The fight to slow global warming is bringing together some of the best and brightest from around Santa Cruz, who are hoping to establish the region as part of the vanguard response to climate change. “We can lead from Monterey Bay,” says Santa Cruz city councilmember Don Lane.
Lane sat down for the 2011 Climate Action Summit on Friday to discuss the region’s Climate Action Compact along with County Treasurer Fred Keeley, County Supervisor Mark Stone, Gary Merrill of Santa Cruz County Business Counsel and Tim Flanagan from Monterey’s waste management district. The CAC, first drafted in 2007, is a joint agreement between the city of Santa Cruz, the county, and UC Santa Cruz, and it has helped spawn a number of efforts like the city’s Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels.
The conference, held at Ecology Action, was filled with questions: How can we cut fossil fuels? How can we get the business community involved? How will Santa Cruz adapt to the inevitable rising sea levels, blistering temperatures, rain pattern changes? “The issues we are all facing but don’t really know how to face yet are the issues of adaptation,” said Supervisor Stone under gloomy June skies (Keeley joked that the heavens were stubbornly waiting for June 21 to break out their summer weather).
The summit also provided a check-in for regional leaders. Flanagan, executive director of the Monterey Regional Waste Management District, discussed the Monterey Peninsula Landfill’s renewable energy plant. Flanagan says the plant captures methane released and converts it to electricity, producing 5 megawatts of power daily. That’s enough to power 4,000 homes “plus or minus – it depends on how often you turn on your big screen TV,” Flanagan says.
Colin Clark, Ecology Action’s program coordinator, reported that Energy Upgrade California, which grew out of the California First solar loan program Ecology Action helped establish, has created 32 jobs in Santa Cruz County.
Respondents explored room for improvement. Keeley says he wished organizers had invited someone to represent the agriculture industry, a big spender of water, electricity and fuel. A number of speakers said the business community could be better engaged in general as government leaders attempt to make green energy more commercially viable.
“The business community is the key to success here,” says Keeley.
