Climate task force aims to keep Sacramento County on track for cutting emissions

Sacramento County’s Board of Supervisors was on the cusp of adopting a Climate Action Plan (CAP) this year. But after receiving a flood of public comments accompanying the plan’s final draft, a November email from the county announced their decision to delay a final hearing on its adoption until 2023.

The CAP describes measures to cut greenhouse gasses in the county, aiming for net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. It proposes a variety of options for cutting emissions in an effort to reach the target year, from reducing vehicle emissions to the electrification of buildings.

But, as previous comments on drafts of the plan have noted, the plan does not concretely explain how its outline will get the county to carbon neutrality by the 2030 target. 

The target year was established in the county’s 2020 climate emergency declaration. In that same document, the county promised to form a Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force, a group that would “oversee the development and implementation of a climate emergency response plan.” 

John Lundgren, the county’s sustainability manager, said that work will be done with the help of that task force. 

“The CAP gets us part way there,” Lundgren said. “But the county staff and the task force is going to be responsible for coming up with the climate emergency response plan that shows how we get all the way there.” 

The task force was formed this year and held its first meeting in October. The group’s members include a variety of people with technical expertise as well as people with a history of focusing on environmental justice. 

Once the climate action plan is adopted, the county will have a year to create a concrete outline which will get at exactly how the CAP will meet its 2030 target, with assistance from the task force. Since the plan has not yet been adopted, Lundgren said the county and task force are not yet operating under that deadline. 

But that isn’t stopping the task force from doing its work. Timothy Alavi-Irvine, chair of the task force and a local environmental activist, was part of the 2020 effort that culminated in the county’s declaration of a climate emergency. He said he and other task force members have followed this issue for some time and have ideas on what to prioritize.

“We know roughly what we need to focus on,” Alavi-Irvine  said. “Even though some parts of the CAP might change, a lot of the CAP and a lot of the main thrust of what we need to do is not going to change.”  

Alavi-Irvine said one priority for the task force will be to focus on “environmental justice communities.” Often, this describes low-income communities of color that are hit hardest by the impacts of pollution and climate change, and have fewer resources to respond. Locally, he said that this would mean fortifying areas like South Sacramento and Arden-Arcade. 

“Those are definitely priority geographic areas for us and priority communities for us,” he said. “We want to move forward centering equity and understanding that climate collapse is going to hit poorer people and people of color and people without adequate political representation worse and it's going to hit them first.”

Supriya Patel, vice chair of the task force and founder of the Sacramento chapter of Fridays for Future, said she also wants to make sure that the task force’s work is accessible. 

“I know that a lot of times these discussions around climate policy can be relatively hard to find or inaccessible to people who have not previously engaged in them,” Patel said. “I really love how the task force has such a goal of reaching out to all different types of communities, from labor communities to our unhoused population to youth.”

Patel said it’s important that they work efficiently.

“2030 is not very far away,” Patel said. “But that doesn't mean that it's not a goal that we should work towards because with the severity of the climate crisis, it is absolutely necessary to take that action incredibly quickly.” 

The task force plans to meet on the second Thursday of every month at 6 PM.