I write to you on the Solstice, the longest
day of the year, in a 100 degree heat wave with poor air quality
while a heat wave continues in So Cal and the Imperial County
records the nation’s highest temperature yesterday. Our
climate emergency is forcing us to rebalance and realign. I hope
you both, your children, your future grandchildren, your extended
families and staff are all safe, healthy, and have everything you
all need.
You have the chance to ensure an equitable
phaseout for refinery communities and to speed up the timeline for
an oil and gas drilling phaseout. I call on you both to revise the
climate scoping plan so that it meets the scale and urgency of the
climate crisis and environmental racism here in California:
Equitable fossil fuel phaseout of oil and gas
wells by 2035, a refinery phaseout by 2045, and a clean grid by
2035.
Investment in clean and reliable
transportation for ALL in this year's Scoping Plan.
Cut climate dead-ends, such as carbon capture,
usage & sequestration (CCUS).
I work with children in Richmond’s Iron
Triangle, the heart of one of America's toughest inner-city
neighborhoods. I am an expert in outdoor play. In the Iron
Triangle, these are the children and families most affected by
continued refinery flares, fires and vehicle emissions. I am deeply
concerned about the harm to these children and their families. We
have a drill at the park: shelter in the office when we receive an
alert of a refinery incident. This is a frightening experience for
the children and adults. It is these children whose exposure to the
particulates in the air make them susceptible to breathing
problems. Can you imagine a child being hampered from riding a
zipline, swinging on disk swings, playing soccer and running after
the butterflies in our gardens because of asthma due to poor air
quality? Or the adults, family members and the park staff, who are
fiercely loyal to the neighborhood they have grown up in, who
struggle for breath and their very lives by the area’s high
pulmonary disease, neurological disorders and high cancer rates?
The children tell me how they notice the strains of the adults in
their world. This frightful quality of life for Richmond families
and many, many California families is unacceptable.
I know you understand: We live in a time that
requires courage for all of us to reimagine what needs to happen
for us to survive. Join me in envisioning a future that is healthy
and sustainable and stay away from a state climate plan with
costly, proven-to-be-dangerous carbon capture, usage and
sequestration, so that the Richmond children I see on a zipline,
swinging, playing soccer, writing and painting love to their dad
and mom, cooking pretend tacos and fresh garden salads, building
Lego flying ships and little homes, and meditating in scientific
water pouring will share in your own families’ future,
because we are all together.
Will you help California achieve our climate
goals by including the priorities above in this year’s
Scoping Plan? Thank you and stay safe.
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