Comment Log Display

Dear ARB Board:

Please give some attention to the proposed GHG Reduction Targets
for the AMBAG region.  This needs your attention in part, because
the target drafting process appears to have suffered from, at
least, a lack of focus on this “smaller” region of 3/4 million
people, if not an outright breakdown of the drafting process.

After the ARB’s August 9 staff report came out with proposed
targets of +13% (increase!) by 2020 and +14% by 2035, AMBAG staff
and other public officials told me they were surprised, or shocked,
by these non-reduction targets.  ARB staff told me they issued
targets based on AMBAG’s previous 2008 business-as-usual (no action
on GHG) forecast, on the rather slight explanation that AMBAG did
not submit a specifically endorsed single set of proposed targets
to ARB.  Apparently, the hard working ARB staff ran out of capacity
before it came to working further with the less prominent AMBAG
region, to devise better.

Then, once the proposed “do-nothing” targets were out, some local
officials, including on the AMBAG Board, were understandably
confused, imagining incorrectly that the targets were based on a
healthy collaborative and scientific process and little better
could be advised.

In an attempt to address the unacceptable situation, at AMBAG’s
special meeting regarding GHG Reduction Targets on August 23, 2010,
at which I was present, the AMBAG Board voted 16 yes to 6 no, to
endorse targets of 0% by 2020 and -5% reduction by 2035.  AMBAG
staff’s presentation at the meeting, also advised the Board that
more ambitious targets of -5% by 2020 and -10% by 2035, are a
supportable option the AMBAG Board could also consider.

Besides AMBAG staff’s anticipation of further modeling results in
the near future to support yet much better targets, it is also
quite safe to say that there is nothing uniquely disadvantaged with
the circumstances of our three-county region, that we can’t plan to
do as much or better than other MPO regions.

AMBAG staff’s memo to the AMBAG Board correctly observes that
“there is substantial public expectation that this region will seek
to be a leader in GHG reductions from the transportation sector.”

If there is some doubt here, I suggest you use the instruction and
clear intent of state law, AB 32 and SB 375, as your guide.  Your
job in this instance as public servants, I believe, is to help
humanity avoid future climate catastrophe.  The climate scientists
are telling us we must act now, not later.  The ultimate economic
penalties will be incurred, if we do not.

I urge you to adopt targets of -5% and -10% for the AMBAG region,
which AMBAG staff presented as an option, and which will spur a
little healthy innovation to achieve.  Or, at the very least, to
adopt the 0% and -%5 targets which a large majority of the AMBAG
Board endorsed on August 23.

Thank you. 

Jack Nelson
Santa Cruz, CA
Campaign for Sensible Transportation,
www.sensibletransportation.org