City Still Slow-Walking Climate Plan

Earlier this week our 350.org chapter sent out a press release with alarm that the City is making the absolute smallest increment of action and effectively burying the Climate Action Plan:

350 Salem OR has learned that instead of allowing the City Council to approve or reject the draft Salem Climate Action Plan, the Mayor has directed the City Manager to recommend non-objectionable strategies from the plan to the Council for consideration in February....

350 Salem believes that the holdup is due to objections from Northwest Natural against elements of the plan that would reduce or eliminate the use of natural gas (fossil methane) in new developments. Houses built now will stand for 100 years and lock in decades of methane and carbon dioxide pollution. The greenhouse gas inventory completed in 2019 as part of the Climate Action Plan process showed that “stationary emissions,” (mostly from natural gas) comprised 16% of total emissions in Salem.

New research - via Twitter

350 Salem says:

Send an urgent message to City Councilors at citycouncil@cityofsalem.net and express your concerns about the Mayor’s attempt to deep-six the Salem Climate Action Plan.

But we should also remember that from the very first memos and the City Manager's selection of a consultant - Council did not make that decision, only inherited it - the desired outcome has been a weak plan.* The problem here is not some new thing, some last minute swerve, but was broadly speaking the goal all along. 

The City was just not that into it.

Remember the soothing, bucolic framing?
No crisis here!
September 2020, via FB

With the City Manager's departure, it should be possible to hire a new City Manager who demonstrates a more substantial and sincere interest in Climate Action.

So while you're at it, consider asking Council to make a real interest in Climate part of the hiring process and criteria for a new City Manager. While Council sets the high level policy, the City Manager handles the details, and they will have discretion to retard or advance any Climate Policy Council sets.

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* From the start two years ago planning seemed weak:

• "City Council, January 21st - Council Goals and Strategic Plan: Slow-walking on Climate" (2020)
  
• "City Council, February 18th - Climate Action Plan" (2020)
  
• "Calm and Optimistic? Doomy and Urgent? City Chooses Former Framing on Climate" (2020)
  
• "A Big Refusal? Our Climate Plan is Dodging Fossil Fuels and does not seem very Serious" (2020)
  

The "final" plan continued the trend and has seemed too weak (all from last fall):

• "Climate Action Plan Frothy but Empty"
• "350 Salem Offers Detailed Comment on the initial draft Climate Action Plan"
• "Recommended First Stage Climate Actions Finally Released"
• "Final Climate Action Report Clears Throat, Still Seems Short on Actual Plan"

More from 350 Salem:

Without Council approval, the draft plan won’t have official status in future City discussions. Also, Council needs to reevaluate the plan every few years to assess progress on the Council’s emission reduction goals. The draft plan is far more than just a list of short-term suggestions.

A report to City Council at their meeting on December 6th stated that “the final draft CAP will come to Council for consideration after the beginning of 2022”, but no action has been scheduled. The final draft of the Salem Climate Action Plan, released in November, was the result of a year of work by a 42-person Task Force appointed by the Mayor. The Task Force was led by the Verdis Group consultants who were paid approximately $170,000 for their work on the plan.

Even the choice of Verdis showed the bias for adaptation and symbol rather than definite reduction of emissions. The amount they were paid is a bit of a red herring. They did what they were hired to do.

The Plan is what we have now, it is what is is, and we should push it strongly, as strongly as we can until the next round of revision, when it can be strengthened. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," and all that.