Comment Log Display

Alternative 3 is incredibly inadequate in an emergency to reach
climate stabilization benchmarks by 2030. If you have an intention
to help Californians do our part to stop runaway irreversible
extinction, then you have to stop worrying about how much it will
cost! Whatever is doable is affordable. Invest sooner to save more
of what can be saved. You appear in the dark about what is at stake
when you do this exercise with these scenarios. 

If the current prognosis for humanity is credible, you would just
parse out the elements in Alternative 1 with more clarity,
accelerate all timelines, balance the options among all
opportunities based on most likely to succeed, effectively market a
transparent and truthful plan to the people, and completely stop
compromising and allowing vested interests to scam your programs.

Alternative 1 is the only acceptable start for a viable plan. Scrap
the rest. But it must needs work, including the following:
1.	Count true costs and savings, especially social and health
savings and environmental justice benefits from an accelerated
timeline for phasing out fossil fuels. 
2.	Optimize every form of Distributed Energy Resources (and ensure
affordability of electricity).
3.	Fix the model assumptions about near term feasibility and
effectiveness of all ECR, especially CCUS.
4.	Explain clearly how in the world you are going to reduce VMT per
capita by 25% by 2030! 
5.	Set ambitious goals for Natural and Working Lands and blue
carbon measures for drawdown and do your best to make them happen
and stop imagining unproven and conflicted CCUS schemes can fill
the gap.
6.	Achieve increase in organic acreage to 30% by 2030, NOT 2045.
7.	Protect soil biology from artificial nitrogen and toxic
pesticides to maximize carbon sequestration and water holding
capacity focusing on whole systems and maximizing the enhanced
carbon sequestration in diverse, multi-species cropping and
afforestation.
8.	Stop conflating wildfire emissions and forest management with
agricultural strategies. There are independent forest scientists
who profoundly disagree with your modeling assumptions. It
neutralizes what could be extremely great potential of ambitious
management of Natural and Working Lands. The assumptions regarding
forest thinning in Alternative 4 are arguable, muddying the issues,
and leading to an unhelpful diluting of what many experts are
demonstrating is a much greater potential to sequester carbon by
non forest management strategies than the models show. 
9.	Convene a group of experts whose funding has been clearly and
totally free from biased industry and US Forest Service influence
to conduct an analysis similar to what is done by the National
Academy of Sciences.
10.	Tell the truth about what is at stake clearly so that people
can learn and understand the vast range of responsibilities we all
have to drastically cut emissions and drastically expand soil,
ocean and freshwater biology.