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GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS GROUPwww.planSBsolutions.com The Global Warming Solutions Group submits the following statement of recommendations to Plan Santa Barbara. GWSG is a local group advocating personal lifestyle practices and community infrastructure that fulfill the fundamental needs of all residents, in harmony with the needs of our ecosystem in the face of the challenges posed by Global Warming and Resource Depletion. GWSG offers the following recommendations to Plan Santa Barbara regarding the next 20 year General Plan: Core Values:By Katie Mickey (Director of the Santa Barbara Body Therapy Institute), Eric Schwartz (Owner of Commuter Bicycles and Thomas Paine Farms) Recommendation 1: Sustainability In an era of climate change and diminishing resources, sustainability necessitates some substantial shifts in how we function as a city. These changes offer challenges to the infrastructure and smooth running of our city. Many of these challenges are already being experienced globally, ( http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/100807EB.shtml http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/062007EA.shtml ) “Abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy In the absence of executive branch leadership implementing policies in cooperation with the global community, city governments are now taking the lead in the US and abroad. In recognition, that 75% of the world’s energy consumption and 80% of greenhouse gas emissions are generated by cities, last summer 540 mayors signed the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement This fall 2000 mayors, councilors, and other officials of local autonomies from 136 countries, at the second World Congress of the United Cities and Local Governments vowed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use renewable, clean energy sources to combat climate change. What is possible within the context of the city of Santa Barbara is to join with city governments around the globe in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, using renewable, clean energy sources and supporting the stabilization of our climate. What is possible is for Santa Barbara to model an effective 90% carbon reduction program that other cities can replicate, commensurate with what science is calling for at this time. “ If you are going to talk about (limiting global warming by) 2 degrees centigrade you are going to have to talk about a 90 percent emissions cut.” Andrew Weaver and colleagues at the University of Victoria in Canada from their 2007 study of Climate Change Safety The change in our climate induced by global warming has placed the inhabitants of our national and global community at risk. Here in Santa Barbara we are already experiencing the potential for climate change to disrupt the safety of our citizens and our infrastructure as evidenced by our recent Zaca Fire and the flooding of 101 several times in the past twelve years. As a city, we have multiple issues to address to ensure the safety of our citizens, our infrastructure and our biosphere. Continuing our current practices of carbon intensive lifestyles, threatens our safety on all levels in that our carbon output contributes to the global rise in temperature and the local impact of drought conditions, vulnerability to fire, flooding and projected sea level rising. What is possible within the context of the city of Santa Barbara is to implement policies that will promote safety for all of its citizens, that will allow each citizen to get their needs met while reducing our CO2 emissions in accordance with the recommendations of the international scientific community and the warnings of the Pentagon. “’Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures,’ the scientists say. Only intense efforts to curb man-made emissions of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases can keep the climate within or near the range of the past one million years, they add.” “Climate Change and trace gases” report issued by James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary Russell, also of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York. Localization The localization of energy production, economy, culture and decision-making has many benefits for our city. Adopting technologies and systems that generate power locally while greatly reducing CO2 emissions allows transporting people and materials without burning of fossil fuels. Localized electric generation makes Santa Barbara less vulnerable to power shortages, the decline of oil production and less likely to participate in resource wars. More utility funds stay within the local economy. Affordability: The true economic costs of our carbon intensive lifestyle and unchecked pollution needs to be factored into our economic decision making process. There are enormous costs incurred by climate change, demonstrated in part by our recent fire, and what we are witnessing around the globe at this time. Implementing an infrastructure that can model reversing the causative factors in climate change has great potential economic savings. Transforming our wastes into valuable resources Pollution has a substantial cost to our fragile ecosystem. We live in one of the world’s top “Hot spots” for threatened biodiversity. www.bioregionalism.org. With the advent of new technologies, the city of Santa Barbara has the capacity to not only clean up our waste, but also to actually create valuable resources from our wastes that can enhance our soil, be retrieved for future use and be transformed into vital energy. Preserve our Commons Open space in the form of undeveloped land and community gathering places is vital to the health, well being and quality of life of all our inhabitants. Our ocean, our creeks, mountain trails, city parks, public squares, easements are all common spaces that are a great treasure of our city. General Plan Recommendations At present we are a fossil fuel dependent society. The majority of Santa Barbara residents and commuters are currently meeting their needs for transportation, safety and convenience by the use of burning large amounts of fossil fuel in their automobile. The costs to our Santa Barbara community is substantial in the form of unhealthful air locally and CO2 emissions globally, congestion of our city streets and unsafe environment for pedestrians and bicyclists. Santa Barbara attracts over million visitors annually and 30,000 commuters daily. The city’s layout worked well for pedestrian and cyclists several decades ago, but the amount of vehicles traveling on them now makes it unfriendly and unsafe. There are not enough safe routes for cyclists to travel on. Local residents along with tourists are in great need of more efficient public transport.
Recommendation 2: *Safe bike routes to school. Recommendation 3:
Curitiba Brazil is one example of a major city of 1.6 million people that has eliminated congestion on their city streets by implementing an efficient traffic flow plan. The city pioneered the idea of an all-bus transit network with special bus-only avenues created along well-defined structural axes that were also used to channel the city's growth. The transit system is rapid and cheap, and is currently being integrated with the metropolitan region. Its efficiency encourages people to leave their cars at home. Curitiba has the highest public rider ship of any Brazilian city (about 2.14 million passengers a day), and it registers the country's lowest rates of ambient pollution and per capita gas consumption. Their mayor, Jaime Lerner is currently consulting for the city of Los Angeles to implement fast, and efficient bus transit throughout the city. Options for the second phase of carbon reduction on the 101 corridor include alternative light rail such as cybertrans. www.cybertran.com. The benefits of cybertrans include: Recommendation 4: Recommendation 5: Recommendation 6: Recommendation 7: Recommendation 8:
EnvironmentCompiled from submissions by Katie Mickey, Eric Schwartz, Vernon Woolf (Director of the Global Alliance Foundation), Tim Manley (Computer Systems Engineer for the county of Santa Barbara, Auditor Controller’s office), Richard Tell, (General Manager Scale Viper LLC) Lane Anderson (Community Activist for Arlington West and Veterans for Peace) Pollution and CO2 emissions currently pose a significant threat to our environment. In addition to the destabilizing effect of increasing CO2 emissions on our biosphere, we are currently contaminating our land, our streams and our oceans with chemicals, pesticides and heavy metals, due to leaks and infiltration into our sewage system and septic systems. As of 2003, Santa Barbara was dumping an average of 8.5 million gallons of secondary treated sewage into the ocean per day. Santa Barbara does tertiary treatment on the “recycled” water that goes to our parks. (Heal the Ocean - Ocean Wastewater Discharge Inventory For The State Of California, Principal author: Hillary Hauser, Heal the Ocean Executive Director, Principal researcher: D. Craig Barilotti, Ph.D., Copyright 2005 by Heal the Ocean, Heal the Ocean 1129 State Street #26 Santa Barbara, CA 93101 (805) 965-7570 www.healtheocean.org, Page 11) As of 2001, Goleta was dumping an average of 4.8 million gallons per day, some of which does not even receive secondary treatment. Goleta expects to continue this practice until 2014 (Ibid, Page 10) During a big storm, the inflow is far greater than what can be processed by our system, therefore the sewage water flows directly into the ocean. Due to these multiple factors, sewage that contains nutrient laden wastes are feeding the primal bacteria in our oceans. This primal bacteria now threatens to kill off our ocean floor in less than 10 years. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceansseries,0,7842752.special Recommendation 9: Examples of companies or municipalities using or considering using the Electrocoagulation System to treat their waste water (according to company representative for Powel Water Systems) include: Our current treatment plant is located roughly 7 feet above sea level. If sea level rising occurs, this will have significant impact on our ability to treat our water. Therefore, a contingency plan needs to be developed for having a portable system or a system at a higher altitude. Recommendation 10:>Repair or replace ineffective sewer pipes and upgrade or in some cases eliminate polluting septic systems. Recommendation 11: Agrichar is a cutting edge technology for capturing the carbon inherent in green waste and turning it into a charcoal substance that can be buried and provide agricultural fertilizer. Agrichar has the following benefits as an industry: Recommendation 12: The installation of Plasmic Arc technology will allow the city to remediate all its wastes, empty the Tajigas landfill, the seven previous landfills and Casmalia superdump toxic waste cite, and turn the waste contained therein into energy and valuable resources. Examples of plasmic arcs in operation, being installed or being considered include: Recommendation 13: Recommendation 14: Recommendation 15: Recommendation 16: Recommendation 17:
The Built Environment and EnergyCompiled from submissions by Roy Prince (Ecological Architect), Katie Mickey, Eric Schwartz, Lane Anderson There are many changes that will need to be made for Santa Barbara to become sustainable and thus viable in the years to come. The price of oil is within a hairs breath of $100 a barrel (perhaps when you read this it will be more than $100 a barrel). The US and China (and India and other emerging nations) are using oil as if it were a renewable resource. Evidence provided by geologists, and reinforced by the economy, defines oil as an ever more limited and expensive resource. The fine work of architect Ed Mazria and Architure2030.org indicates that roughly 50% of our energy use is buildings, commercial and residential. These figures reflect national consumption patterns. Based on the moderate weather in Santa Barbara, we would expect energy consumption related to buildings to be lower. Conservation is the first item on any list for reducing energy needs. The more one conserves the less energy is needed. We must highly insulate the roofs/attics, walls and under floors or slab edges of our buildings. We must replace single glazed windows with high performance (not with PVC vinyl materials) windows. And we must replace our doors with highly insulated doors. In other words we must highly insulate the building or thermal envelope and seal any cracks that allow energy to be wasted. The city recently increased the T-24 energy benchmark an additional 20% - given that T-24 is already 30% above the national average this is a move in the right direction and meets the Arch2030 benchmark for 2010 for a 50% reduction in fossil fuel use. New legislation will be required to move towards zero fossil fuel energy use in the future. Recommendation 18: As previously noted all new buildings, by City energy code, must meet the Architecture2030.org benchmarks. How can we upgrade our existing building stock to meet the Architecture2030.org benchmarks for reduced fossil fuel use? Recommendation 19: We need to know how bad it is – what is the current energy condition of our building stock? How much energy does each building use and what conservation strategies are already in place? We need mandatory energy audits that define the condition of each structure and define what upgrades are necessary to meet the Architecture2030.org benchmarks and City codes. These audits will show us the enormity of the job and the resultant energy retrofits will provide much needed income for our citizens. Recommendation 20: One of the fascinating things about Prius owners is that they get immediate feedback about how they drive. It is a great way to self-regulate how much energy one uses. Prius owners love it and even have contests to see who can get the highest mileage. Being able to see in real time the effect one is having by ones actions – very often gives one the power and incentive to make changes for the better. We now have a similar capability for determining the energy use of our buildings. There are devices currently available that, in real time, tell a building occupant exactly how much energy the structure is using. These devices should be mandated by City ordinance and installed inside our homes and workplaces so we can monitor and manage or alter our energy use. Recommendation 21: Some states and municipalities have agreements with their electric utilities to pay an energy producer (with PV solar this means you and me) when energy is fed back into the grid. It’s often called “net metering.” For reasons we will not go into here the utilities and the state of California have come to net metering agreements that is not equitable to the energy producer. We suggest the City renegotiate equitable net metering agreements with power providers. This will go a long way to decrease the pay back time for PV solar and make PV solar a realistic energy option. The Buying Club concept, noted below, would leverage the cost of PV solar and make it very affordable for Santa Barbara homes and commercial structures. Recommendation 22: Buying Clubs will allow for reduced costs for insulation and high performance windows, doors, appliances, PV and water based solar, and other energy saving products and services. The City may also offer low interest loans or other programs that assist property owners to retrofit for energy efficiency. Recommendation 23: One possible option, and we know there are many other possible ways to accomplish this, is to mandate that upon the sale of a property with a building on it, that the building(s) be brought up to the current energy code. This option makes the buyer and other possible entities like product manufacturers, retail outlets, contractors, utilities and or City responsible for the cost of retrofitting energy efficient systems and states that the buyer must comply within 2 years of purchase (the structure cannot be sold again until it meets current energy efficiency codes.) Will it be “business as usual” or a stand for making Santa Barbara sustainable? It’s an interesting quandary; who should pay for reducing a buildings carbon footprint? The question of who is ultimately responsible or who may have contributed to the problem may not be helpful at this time. What we do know is we have a large-scale problem that calls for all segments of our community to assist in the transition to a carbon free future. Recommendation 24: Recommendation 25: Recommendation 26:
New Categories for the General PlanCompiled from submission by Roy Prince, Katie Mickey Recommendation 27: We recommend that Santa Barbara engage the creative talent and best minds in our community to generate a master-plan for each of the above categories, accompanied by the following measures: We are not suggesting that we have any final answers – but we are suggesting that we need to take bold steps to move into a fossil fuel free, climate stable future.
Addenda: This Document (200Kb) Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan 2005 Tertiary Treatment Study Santa Barbara Heal The Oceans 2006 |
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