81 Days to Copenhagen - "Santa Cruz finds massive changes needed in transportation to meet climate goals."

With 81 days until the Copenhagen Climate Conference begins, the city of San Cruz released its 2008 Green House Gas (GHG)  emissions numbers late last week.  This article, one in a series on Santa Cruz and Copenhagen, reviews some of these numbers.

First, please sign the UN's "Seal the Deal"  so Copenhagen can achieve real action.  Now Santa Cruz's numbers.






(source:   City of Santa Cruz, Ross Clark, 9/11/2009)

These are the same numbers as reported in Sentinel, except for one number: the total reduction of GHG from 1996 is shown here as  -8%, an apparent typo, which the Sentinel corrected to -24%.  


Recall from an earlier post, that the City's goals for reducing GHG emissions are:
30% below 1996 by 2020
80% below 1996 by 2050

So it looks like the city, at -24% for 2008, is well on track.   Perhaps.

First, remember climate change  could be the major challenge of our lifetime.  We are all in this together.   From China to Kenya to France to Santa Cruz. 

The C02 in the atmosphere is about 385 ppm, whereas it was 280 ppm in 1750.  At 385 ppm, if we do nothing, will cause significant climate change, not just warming, in a few decades.  Many scientists insist we much as act immediately and get this number below 350 ppm.   This will buy us time to work on other solutions.  

Back to the Santa Cruz numbers.  The UN (eg Kyoto) and ICLEI, an international group of local governments, have been using 1990 as baseline.   So using a number after 1990 (like 1996 or 2000) makes it easier to "meet" the target because emissions were rising.

Santa Cruz, of course, had an severe earthquake in 1989.   So numbers for the early 1990s are very skewed.  Mr. Clark picked the 1996 as a baseline.   And California's AB32 calls for a baseline of 2000.   We just need to careful.   Santa Cruz had originally been using 1990, like most other US and world municipalities.

But there are at least two other problems with the numbers.  Two categories - Commercial/Industrial and Transportation - are the largest.  Look at the drop in Commercial/Industrial from 1996 to 2000 (77k tons CO2:  168k - 91k).  Unfortunately, Mr. Clark explained it isn't quite so good:  several factories closed in those years and he believes this accounted for most of the 77k drop.

Next look at transportation.  As Paul Schoellhamer of Watsonville points out in  letter to the editor, transportation when from 34% to 51% of our total GHG emissions, where as the national average for transportation is 32%.  So I have borrowed his headline.


In future article, we will look at ICLEI, the organization, and try to examine how GHG emissions are calculated, verified and what Santa Cruz can do to reduce emissions even further.  After all, a real leader must do his or her part and then some.

• Schoellhamer Letter
• Sentinel Article 
• "Seal the Deal" - previous post
• City of Santa Cruz - 30% by 2020 -http://www.30x20.org/
• ICLEI - Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) - 5 milestone methodology: http://iclei.org/index.php?id=810