Salem-climate-action-plan-revised-draft-2021-11