City seeks to be leader in climate change
Reinforcing its status as a national leader in the fight against climate change, San Jose has become the largest city in the country to set an ambitious goal to go carbon neutral by the end of the decade.
In a unanimous vote by the San Jose City Council this week, San Jose joined a handful of cities across the nation, including Menlo Park, Flagstaff, Arizona, and Ithaca, New York, to adopt a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. In doing so, the city has announced that by 2030 it intends to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it offsets by alternative means, such as producing more electricity from solar panels and encouraging more residents to drive electric vehicles over gas-powered vehicles.
“Our vote today is important for our city, for the planet and more importantly, for our children,” Councilwoman Pam Foley said during the special city council meeting on Monday.
According to the city’s 2019 community-wide greenhouse gas inventory, the city emitted 5.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Transportation accounted for 51% of those emissions while release from buildings accounted for 34%.
The city’s timeline to achieve net-zero carbon emissions is ahead of the statewide goal. California in 2018 set a goal to go carbon neutral by 2045, but earlier this year Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state agencies to accelerate that goal date to 2035.
“San Jose has proven itself to be a national climate leader and this kind of ambitious climate action will reverberate across the country for other cities to replicate,” said Sarah Elkotbeid of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “San Jose residents need these actions now, especially low-income and communities of color who are already disproportionately suffering the consequences of climate change.”
Although San Jose has already adopted several policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the city, nearly every council member acknowledged that achieving net carbon by 2030 was going to be an arduous task.
“We know that this transition is going to be extremely difficult and timeconsuming,” said Councilmember Matt Mahan. “I’m very supportive but I do really want to better understand what we think the implementation path looks like, what kind of investments are assumed and what the trade-offs are. I think the hard part in the years ahead is going to be talking about what we’re willing to forgo.”
To reach the goal, council members proposed planting more trees in barren, heatprone neighborhoods in East San Jose and adding more electric vehicle charging stations to encourage more people to make that transition.
“This climate crisis is inevitably the biggest in all of our futures,” said councilmember Raul Peralez. “So I think it’s important that we set out these goals and we create the tools necessary to do so.”
San Jose’s carbon neutral goal is the city’s latest effort to move away from natural gas as part of a national movement shifting to renewable energy.
The city council in 2018 adopted Climate Smart San José, becoming one of the first cities in the country to set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Since then, the city has banned natural gas from nearly all new construction.
Dashiell Leeds, conservation assistant of the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, called the council’s netzero goal “another step in the right direction.”
“This target may be called aggressive by some but we would call it necessary,” Leeds said. “… The resolution before you today is actually the normal expected behavior in response to a climate crisis of this urgency and magnitude.”