"Reducing sprawl called crucial in warming fight," says SF Chron on June 27 - so how's about changing our auto-centric ways?
Since Petaluma Planning Dept's Pamela Tuft said "We're creating the wheel here," when we were looking at the General Plan Draft on greenhouse gas reduction (GHG) - her statement that we can't keep our promise to reduce greenhouse gases 20% by 2012; we can only expect 8% reduction, I've been dipping into what climate change peers to be (don't read about global warming before bed! Nightmares are made of these...) We simply have to do better than this!
Point is we don't have the leisure to just wait till after 2012 or 2025 to change our ways! Heard Jerry Brown, now our Attorney General, is saying we've got just 4 years to turn the bilge barge around; some give us 10 or so. Whole lotta change must be - if you want clean air, water, no huge rise in cancer and bugs bacterial on the ground and in the air. Scientists predict mass die offs and migrations of people and animals as temperatures rise and more dessert is created in Africa, Asia and to a lesser degree Middle and South America. Wish we could just imagine a humugous and perfect CO2 vacuum into existence - but that won't exist anytime soon.
"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has got to change!" He didn't say, "Gee, I guess we ought to drive a bit less" or just change your lightbulbs or as some Petaluma council members seem to be saying "we NEED more onramps and parking lots and big box stores to fuel our auto-centric lifestyle and bring in more tax revenue" (while doubling our GHG?) And with the new stores robbing from the existing and building up infrastructure costs and medical costs to the city, this helps how? We'll need a balance sheet to see if that in any way could HELP our bottom line, be a net positive for Petaluma - a Community Impact Report (CIR) policy, now being called an FEIA - fiscal economic impact assessment...oatmealish words, but if they get the data on the page, ok!
I know TV and the big corporate guys have fueled our ideas of what we think we want: more everything and now. Wasn't always thus.
Need I mention we got all dependent on foreign oil largely because the Bush administration is laden with Oil Tycoons? Ex: there's a Chevron oil tanker named after Condolessa Rice, who served on their board, and VP Cheney is linked to Halliburton to say NOTHING of where our President Bushie got his dough. Oil money/greed did actually fuel a war here, still a shooting war that made us miss the bigger stories coming out of the middle east in favor of saving oil rights while polluting the universe and adding to a global economic crisis!
So recently the State of CA came out with a 9-page proclamation, reading something like our General Plan, i.e. DENSE copy you can't easily chew your way through.
If you're looking for what you can do at home, their are green self-help lists in the newspaper, if you can find a paper (at least 3 newspaper boxes downtown are empty or broken downtown) and read it, and tomorrow maybe focus on how you can reuse instead of recycling, and if you're really thinking about it, you'll build a rainwater catchment system or cistern (to protect against drought). You could have a healthy veggie garden while the grasses around you are all burned up. Great way to more than keep up with the Jones.
An energy solution for Petaluma I'd dearly love to see is our Community Center at Luchessi becoming our first Community Choice Aggregation cite - solar energy beaming from its broad roof to the neighbors nearby, a practice that could with care and investment become our alternative to foreign oil, to foreign wars as we know them, to saving ourselves from the worst of climate change - broken infrastructure systems, broken energy grid. California is looking to take money OUT of its road repair budget right now. That CalTrans money from the sky just may never be there.
We have a postcard community here - let's learn a lot, change our ways and leave the place for our kids or whoever in at least as good shape as you see it now.
Our lovely little river town; gateway to Wine Country.
