Congratulations Oakland on your new Climate Action Plan!

Congratulations Garrett Fitzgerald, Oakland's Sustainability Coordinator, and the rest of Oakland's Public Works Sustainable Oakland Department, and the Oakland Climate Action Coalition (now the Local Clean Energy Alliance) and the rest of the active community supporters, for the unanimous passage of the "Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan" at the Oakland City Council meeting last night. Read the draft version here, which will be the same as the final, I presume, unless the CEQA process changed something. Sustainability maven Rebecca Kaplan moved for its passage and, except for the one person excused from the meeting (Jane Brunner), it was all ayes.

The eight people giving comments before the passage of the plan all had praise to offer, but also a few constructive criticisms, including the need for the plan to address the need for more trees in Oakland with a master plan for planting. That comment came from a representative of Urban Releaf, from Richmond, CA. After the plan passed, Garrett and the Urban Releaf contingent reconnoitered in the hallway, and I got to hear Garrett tell the woeful tale of how a few years ago Oakland was up for $50,000 in matching funds for urban greening from CalFire, but it was lost because the expenditure, approved at the City Council, was misclassified by a clerk and therefore disappeared along with the opportunity for the matching funds. City layoffs have left the Public Works Department with no institutional memory about the original plan for those funds.

On a positive fiscal note, I learned at the meeting that $35 million in unexpected revenue from economic growth has shown up in Oakland's coffers, and the City Council is gearing up to allocate it. Trees won't be on the priority list before basic infrastructure maintenance and safety, but it's just to say that Oakland should not despair of its ability to renew itself.

Congratulations Oakland on Your New Climate Action Plan!

Congratulations specifically should go to Oakland's Public Works Sustainability Coordinator Garrett Fitzgerald and to all the community members and organizations who worked with him to develop the Oakland Energy Climate and Action Plan (ECAP).

On Tuesday March 1st, two years of community consultation culminated in the adoption by Oakland City Council of the ECAP, which calls for aggressive greenhouse gas reductions in the city alongside climate change adaptation measures.

-- Read Oakland's ECAP (the Feb. 22 variant currently on the Public Works site).

-- Read the Ella Baker Center's March 3, 2011, press release on the passage of the ECAP - highlights of community involvement in the plan (though nothing about how climate adaptation is in the plan).

-- See the Oakland Public Works page on the ECAP, giving a little background, additional links.

-- See Oakland Climate Action Coalition's Webpage - again, the content is more about supporting sustainable economic development along with GHG reductions and less about preparing for climate impacts, but this coalition has a lot of potential to help Oakland identify its community vulnerabilities and prepare accordingly.

Go Oakland!

San Luis Obispo County Climate Plan: "We've never been here before."

Only two counties in the State of California have detailed climate change adaptation plans in the works: San Luis Obispo is one. Last Thursday they held a community workshop on the plan. It is primarily a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I know researchers focused on climate adaptation have been involved in this planning process, including one of California's leading lights on adaptation Susanne Moser.

From the article "County to Fight Against Climate Change" (David Sneed, Feb. 13, 2011, SanLuisObispo.com - The Tribune):

The county is ...one of only two in California to have had a detailed climate adaptation study done. It looked at the various impacts climate change will have on the county and how to prepare for them.

The study was headed by the Local Government Commission, an organization that advocates centralized community and economic planning based on Ahwahnee Indian principles.

“San Luis Obispo County will be setting the marker for other communities,” [Michael] Boswell [a Cal Poly city planning professor] said.

Environmentalist and government watchdog Eric Greening of Atascadero urged county planners to concentrate on reducing emissions rather than adaptation.

“We’ve got to stop being so full of ourselves,” he said. “We haven’t the faintest idea what we are going to have to do to adapt to climate change. We’ve never been here before.”


It sounds like a good reason why you should focus on BOTH adaptation and reducing emissions (and, personally, I believe reducing emissions is a long-term adaptation strategy).

The article doesn't state which is the other California state county creating a detailed adaptation plan, but here is a November 2010 list (PDF) compiled by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) with links to 63 different California city and county, and 36 relevant non-Californian climate planning efforts. Most of these are concerning greenhouse gas reductions, but those are the plans where you can find most U.S. adaptation efforts.

Susanne Moser is working with both Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties on their adaptation plans, so this article might be referring to Fresno as the other county with a plan.

Read more about Fresno's adaptation plan here.

Read more about the San Luis Obispo adaptation plan here.

Read more about Susanne Moser's work supporting climate adaptation in California here.

P.S. If you don't know what the Ahwahnee Principles are, you are probably not a city planner. This author incorrectly refers to them as the Ahwahnee Indian Principles. They are a modern (1991) invention of some California city planners at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. Read more about their invention here.

The principles basically emphasize developing neighborhoods so that homes are located within walking distance of retail shops, schools, and public transit, and other social and economic efficiency principles. No "Ahwahnee Indians" were involved in the drafting of the principles, from what I can discern.

Read the “Ahwahnee Principles for Climate Change" here (PDF), published in 2008 by the Local Government Commission. Sacramento, CA.