| Comment |
Thank you for the
opportunity to comment. My name is Leah Louis-Prescott
and I work in the Oakland office of RMI, an independent
nonprofit working towards a low-carbon
future.
Thank you for the June 23-24 workshop and thank you
to staff for your work on this Scoping Plan. While I appreciate
that this draft was an enormous undertaking, I echo the concerns of
the EJAC and numerous community members. The current draft Scoping
Plan fails to adequately address the climate crisis and falls short of
providing Californians with the maximum achievable greenhouse gas
emissions reductions.
Fossil fuels are a threat to our air, our health, and the climate.
Exposure to air pollution is now the greatest environmental health
risk factor for early death in the U.S. In California, nearly
90% of residents live in a county that exceeds federal levels of
acceptable ozone and/or fine particulate matter. In other words, 9
out of 10 Californians breathe harmful air. The plan states that
“more must be done to ensure the most vulnerable populations
have safe air to breathe,” and so I ask why isn't more being
done here in this Plan to maximize near-term pollution
reductions?
The Plan rightly states in chapter 1 that climate
change is “right here, right now” and
that “the future of our state…is
inextricably tied to the way we respond in this
decade.” As the plan suggests, there is no time to delay our
climate action.
The Plan should maximize the solutions that are technologically
feasible today – such as zero emission vehicles and
appliances – and minimize reliance on still developing
technologies such as carbon capture. Though these technologies may have a long-term role to play, they should not
be favored over more ambitious near-term adoption of proven zero emission
technologies, as proposed in the selected
Scenario.
I encourage the Board to reconsider and/or revise the
Scoping Plan to align with the urgency of the climate crisis. I
ask that the final plan accelerate deployment of zero emission
technologies, especially for the most vulnerable populations, to
provide the health, air quality, and climate benefits that
Californians need in this critical decade.
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