Recommending Yearly or Biennial Reporting by the Mayor’s Climate Action Plan Advisory Committee
While it has been a decade since the last report of such a committee, we realize that the local and national energy and climate situations can change rapidly with progress, with failures, with federal policies, and with California legislative actions.
Therefore, I suggest that the Advisory Committee should consider a short set of meetings on a yearly basis, to report on how we have had gains and losses, and how can the city of Laguna Beach adapt to the changes.
Locally, we have had the sudden and unanticipated failure of the new San Onofre reactor’s heat exchangers, removing forever our largest local source of clean energy at 17% of total energy. California wise, we have a set of clean energy requirements on electrical utilities, and now a carbon tax. Nationally, we have the Trump administration, in service to the fossil fuel industry, and with a personal grudge to remove all of Obama’s accomplishments, catastrophically and suddenly removing all regulations and programs on clean energy, clean water, clean air, poisonous chemicals, and etc. Midwest states have progressed greatly in using their high winds to generate wind power. Internationally, we have the celebrated Paris Agreement on clean energy goals, signed by almost all nations, and from which the Trump administration is exiting.
Worldwide, we have had incredible progress in lowering the cost of solar power, and increasing the efficiency of solar cells. China has progressed in bringing economies of scale to manufacturing clean solar power and wind power for the use of the world.
Climate wise, effects from global warming have begun to show up in increased intensity of storms, increased heat and dryness contributing to fires, and increased winter temperatures leading to less snowpack for water reservoirs. The lack of winter freezing leads to the spread of pine bark beetles and the destruction of forests, leading to more fuel for summer fires. The Arctic is melting faster, disrupting its wildlife, and sea level rise is destroying expensive coastal properties and cities. Excessive Santa Ana heat is making our Southern California beaches uninhabitable during those periods. These catastrophic occurrences can yearly motivate the local population to engage in further clean energy mitigating measures.
This is just a summary, but it points to the motivation for yearly reviews of changes by the Mayor’s Climate Protection Action Committee.
