Total Climate Change Action: What are we waiting for? From DECLAMATION to DECLARATION

[Jorge Rebagliati]

Dear Sonoma County Supervisors and City of Santa Rosa Council Members:

What is stopping Sonoma County from becoming a Climate Change-Ready County?

How much more scientific analysis, empirical reports and direct experience of Climate Change-Related catastrophes do we need to become a Climate Change-Ready County?

For many years we have claimed in Sonoma County that we care a lot about Climate Change and that we have to vigorously deal with Climate Change because is the greatest threat to humanity and the planet.

In 2008 we issued the Sonoma County Community Climate Action Plan were we stated:

"Achieving Sonoma County’s climate goal requires a monumental and extremely challenging intervention in business as usual. We must move together at tremendous speed and scale. Individual actions and volunteerism,while essential, are insufficient.

Transforming our energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables entails a unity of purpose, ingenuity, and commitment similar to this country’s mobilization during World War II and the New Deal era. Just as the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution remade the world, so will the Energy Revolution.”

Despite its monumental and appropriate vision, the Plan settled instead for a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 25% below 1990 by 2015, without any means and formal commitments to achieve that goal, which did not meet.

In 2016 the Climate Action Plan 2020 was approved by County and Cities, which took on the unaccomplished goal of the 2008 Plan and forwarded it to 2020 and included more specific Climate Mitigation actions to achieve that goal, and Climate Adaptation actions to reduce the community’s vulnerability to Climate Change-related disasters.  As the 2008 Plan, it was not binding and in July 2016 it was put on hold by a judge because of a determination that the actions proposed would not achieve the GHG reduction goals.

Then, in October 2017 the fire storms came and showed us how unprepared we were to face a catastrophic Climate Change-Related event, and they also showed us that all our talking about Climate Change and even some partial concrete actions like the creation of Sonoma Clean Power had not even come close to making Sonoma County a Climate Change-Ready County.

So, here we are at the end of November 2017 still wondering if we are ready to be a Climate Change-Ready County, if we can afford to be a Climate-Change Ready County, if the timing is right to be a Climate-Change Ready County.

We must stop wondering and move from Declamation to Declaration, from talking and planning to implementing holistically and fully both aspects of Climate Change: Climate Restoration, aimed at stopping all GHG emissions and drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, in all ways, as fast as it is physically possible, and Climate Change Adaptation, to protect people and environment from the next Climate Change-Related extreme events.

We need a mandate with the greatest power to unleash all our resources and apply for external resources to address both aspects of Climate Change at the maximum level that the current state of the Climate Crisis requires.

That mandate can come from official, public and detailed-enough Declarations from our local governments, stating the highest level of crisis as defined by the Stafford Act: Major Disaster.

Our local, State and Federal governments had to issue Emergency and Major Disaster Declarations in October 2017 to get the resources to put out the catastrophic fire storms, clean up the toxic mess and start reconstruction.  The same political tools can and must be used now for Sonoma County to deal with Climate Change, 

There is a very large body of evidence (both scientific and empirical) that Climate Change is now at the level of Major Disaster, already causing catastrophic destruction and on the verge of becoming unstoppable.  So, Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations by our Board of Supervisors and City Councils may surprise other communities but they will not be unexpected.  Actually, many will soon wonder why it has not been done before.

For those of you that are still wondering if the Declarations we propose are more declamatory, rhetorical, statements without any practical consequence, we assure you that they are not.

These Declarations are official executive orders with a mobilizing power like the Declaration Of War that got the U.S.A. into World War II.

Finally, remember that this country got out of the Great Depression and into a period of unprecedented prosperity with the New Deal and World War II, and both started with Declarations of economic crisis and war, respectively.  The Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations can do the same for our Sonoma County embattled economy after the fires.

Let’ s not wait any longer, let’s turn crisis into opportunity.  We are ready.

Jorge Rebagliati

Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration Campaign

"We are the ones we've been waiting for"

DECLARATION: "Climate Crisis Is Already A Major Disaster"