Urge the San Ramon City Council to Declare a Climate Emergency!

Whether we like it or not, climate change is upon us. It’s probably the most existential threat of our time. Climate isn’t just about weather, it’s about what impacts us every single day. It’s touched many lives over the past 5 years, we’ve had devastating fires in the SF Bay Area, and California. We’ve experienced those fires through the air we breathe, as recently as this last September. Healthcare concerns are increasing with higher asthma and allergy rates, and infectious diseases, like Malaria, will be on the rise.

None of this has moved the city council of San Ramon.

It’s been over two years since San Ramon Valley Climate Coalition was formed to urge the city council to take action on climate change. Frequently, we’ve appeared before the city council of San Ramon, to listen to the resident’s concerns to address quality-of-life. We’ve addressed numerous issues to decrease San Ramon’s contribution to greenhouse gasses, such as electrifying new home construction, decreasing traffic congestion, encouraging the purchase of EV school buses, and most of all, which covers a list of proposals and oversight, declaring a climate emergency and adding a sustainability/climate task force of some iteration, to help the city meet California’s greenhouse gas emission goals.

We need more than responses, such as, “We need to plant more trees.” “It’s a regional problem” “It’s a Bay Area Air Quality Board’s problem” “We don’t need a climate emergency declaration just to say we did.” “It’s all because so many people like living in San Ramon and are commuting to Silicon Valley.”

We’re way past the need for planting trees that will take 20 years to decrease CO2. We need all hands-on deck to help the region, the state, and the country to decrease greenhouse gasses. We need a current climate action plan (it hasn’t been updated since 2011). Many cities update their climate action plan every year.

Let’s help our neighboring cities, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Dublin, Lafayette, Martinez, Hayward, Fremont just to name a few, to be a model of action, instead of the city council putting their heads in the sand thinking that climate action won’t make a difference.

Please help us raise your voices to be heard by the San Ramon city council members. We need a Climate Emergency Declaration to enable a Sustainability Task Force to guide, help the staff, and help other commissions to actively participate in climate solutions while saving money.

Please sign our petition on change.org, https://bit.ly/3PQ7WCV

AND/OR

Write or call the San Ramon City Council https://bit.ly/3LPFoYT