How To Reduce Davis's Carbon Footprint? Council Candidates Weigh In.

Here's our full . Share your thoughts below. 

"Davis is entering a series of well-publicized inter-city challenges to reduce the City's carbon footprint. What will you do, if elected, to accelerate the adoption of some meaningful sustainability practices in Davis? What elements of the city's Climate Action Plan do you believe would be most effective in reducing the city's carbon footprint and environmental impacts?" -Sierra Club Yolano Group

The path that both the City and Davisites need to go is: first go after low hanging carbon reduction fruit and then after the high hanging fruit. The City needs to: continue to replace street light with LED’s (so far 10% are done), replace auto fleet with hybrids, install energy-efficient furnaces and air conditioners, expand upon the 2 megawatts of PV’s already installed and support and encourage financial means for Davisites to pay for high hanging carbon fruit.

Here are some of the easy ways to reduce ones carbon footprint: composting food waste, reduce shower times to 5 minutes, set thermostat to 65-68° when people are home and active; 55-58° at night & when no one is home, replace or clean AC filter, raise your A/C thermostat 4 degrees, install whole house fans, effective use of window coverings, reduce miles driven in a car or truck by 20%, implemented fuel efficient driving practices, carpool or carshare, switch from meat to vegetarian meals one or more days a week, buy locally produced/organic food, grow food at home, set temperature of your water heater to 120 degrees, insulate your water heater, install more than five compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, thoroughly sealing air leaks in your home, sealing & insulating warm air heating ducts, insulating your walls & attic and get auto engine tune-up and maintaining air pressure in your tires.

Promoting solar power. We must look to every level of government to find programs to promote solar energy, and where these programs do not exist, we must create them. We should implement our own commercial and residential PACE program. We should also push for the formation of a CCA (see below) and the adoption of SB 843, which would allow us to purchase off-site solar power.
Starting our own municipal utility. We should create an energy system more in line with the values of our community. Wherever possible, we should source our energy renewably. A number of communities have already successfully started their own public utilities, or employed Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) to choose the source from which they draw power. What they did, we can do as well.

Focusing on low hanging fruit. While we transition to a more sustainable energy model, increasing energy efficiency through simple, relatively inexpensive changes to homes is low hanging fruit we can pick now. We can do a better job of getting the word out so that homeowners reach up and pick this fruit, taking advantage of state and federal programs in the process.

My family was one of the first 150 Davis households to participate in the low carbon diet, we intentionally don’t have a yard, and we live in sustainably-built, environmentally-friendly infill project in Central Davis. We’re trying to put words into action, and living a life that treads lightly as lightly as possible on the environment.

I enjoyed hearing David Gershon speak when he visited Davis, and am excited to participate in the Cool California Challenge. In my professional life, I work on environmental legislation in Sacramento, and I work with many state agencies and organizations that are working on helping cities reduce their carbon footprints. California is at the forefront of working on these issues, and I’ve worked firsthand on some of these key bills, including California’s landmark AB 32.

The key is to bring the best ideas back to Davis and create linkages between state agencies and action here locally, in Davis. Now that we have a climate action plan and a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, I would give priority to sustainability portion of the City’s Department of Community Development and Sustainability. We have 1 city staff person working on sustainability, and I would work to ensure that sustainability becomes a priority throughout ALL city departments. I would also work to further collaborate with our world class institution, UC Davis, on innovative ways to be cost effective in reaching our goal but also be creative and forward thinking when pursuing sustainability.
Additionally, I think we need to further look for grants and incentives related to sustainability, and engage with other people and communities which are making this happen already in their own communities, and ask how Davis can continue to reduce barriers to our future success.

I will continue to control urban sprawl, thus preserving both habitat and ag land. We should promote buying locally, focusing on locally grown food to cut energy usage, provide local jobs and assure that our ag land is preserved.

I will pursue the building of a large transit-oriented development near the AMTRAK station and downtown, such as the PG&E lot and perhaps our nearby city yard. Either site could provide a many units, enabling more Davisites to have the option of moving within walking distance of downtown and the AMTRAK station.

I would like to explore a municipally-owned solar farm on our city-owned land outside of town, and charging for garbage according to size of container to reduce solid waste.

Finally, I want to focus on making sure that living in Davis is so nice and so interesting that we don’t feel the need to get into our cars every weekend and board the plane on holidays or buy vacation homes that we need to drive to.

This includes maintaining the visual character and human scale of downtown, bringing more arts, entertainment and unique locally-owned restaurants and making sure that our new neighborhoods and our new housing is aesthetically pleasing both in terms of interior architecture and in neighborhood design.

I support working with Cool Davis to identify and prioritize our carbon footprint reduction paths. They are currently working on several innovative ideas that will benefit our community.

The climate action team (2009) came up with fairly comprehensive list of proposals and the role the city council needed to play in implementing them. I am supportive of the vast majority of the suggestions (some need additional specifics, but in concept I am supportive). These ideas were incorporated into the Climate Action Plan. I support the general ideas and also the general time frames and reduction goals set in the CAP.

If elected, I will work to support the work that Cool Davis and the Climate Action Team have done.

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