Speaker 1 00:00:08 Good planet's. A hot zone. Tropic climbs thriving. Season wind blowing some breathing trees. Strong sunshine, good planets are hard to find.
Speaker 0 00:00:34 Good
Speaker 2 00:00:34 Planet. Hello, case squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to sustainability now, a biweekly case, good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipitz. Under California Law, cities and counties are urged to periodically develop climate action plans or caps. A cap lays out a community's roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the following years with input and review by community members and various stakeholders. My guest today is Rachel Kippen, who has spent the last year or two working with cities and counties on their caps. Our tasks today is not to talk so much about the content of caps, but instead to explain how a city or county goes about developing one and whether it is an aspirational document or a plan for concrete action. How effective are these plans in driving concrete emission reductions? Do caps matter? Rachel is a coastal environmental advocate, writer, nonprofit, professional, and artist. She has over 15 years experience in educational programming, communications, and advocacy with the California Academy of Sciences, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Catalina Island Marine Institute, guiding kayaks, crewing boats in Elkhorn Slew in the Gulf of the Phons, formulating sustainability policy and climate mitigation with the city of Watsonville and playing leadership roles at Save Our Shores and O'Neill C Odyssey. She authors a twice monthly column for the Santa Cruz Sentinel entitled Our Ocean Backyard. Rachel Kippen, welcome to sustainability now.
Speaker 3 00:02:18 Thank you so much. Thank you for having me back. It's, it's really nice to see you and nice to be here again.
Speaker 2 00:02:23 Since you were last on the show, you've gone through what is euphemistically called a job transition. So what are you up to these days?
Speaker 3 00:02:31 Yeah, thank you. Um, I, you know, as, as you know, resigned and duress from my former position with O'Neill cis. Um, a decision I'm still very proud of today and since then, um, and, you know, really informed by that experience, decided that I wanted to take some time to work on projects, uh, and maybe not be full-time for one organization. So I've been doing a mix of contracts and consulting. Um, I worked for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education in, um, mostly an alternative education for high school students, doing a mixture of environmental justice and climate education, marine science education, and with of pushing back against big industries like the tobacco industry. And I also, uh, work for, uh, Alameda County as a contractor on their current climate action planning process, focusing specifically on government services and operations still right in front of Sentinel. And I've got a couple other little grants and projects that I've worked on in between. So it's been nice. It's been, uh, a totally new experience for me to try out the consulting contracting world.
Speaker 2 00:03:38 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, uh, you seem to be wearing a lot of hats. I mean, uh, various boards and commissions. Can you say something about those as well?
Speaker 3 00:03:47 Yeah, so I have had a, I have a lot of privilege getting to serve on these different, um, boards and commissions. Um, one of the ones I'm the most proud of is to be a founding member of the Black Surf Santa Cruz Board of Directors. Um, and we became a nonprofit, uh, in 22. And that's an organization that was founded by Bella Bonner. And, uh, really is prioritizing, uh, diversifying the lineup and making ocean access, uh, more reflective of our larger community, particularly centering black, the black community, um, and also other people of color. So I've been working a lot with that. I'm a board secretary, uh, and then I serve on a few different commissions. I'm, I have the pleasure of serving, uh, as a third district representative for the county's commission on the environment. And so our job really is to, uh, make recommendations and advise our board of supervisors on issues as they arise.
Speaker 3 00:04:45 And also that fall under kinda our work plan that usually spans about two years. A lot of that has had a climate element as well. Um, and I'm proud to be the co-chair of Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition. And I serve it from the lens of, um, looking at tobacco as an environmental justice and huge polluter, um, number one littered item on earth, huge source of ocean pollution. Um, so that's, that's another role. <laugh>, I've got a few more, it's kinda hard to remember the, I the conservation, uh, the conservation primary for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, um, for Noah. So they, we have an advisory council, um, and we have various seats like our fishing representative, our, um, scientific research representatives, um, and, and our conservation primary. So we bring forward, um, issues from the community and from our constituents related to conservation. Uh, and then again, we serve as an advisory role, right? We're not making the decisions for the sanctuary, but we're advising, um, staff on, on kinda how we reflect back, uh, what our what our primary needs for communities.
Speaker 2 00:05:52 When do you, when do you sleep?
Speaker 3 00:05:54 <laugh>? Yeah, A lot of juggling. You know, sometimes I'm like, what are we, I I need to get like a better, uh, technological personal assistant or something. But yeah. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's exciting. You know, I really like the fact that this has been a mix of, what I've really enjoyed is having a mix of kind of like the, the government scope of work and, and, uh, advising governments and trying to really push those infrastructural changes forward. And then I don't think you can really do advocacy or, or pushing forward any kind of movement or policy without doing education. Those things really need to happen hand in hand. So still getting to have a role in educating youth and communicating with the public through my column, um, it's a nice balance. I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2 00:06:41 Well, we're here to talk about climate action plans. Yeah. <laugh> and, and you've been involved in, in a number of, of writing or whatever it is. A a number of them. Yeah. Maybe you can start by telling us what a climate action plan is, how often they need to be prepared, and whether they're required by state law.
Speaker 3 00:07:01 Those are great questions. So, a climate action plan, I need a better word than roadmap cause that makes us think of transportation, but it's, it's kinda like a roadmap. It's a strategy that's adopted by a local jurisdiction adopted by a city or a county, uh, that is looking at the various sectors of emissions. Um, and also, you know, I, I'll backtrack there. I would say it's, it was first really kind of developed as looking at, you know, here are all of our emissions here. Here is our big footprint. Here's our impact, and where can we, where can we draw it down? Where are we, where can we reduce? Uh, so that was kind of the initial focus of climate action planning. Uh, and fortunately as we've kind of continued in our climate action planning knowledge, um, so kinda a relatively new thing, if you look at it from kinda historical government perspective, uh, we learned that not only do we need to do actions to reduce, but we need to do actions to adapt.
Speaker 3 00:07:56 We need to do actions for resilience. We need to do actions for retreat. Um, so a lot of climate action plans started as a result of AB 32, which was the state of California, um, trying to, to reduce our reductions to, I believe it was 15% of 1990 levels. That was in like 2006. Yeah. Uh, and so a lot of climate action plans started to pop up, um, voluntarily as a result of that. So it is not required by state law to create a climate action plan, uh, but it really has a lot of good, um, there's a lot of incentives for a government to do a climate action plan because several of the sectors that affect the cla the planning process, already have other state mandates that they have to meet. So it really helps us be cohesive. Um, and I, I have a quick example.
Speaker 3 00:08:52 So for example, like if, if you have a water conservation mandate, like water management agencies need to reduce the amount of water that is consumed because we are in a long-term drought, which is also a climate, um, a result of climate change. Um, you know, they, they'll be required to be held to that state mandate of reduction. But that reduction is also a climate goal because of how much energy is used to, um, extract and to heat and to transport water, uh, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna simultaneously reach these goals. So when you have all these state mandates, which we do, uh, putting that kinda together and bringing in various departments and agencies to come up with a comprehensive plan, um, serves a lot of different folks needs.
Speaker 2 00:09:39 Yeah. Oh, I mean, it sounds, it sounds rather rather complicated <laugh>, um, and we'll get, get back, maybe we'll get back to that a bit later. Yeah. So what, what is the general content of a climate action plan? What issues and topics are covered?
Speaker 3 00:09:55 Yeah, great question. So, uh, things like transportation, right? Transportation, especially across the board, across the state of California, one of our, our biggest sources of emissions. Um, but transportation here in Santa Cruz County is our largest source of emissions amongst each jurisdiction, and then countywide as a whole. So that's a, that's a big subject area. You know, how can we increase public transit? How can we increase, um, electric vehicles? How can simultaneously we incentivize folks to use these things. How can we make sure no one is left, left behind in this transition towards more, uh, sustainable forms of transit? Uh, things like the built environment, right? So that's another thing, right? We, we've created laws and, and some standards in the state of California related to construction and new buildings. Uh, and so looking at policies that a government might have would be related to a climate action plan of, okay, when we allow a new development to come in, what are some of the things that a new development has to look at?
Speaker 3 00:10:58 You know, how are we gonna look at the footprint of that new development and say, oh, well, you know, you're gonna need to offset this by planting so many treats. Or you're gonna need to ensure that you have, um, energy efficient lighting in your building, and you're gonna need to ensure that you have water conserving devices. And again, those are serving multiple goals still, right? For the city as a whole, or the county as a whole. So I'm looking at those things. Uh, the community resilience piece, I could say is also, uh, more exciting to see more general public and residents being engaged in planning processes and saying, Hey, you know, if we're proposing to do some sort of mitigation, some action that will help us reduce our emissions, is that gonna have some sort of effect on a, a community that isn't represented at the table?
Speaker 3 00:11:45 And can we figure out how to also mitigate those effects? Right? Or, uh, what else we have. I'm trying to think of what we have in my current climate action plan. There's a lot, a lot of emergency preparedness. I mean, we couldn't, we couldn't be in a more opportune time to talk about that, right? The climate shock of having nine atmospheric rivers in a row, including a bomb SiteOne, and being like, that's a, that's a climate shock. So how are we gonna ensure that we have networks where people are informed of what's coming, where they can respond quickly, where we don't lose live, livelihood, income, um, and how we can, how we can not only be safe, but how can we, what's our next step? Right? That's a big conversation we're having now in this county. What's our next step with all of this? So they, I would say they're, they've grown in complexity too, which is exciting. And then also a challenge simultaneously,
Speaker 2 00:12:38 Uh, let's come back to that. I, we need to take a short break. You are listening to K S Q D 90.7 FM and k squid.org streaming on the internet. You're listening to sustainability Now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Rachel Kippen, a coastal environmental advocate, writer, nonprofit, professional and artist. And we're talking about municipal and county climate action plans. Um, you know, some people describe climate action plans as aspirational documents describing, you know, what should happen rather than what can and or will happen. I mean, can you talk about that just a little bit?
Speaker 3 00:13:19 Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, yes. I would say some plans, most plans have aspirational elements. A lot of that also to do with lack of funding. So, you know, there could be a lot of goals that a government might have and want to put in, put in play. You know, we have these relationships built across agencies or with the government and nonprofit organizations. And then, you know, then we're in a political climate where, for example, um, the Biden administration passes the Inflation Reduction Act, and Newsom commits billions of dollars to the climate change. I would say we're in a climate funding boom. So you're gonna see climate action plans that are gonna try to reflect that hope, right? But that doesn't always, that doesn't always end up being what we want it to be. We don't always get the funding that we want. Uh, and then I would also say simultaneously, it's not a perfect process in that if we have an aspirational goal, you know, some folks might be really bought in and some folks might not be within that same government.
Speaker 3 00:14:20 So I can speak to community choice energy being a huge gain, right? Saying we're gonna, we're gonna take, we're gonna hear in Santa Cruz County in the greater Monterey Bay region, uh, create the community choice energy. And, and same thing with, um, Alameda County being part of, um, east Bay Community Energy. Uh, we're gonna look at having these renewable sources of energy rather than, you know, a single source through pg and e that's not sustainable. Uh, and that immediately, once we started adopting, that started hitting higher climate action goals that we had. So you might have people who are in these positions who are like, well, you know, just because we adopted this thing, now, boom, we hit, we hit some big goals. So all the other goals that we have, you know, we did it already. So there's, there's a challenge too, with being successful. Like, if you're successful and you have a big gain, um, sometimes that could decrease buy-in, because there are so many things that a jurisdiction has passed with putting their money in effort towards that. They might say, oh, well, we got it now, right? We, we hit that mark. So move along to whatever else, you know?
Speaker 2 00:15:28 Uh, well, I was looking at the draft Alameda plan mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I noticed that, um, there was a section which said that the county had significantly decreased its emissions because people were working from home. Yes. Which seemed to me cheating.
Speaker 3 00:15:46 Yes, I'd love to. Yeah. What, I'm curious, what, what felt like cheating? I'm just curious,
Speaker 2 00:15:56 <laugh>. Well, in, in the sense that, you know, a lot of that had to do with Covid.
Speaker 3 00:16:00 Totally,
Speaker 2 00:16:01 Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's not because, you know, agencies were, were sending their, their employees home to, to work mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? I mean, it wasn't mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right. It wasn't, uh Oh Yeah. Sort of common practice. And, and it has become that. Right. And yes. Transportation as they point out. Yep. Employee transportation. I think those are, um, is it class two? What's the, the terminology emissions? You know, they're the three categories of emissions. Yeah. One is the direct one, the second is the indirect, and the third has to do with services that you procure. Something like that. And it sounds, sounds accurate. <laugh> Well, and, and commuting emissions are in the second category. Yeah. Because they're not caused directly by the city or the county.
Speaker 3 00:16:47 By the county. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:16:48 But they're associated with employees having to go back and forth. So Yeah. If they don't have to drive, right. That's a big chunk of emissions. That, that seemed to me also. Well, I mean, it was cheating in the sense that there's not really environmental justice embedded in that, right. Because the people who are not working for the city Totally. Or the people who collect the garbage don't have that choice.
Speaker 3 00:17:14 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I can say that, um, in my experience working with different jurisdictions, that there is often folks who've been advocating for telework, um, and creating telework policies for this exact reason. Cause one of the things I, I learned this, uh, when I was working with the city of Watsonville, and I had a role in that climate action plan process as well. Um, and it was pre covid. It was like 2015 or something. Um, is that am bag here locally? The association for Monterey Bay Area Governments. They do a lot of our inventories. You know, they, they, they provide that service to local governments of like, what sector, what sectors are causing so much emissions? And they said through their data that, um, during like the furlough Fridays, I don't remember when happened, furlough, government cuts, transportation emissions sector dramatically dropped. It was like immediate data Of course, that 20% Right.
Speaker 3 00:18:13 That showed that. Right. Yeah. Right. And, um, and I think it's incumbent upon workplaces to try to formalize some policies around that. And you're completely right around the equity element of it. Because if you're going to, there needs to be multiple layers of incentives. That's my personal opinion. Right. If you're not gonna offer equal incentive of, if not everyone's job, of course not everyone's job allows for full work remote. But one of the things that we've had conversations around is, okay, what, how can we reconfigure the work week even, you know, because there's a lot of needless transportation and kind of, I would say, for lack of a better word around it, some like kind of old, old school thought in government of like, you show up and you clock in and you clock out. And, and that's how we like, are accountable for our work.
Speaker 3 00:19:01 Right. Um, but so many studies have shown that to be inaccurate, that people who are doing telework are often working as much or more cause they're more efficient with their time. So how can we even structure people's weeks where their commutes are less, or where they're incentivized, where they're offered, um, of course, sustainable transit options, incentives for their funding, funding models around that. Like, how can we help use some of the, the, it's a cost savings measure too. It's a huge cost savings for the government. So how can we use some of those savings and funnel it back in an equity p in an equity equitable way to other staff, to our community members, and to really also utilize unused space, because it's also creating a lot of, a lot of unused space. Yeah. So kinda back to your point of covid, um, I think several people, myself included, there were so many downsides of covid.
Speaker 3 00:19:54 Obviously there's tragedy, but one of the really huge gains was that it, government was saying, no, no, no, we can't do this. That's impossible. You gotta come here. You know, and, and then boom, we have covid. And they're like, oh, actually we can tr we can totally pivot. Um, and, and being forced to pivot, then further created that data, just like the data from the furloughs, uh, to show that, you know, this is really a, this is really a direction that we need to be thinking. Plus the added element that I hadn't really been thinking about prior to looking at, um, telework through my current contracting is the fact that, um, when we're going through climate increasing climate shocks and increas increasing climate disasters, that's a really huge hardship for a lot of employees in any situation. And so, you know, commuting to work in a storm, commuting to work during poor air quality events from wildfire season, commuting to work, if you have, I have a really old car.
Speaker 3 00:20:54 It doesn't have ac If you commute a commute in your really old car in extreme heat event, my, my car not gonna make, it's gonna break down in these, you see all these other kind offshoots, you see increased anger, increased road rates, you see mental health decline mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you see that mental, mental health decline amongst your employees. So really thinking of it from a, like, we need to have telework also as a, as an emergency plan. You know, we need to be able to think about how do we deliver services in a way that's not as required or as dependent on, uh, needless transportation, I would say, you know,
Speaker 2 00:21:31 So we're just talking about, uh, uh, you know, storms and, and, um, people working from home. But of course, in this last, in this last series of storms, power went out. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And since people doing telework rely on, you know, the internet and all sorts of communications, that raises some, some problems, right? Yeah. And I was gonna also observe another thing, which is that the people who can't work from home usually are paid less than the people who can. Right,
Speaker 3 00:22:07 Right.
Speaker 2 00:22:08 Right. So, I mean, you know, yeah. And, and your, your comment about all of these interrelated and connected pieces, you know mm-hmm. We never mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we never, we never noticed them until mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they disappear or they don't work. Yep. And, um, yeah, it's, I mean, it's an interesting observation, but you can't fix everything.
Speaker 3 00:22:26 Right, right,
Speaker 2 00:22:27 Right. And, and, um, uh, anyway, so, okay. So we, we've talked about that, but you now, were involved in, you know, we can take anyone, we can take Alameda County Yeah. Um, in developing the plan, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, how does that happen?
Speaker 3 00:22:47 Yeah, good question. So it, again, it kinda depends on each government. I can say, you know, for each jurisdiction, they've, they've been a little bit different. Um, again, kind of historically, I, I think you'd mentioned that like, you know, plans might evolve from former plans, right? So like, you might have had a plan that went from whatever, 20, let's say two eight to 2020, or
Speaker 2 00:23:11 Yeah, whenever I write something new, I go back and look at what I wrote before. Right. <laugh> to, to, to plagiarize it. Right?
Speaker 3 00:23:18 Right. It's a pla
Speaker 2 00:23:19 <laugh>, of course. Um, but does, anyway, go on. Let's, let's, yes. Leave that for the moment. Yeah. Continue.
Speaker 3 00:23:27 So those, um, those kind of former plans had, I would say, focused more traditionally on looking at the sectors of emissions and saying, reduce, right. Reduce, reduce, reduce. And so that's where they, like, where they kinda launched off into creating the plan. Okay, well, you know, if we're looking at transportation, then we need to have our community planning department, right? We need to involve folks who create general plans. We need to, if we're looking at, uh, built environment or, or, or let's say let's, we're looking at, um, our emissions from our landfills and our, our waste. We need to bring in the solid waste folks. We need to look at our materials that we use. Um, those are, those are kind of ways that I think it was traditionally approached to sec emissions bring folks together. But now, you know, again, with increasing, uh, understanding of the need to adapt and the need to recover and to retreat and to do all these other things, um, you'll even notice, like, this is really fascinating to me, that our plans moved from being climate action plans to, several plans are now double ass.
Speaker 3 00:24:34 They're climate action and adaptation plans. Um, which is exciting. Cause like, wow, we're, we're acknowledging we live in climate change and that Whitney here, and we must adapt. So it's working a lot across, across departments, bringing in department, um, leads from, from these different, from an agency's internal, um, you know, internal folks. And then also bringing in the community through public participation. You know, whether it be workshops or surveys or presentations around what is a climate action plan. Uh, looking at proposed measures and saying, does this make sense? Is this even feasible? Um, I would say it's a lot of meetings and it's a lot of, you know, trying to get folks to come in and not necessarily always couching it again in climate, but what are shared goals, right? So there's so many things that a government is required to do and ha is mandated to do.
Speaker 3 00:25:33 So like, let me look at your list of things in your closet that you're so scared of that you're not gonna get to, and how does that meet our emissions goals? How can we overlap in terms of our public health? You have these public health departments that have these big goals, and we, obviously, climate, climate change is a public health crisis. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we have that too, right? So where's our shared, where's our shared areas? Um, and then, you know, kind of write the plan in that regard. So we, you know, we have had, um, stakeholder groups essentially that come together, um, and share feedback, and then start drafting. Usually it's, you know, your office of sustainability if you have one. Um, or, you know, not every agency has that. We'll start the draft of the plan. I think some plans also live in your city managers, depending on, you know, again, the, the government's preference, um, and the, the, the sunrise and sunset of a plan is also up to that jurisdiction. So I can say, you know, I, I know I'm not, I'm not actually a staffer for the, for Alameda County, but I can say publicly that our plan, this plan is sun setting in 2026, because it, it's, you know, it's 2023 right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:26:43 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:26:44 It's a short turnaround. And the reason for that is because it's aligning with the vision six, the strategic plan for the entire county uhhuh a lot of goals are aligned with. So then, you know, we're gonna try to hit these goals by 2026, and then we're gonna do our next updated plan. We're gonna have a lower lift, um, for the next round. Cause we've really pushed forward some of the big things that we wanna have.
Speaker 2 00:27:07 Uh, let's come back to that. I, we need to take a short break. You are listening to K S Q D 90.7 FM and k squid.org streaming on the internet. You're listening to sustainability. Now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Rachel Kippen, a coastal environmental advocate, writer, nonprofit, professional, and artist. And we're talking about municipal and county climate action plans. You know, I did, you don't know. I, I wrote an institutional biography of uc Santa Cruz, during my last sabbatical. And as part of that, I read through the 25 odd strategic plan Yeah, yeah. <laugh> that the university had prepared. Right. And yeah, one of the striking things about these plans is the extent to which the goals are not fulfilled. And the next strategic plan ignores the previous one. Perfect. Right. <laugh>. And, and so, you know, the question of course comes up. So there, here's a strategy, how does it actually get implemented?
Speaker 3 00:28:11 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:12 Right? I mean Right. You have agencies that are responsible for certain sectors. Yep. Right. They don't have the money to do the things that are laid out in the plan. Yeah. There's a lot of reliance on private funding to try and take up some of these tasks, right? Yep. What's the follow through?
Speaker 3 00:28:35 Yeah, that's a good question. And it's really hard.
Speaker 2 00:28:38 I only ask good questions, Rachel.
Speaker 3 00:28:40 I know, I know. Yeah. What's the follow through? So the follow through, I can say from the different plans that I've worked on, it's again, really dependent on several factors of, um, you know, I would say a good plan, A good plan is one where you can look at it and with your, your development group or with your, with the folks who've helped really drive forward these initiatives. You can say, now, I, I can look at this plan. I can, I can tell you which are the, like, low hanging fruit ones that we can, like, that's fundable. We can get a grant, you know? Yeah. Or we've got strategy in here that's like, pretty close to like, almost writing the grant itself. Um, so those, or like really priority populations too. We've seen that a lot, especially with the, um, with the, you know, the California budget and with looking at climate through an equity lens, which has fortunately become more common.
Speaker 3 00:29:33 Um, anything that's involving priority populations and populations that are being hit first by climate change. Um, knowing like the time is now to direct, right? You gotta have some strategic thinkers and people who really wanna hustle for that grant money. Um, and then I would say public accountability is a huge piece of it too. You know, like, never underestimate that because when we take these plans to our various, um, leadership, whether it be a council or a board of supervisors, right? Having the public there and being like, we actually really care about this <laugh>, you know, we're gonna make comments, we're gonna send letters. And I can speak to, I, I, I was always impressed by that when I was working for the city of Watsonville that even, you know, there was public, there was public request for like, where's the climate Action plan update? And that's, I I, I can say that.
Speaker 3 00:30:18 I wanna see that. I wanna hear. Cause if you're a staff in a large agency and you're trying to get that agency to buy in to make, making moves on these targets, and you have the public, you know, driving, pushing, pushing, pushing, saying, Hey, you wrote this. It's a measure. Like, where is it? What are you doing? Um, tell us. And then that's going to your, your elected officials. And, and a lot of those people really listen cause they wanna be reelected and cause they care, hopefully, you know, but that, that is a, that is a big piece to have the public pay attention to what, what your government agencies are making promises for and how far they've gotten on those promises.
Speaker 2 00:30:58 Um, how, how broad is public involvement? I mean, you know, what, what fraction of a city's population gets deeply engaged in reading these and reviewing them and commenting on them and making demands. Do you have any idea?
Speaker 3 00:31:15 Uh, I would say it's not as high as I'd like it to be. Um, I think a lot, you know, you go from like, several hundred participants might review a plan, but they might review also, plans tend to be pretty lengthy. Yeah. And also tend to have like a lot of stuff that not, not necessarily everyone's versed in. Right. You might. And that, that means, doesn't mean people aren't smart, it just means that you're not super versed in all of these, these various components. So, um, I think that that is, that's the task of, of cities, um, cities and counties and are just community at large. And I, you know, to not get too, uh, existential about it. I also think this is a result of having climate change denial for decades. I think the fact that we don't have the type of engagement and understanding of climate change as a result of the concerted effort, even though we live in a place that's very different than maybe the rest of the country, the concerted effort to not push this forward is truth and is backed by science and is something that everyone's had been educated about, um, and as like, the highest priority, uh, on this earth.
Speaker 3 00:32:24 You know, this is our greatest existential crisis. So I think, I think we're dealing, unfortunately, with a lot of catch, um, where, you know, you, you'd want your whole population to have engagement in climate, and you'd want, you'd want people to have the, the time to read a climate action plan. That's a privilege. You know, not everyone's got that time. So you wanna incentivize people. Um, yeah. I'm sorry. I feel like I went off on a, on a little
Speaker 2 00:32:48 Riff. No, no, no. I think, I think, no, I think that's a, you know, a really important question because community engagement, I mean, I know with Santa Cruz there have been mm-hmm. <affirmative> repeated efforts to reach out. You know, there have been various kinds of, of meetings and mm-hmm. <affirmative> and groups and, and the like. Um, but the, the issue is always, you know, the people who come, come keep coming back again and again. Right, right, right. And the people who don't come, you know, to them it's, it's not relevant. Uh, and you know, there's that old, it's, I, I'll be pillared for saying it. There's that old saw that a conservative is, is a liberal who has been beaten up <laugh>. And, you know, in this case, a climate, uh, uh, a a someone, a climate activist, you know, is someone who has been directly affected by, you know, flooding or some sort of climate catastrophe. Now, I'm, I'm not saying that's the, the basis for interest, but mm-hmm. <affirmative>, of course, people who are, are exposed to these kinds of things are, are now gonna be much more interested in preventing them in the future.
Speaker 3 00:33:57 Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 00:33:58 On the other hand, they're gonna rely on their municipality mm-hmm. <affirmative> to make sure it doesn't happen again. And I think about, I think it's Felton Grove, right, right. Which flooded repeatedly, you know? Right. And it never, never, nothing ever seems to happen. Right. Um, but, uh, which is surprising, you know, you think that, that that particular community would be able to mobilize, but
Speaker 3 00:34:24 It's real. Yeah. It's, so I feel like it's so complicated too, right. Cause you're hitting on these points that make so much sense of like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 2 00:34:33 Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:34:35 That, um, that are, um, looking at a community that's affected by climate change. And I think that's also related to climate education. And so one of the tactics I can say in doing like climate education or even talking about climate action plans, is not even always couching it in climate change.
Speaker 2 00:34:51 Cause Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:34:52 Right. We're talking about your, your safety. We're talking about your wellbeing. And, and, and that as a way to bring people in where they're, where there might just not even necessarily not be like, I don't believe that climate change is real, but like, now I've put it in this category that it's not for me. Like, it's not the, like, it's not the most urgent thing in my life because we don't, we haven't drawn connections enough to it being the most urgent thing in everyone's life. And, um, and I think, again, that's just the la of the failure of our kinda education around it. Um, and not necessarily people who wouldn't be engaged in it. Cause you do see a lot of folks who are super engaged in it also being usually like, having different levels of privilege, different levels of
Speaker 2 00:35:36 Education around. Right. Right. Who has the time, but
Speaker 3 00:35:38 The time,
Speaker 2 00:35:39 Who has the time? I mean, this is, social movements are generally, uh, middle class movements, because who has the time?
Speaker 3 00:35:46 Who has the time? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:35:47 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:35:48 Um, and, and yeah, those, and the, and the poor people that are affected, not poor, like everyone who's affected, but the people who are affected in these emergencies and these, you know, the flooding and Felton grove, you know, it's, it's like, it's so hard to say to a person who's lost stuff, lost anything, lost their business, lost their home to say, well, you know, like, maybe we'll give you some money so you can rebuild and then it'll happen again in five years. Or you have to move, you know, maybe be like, but who, that's a privileged piece too. Like, do you have the ability to move? Where are you gonna move? Can you buy a house? Do you, now your house is, has no equity. So like, how are you gonna be able to do that? Unless we really dedicate resources to, to transitioning, um, folks,
Speaker 2 00:36:33 So, um, one of the things you mentioned, you, you mentioned back, um, you know, looking for grants, getting grants mm-hmm. To do these kinds of actions mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the grant world is extraordinarily competitive. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so sometimes, you know, a jurisdiction will get a grant and other times they won't. Yeah. And it, it seems to me that it would be much more effective to fund projects out of, not based on, you know, writing grant proposals, but based on more reliable sources of Yeah. Of funding. Right. Which, right. Which, you know, and, and I, I realize that's impossible. Right. <laugh> under our system. I, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know, and the other thing you mentioned before is the, uh, the, uh, inflation reduction act, right? Yeah. Which has all of this money in it. Yeah. The problem is by the time it trickles down, right. There's not much I had heard that Watsonville got something for some project, Watsonville got something like $120,000 out of this, you know, billions of dollars of bounty because of this, of this process. Yeah. I mean, it sounds really impressive. Right. Right. Right, right, right. And, and then when you start to distribute the funds, they turn out not to be quite,
Speaker 3 00:37:49 Not
Speaker 2 00:37:49 As impressive quite as, quite as much.
Speaker 3 00:37:52 Absolutely. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:37:54 Yeah. You know, so, so we've got, I mean, in a way, it's, again, it's the unfunded mandate problem. Right.
Speaker 3 00:37:59 Which is, oh, for
Speaker 2 00:38:00 Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:38:01 Oh, yes.
Speaker 2 00:38:02 Let's take another break.
Speaker 3 00:38:03 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:38:04 <laugh>. Okay. We'll come back. You are listening to K S Q D 90.7 FM and K squid.org streaming on the internet. You're listening to sustainability. Now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Rachel Kippen, uh, coastal environmental advocate, writer, nonprofit, professional and artist. And we're talking about municipal and county climate action plans. I wanted to get much more into the, into the politics, you know, into the sausage making of the process. <laugh> and, and actually, uh, I have this long question
Speaker 3 00:38:39 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:38:40 About, um, public agencies mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, and their roles and their competing interests mm-hmm. <affirmative> and many jurisdictions, as you've mentioned now, have climate offices mm-hmm. <affirmative> and sustainability offices mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and they take the lead on development of these plans, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and other de other departments are consulted and brought into the process, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but it's not really their responsibility, and they have other things that they have to do. Yeah. Like the building department, you know, has to review and approve permits. Yep. Okay. Um, and so is putting this responsibility on specialized offices a way of avoiding responsibility in other agencies. I mean, that's still sort of bureaucratic politics, right? Right. Right. Have you observed this, you know, I'm trying now to interrogate you about Oh, no. Involvement in this process. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:39:38 No, I, I got you. I also, you know, I'm an independent still, so I feel like, um, and I, and I do, I, I say the people that I work with, I've, I've been very impressed with. They're very committed to the work that they're doing. But there are totally, there's just these fundamental issues, right. Like, like you bring up. And I do think that especially over the last, like you, you know, you've probably seen these opposite sustainabilities, like popping up more and more over the last decade. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and like, and that's great to a degree, but I agree with you that, um, they can be looked at as like, I don't know, the stepchild, you know, where like, there'll be a, a feeling amongst potentially other internal stakeholders within a government agency of like, what do you even do? You know, you're not what, like, you're not deliver, you're not, you're not delivering, you're not taking the waste away.
Speaker 3 00:40:26 You're not pumping the water too. You're not, you know, what is your function? Um, and then, and then also then having these, these folks come in and try to create these comprehensive plans. I would say that the, the agencies that are looking at climate action planning related to their funding is, is really, uh, one of the smartest ways to go, in my opinion. Because like you mentioned, there's not enough funding. And the grant, grant hustle is not always a reliable game, especially with changing politics. And, you know, the cities that are gonna maintain their wealth, and I don't mean their wealth in like their wealthy populations, but the cities that are gonna maintain their services are the ones that are gonna address climate change and recognize they're making an investment mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so if they need to have it at the leadership level, right. It, it doesn't, it, it, you can have your offices.
Speaker 3 00:41:19 And that's, I believe, I, I hope I don't speak incorrectly to that, but I believe that's city of Santa Cruz, they have, you know, their sustainability within their city management, their, their relationship is like very, very close. Um, to, to prioritize the fact that this is, this is now a part of absolutely everything. Um, and it's not a perfect, it's not a perfect process by any means, because you also have so many different departments that are taxed with these things. And if they're, if they're asked to do additional stuff, and it's not funded, it's like, now your office of sustainability is the state mandate, right? You're like, oh, now you're gonna do this thing, but there's no guarantee that it's gonna work out. So it's trying to look, I think, at your, at your budget often and say, what's the most bang for our buck to reach goals that we need to, that are prioritizing, um, our survival, our ability to deliver services
Speaker 2 00:42:14 At what level? Now, is that at the citywide level or at the, at the department level?
Speaker 3 00:42:19 I would say more at like the citywide level,
Speaker 2 00:42:21 Right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:42:22 It's like a, and you know, I could say personally, I'm not a total expert on, on all of the political processes that create the mandates for the state. I've worked on several, I've had several state mandates come down on me, but I could say like, it would be wonderful to have climate action planning, uh, be more of a mandated piece and have funding attached to it, of course. But that's, we we're not, we're not there yet. And that's, I think that's also another tangent of like, we're spending so much money as local jurisdictions dealing with this climate crisis. And, and oftentimes we're not even necessarily labeling app labeling it appropriately. So we're calling it other things, but it's the climate crisis. And we need to be, we need to be pushing back ultimately on getting lobbying out of federal government and pushing back into fossil fuel industry and taxing and taxation models that they're people profiting and making tons money that could help put the bill for what's happened. But, uh, we haven't gotten there.
Speaker 2 00:43:24 Well, well, I mean, all of that, all of that is true. Right, right. But Right, right. But, you know, changing, changing that structure is a, is a matter of political struggle as well. Right, right. We're, when you were, uh, in these meetings, did agencies fight back against proposals? Was that a problem?
Speaker 3 00:43:43 Not, I, I haven't experienced, like, fighting back, uh, per se as more as I would say. Like, that's not, like the way that this is currently set up is not gonna work. Like, just, and I actually, I've found that to be, I think I've, I've evolved a little bit in my thinking too, because I was really naive going into a lot of this just being like, why wouldn't you just do this? Just pay so much cent, just do it. You know, like, come on on, right. And then be like, oh, right. You have like 10 billion other things that you are also aren't gonna be able to get done. So having the actual honest and transparent conversation of this is just not feasible in this way. Like, we have to change this measure. We have to change this goal. I've experienced that. Uh, and, and I've ultimately appreciated it. Cause that's also what leads to structural change, right? If you're like, we need to do this thing, and we have, we have no plan for it, then, then you're, you're going back to your city leadership and you're saying, how can we get a plan for that? Then you're saying, what's creative funding possibilities for this so that we can actually, you know, strategize to, to make something happen instead of just like having me or someone else just write it down and be like, oh, be so great if we did this thing. You know?
Speaker 2 00:44:48 But that then becomes a distraction from the normal business. Right. I mean, again, you've got this time allocation. I'm just, you
Speaker 3 00:44:56 Know. Right, right,
Speaker 2 00:44:56 Right, right. I'm playing devil's advocates, obviously. It's all good. Yeah. And you know, again, it's, it's, uh, it's something that even though I taught politics, international politics for 30 years, yeah, yeah. I've only really become sensitized to this, these, these struggles, you know, in the last three or four by observing them much more closely. Yes. Um, did, did Alameda County use a consulting firm?
Speaker 3 00:45:20 Yes. Several, yeah. Several different folks kind of brought in for se, and we're not done yet. So we've had several like, um, yeah. Folks coming in that have helped, mostly facilitators, and facilitators are helping with community engagement too.
Speaker 2 00:45:34 I, I, I know that there are these consulting firms now that basically do only climate action plans for cities. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and presumably they have templates. Yeah. Right. And they come in and they basically fill in the blanks,
Speaker 3 00:45:49 Which actually hasn't been totally my experience. I'll say it like I at least that with, well, cause with Watville Watville, we did that too, but I, I, we didn't have, cuz there wasn't, like, there wasn't a one size fits all, you know, even if, even if a consulting firm wants to come in and be like, here's what, here's a good idea. There's just, there's a lot more nuance. Right?
Speaker 2 00:46:09 No, no, I'm not, I'm not arguing that, that they do the same thing in every city. Right. And I'm not arguing that there isn't local participation and involvement. Right, right, right, right. But these consulting firms have done it. Yeah. Done this, and they, they know how to approach it. Right. And then they know how to organize community meetings or all of these sorts of things. It becomes an industry in and of itself.
Speaker 3 00:46:35 Right, right,
Speaker 2 00:46:36 Right. Which I suppose is okay. Yeah. Um, but, uh, you know, it also does take away from, from local participation, I guess. Um, do you, do you have any sense, uh, I mean, Santa Cruz for instance, had a, had a prior climate action plan. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> for the one that I gather hasn't been quite finished yet, but it's very close. Um, am I wrong?
Speaker 3 00:47:04 So my, just to clarity for my role for Santa Cruz's climate action planning process was I was an equity advisor, so I was brought in solely for their equity in and engagement of like Yeah. For lack of Abel gap analysis. So I'm like, I'm not versed in, in their, in their, in their full achievements, uh, uhhuh,
Speaker 2 00:47:24 Uhhuh,
Speaker 3 00:47:24 <affirmative>, previous plans to current. Um, but I could also speak to, I would would say, like for Santa Cruz, and even just knowing my like very limited engagement of like, oh, review, reviewing the county's current plan, that was just, um, that just went through review. Yeah. Um, is that, like, then those same folks that are working on, um, climate action planning often are in these situations where now we're in, you know, now we're post, like, post-disaster. And so a lot of, now they're in like, recovery, right. They're like, a lot of what they've been doing is emergency ops and recovery. Right?
Speaker 2 00:48:02 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:48:03 So it's, it's I think a really challenging thing when you have this, I I, I think we, I think as a state, even though we were faster than so many other states, we were really late to the ballgame. Like, everyone has been really late to the ballgame. And like, we should have had planning processes a lot sooner than we have, um, you know, statewide and nationally. Um, because I, I don't,
Speaker 2 00:48:25 What do you mean we're late to the ballgame? Which particular ballgame are you thinking
Speaker 3 00:48:29 About? They're, the ballgame was like making climate action plans prior to the year 2000. You know, like <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:48:35 Ah, ah,
Speaker 3 00:48:37 We're still like new, you know, it's like, I mean, not new, new, but like the first plan that ever was created was like 2000. But like, so many plans really weren't starting until like 2000. Ok. 10. Right. Ok. But, so like,
Speaker 2 00:48:52 That's kinda, but we had Kyoto
Speaker 3 00:48:54 <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:48:56 I, you know, in 2000 I think there was still a certain amount of optimism. Yeah. Uh right. And I think, right. What has changed is that, uh, you know, it's, it's looking less and less like there's going to be any kind of coherent strategy Right. To to, to address this pro. It's all gonna be lots and lots of little bits. Um, yeah. I mean, in, in a sense, putting the responsibility on municipal jurisdictions right. Is a way, is almost a way of confessing that we don't have the capacity at higher levels. Yeah. To actually, you know, act effectively, we can distribute money, but we don't have the capacity to, to do that. Right. Right. Which is an interesting, interesting thought because of course there are state agencies that do
Speaker 3 00:49:47 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:49:48 Act all over the place like Caltrans.
Speaker 3 00:49:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:49:52 Yeah. And, and so, uh, it, it does strike me that the, the political political organization is not up to this particular, particular problem. Let's take another break. Okay. <laugh>. Okay. We'll come back. You are listening to K S Q D 90.7 FM and k squid.org streaming on the internet. You're listening to sustainability Now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Rachel Kippen, a coastal environmental advocate, writer, nonprofit, professional and artist. And we're talking about municipal and county climate action plans.
Speaker 3 00:50:31 Yeah. And I would say even to your point, like, you know, we have the executive order for carbon neutrality by 25, something like that.
Speaker 2 00:50:39 What it's now Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:50:43 Executive order from the governor. It's noten enforceable. There's no penalty there. You know, like, it's great, but also what, what at the end of the day does that mean? And so from a, you know, I think to, to the point of like, okay, well if this is like our earthly survival and the best we can do as an executive order of 2045, hopefully we're carbon neutral. Yeah. That's really scary. Like, that's not, that's not the best news for sure. Yeah. And the California tends to like lead, right. If California is leading and that's, and that's, you know, our role and that's where we're at. It's still, yeah. Still still pretty, pretty challenging. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:51:24 Yeah. Well, um, we're coming to the, to the end of, uh, of our time. Yeah. Together. And so I was just wondering what are your plans for the future? Thank you for asking. Where can listeners find out more about what you've been up to?
Speaker 3 00:51:38 Cool. Yeah, thanks for asking. Um, I, for the future I've been, I, yeah, I'm planning on continuing to do contracting. I, I like, I like the mixture of work. So know that if you're working on sustainability projects, uh, it's something that I, I particularly, I've enjoyed doing the sustainability and education kind of mixture. Um, and kind of have some grants, grants in the works for next year. We'll see where, we'll see, we'll see where we land with that. Um, and another thing I did wanna plug, um, the Democratic Women's Club. I'm not a member of the club, but I just know that they're doing a large climate forum that's gonna take place in March. I believe it's March 16th. Um, and there's gonna be an update from some speakers, um, about various climate elements. So I, I think that'll be a really good one. Um, I'll prob I, I believe it's gonna be in Lookout. I might write about it myself too, in the sentinel column. Um, folks, feel free to reach out to me through the Sentinel. Uh, yeah. And it's been a, a privilege to get to speak with you again. And, uh, always interesting conversation with you. You got a lot, you got a lot of knowledge. It's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:52:41 <laugh>. Yeah. What's the, where can listeners find your, your co sentinel columns? Can you, you memorize the, the, the, uh, U url?
Speaker 3 00:52:51 The url? You can just, you can just search Rachel Kippen, um, our Ocean Backyard. And then I am, um, also con, I can be contacted through just the
[email protected]. Um, that's kinda a just general address. They'll, and they'll make sure it gets to me. So, um,
Speaker 2 00:53:07 Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you who still read paper, papers, <laugh>, Rachel's column is in there every two weeks. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but I think it's also available online, also Available online, right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for being my guest on sustainability now.
Speaker 3 00:53:23 Thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 00:53:24 Have a great day. Okay. Look forward to seeing what you, you know, what you end up doing in the future.
Speaker 1 00:53:30 Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:53:31 So thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make Case Good. Your community radio station and keep it going. And so until next, every other Sunday. Sustainability now
Speaker 1 00:53:51 Good planets a hot zone, tropic climbs and thriving. Sea wind blowing some breathing trees. Strong sunshine, good planets are hard to find. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:54:17 Good planet.
