Economy

San Diego Sets Green House Gas Reduction Goals

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published July 22, 2010 at 12:06 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

The San Diego region is poised to come up with goals for reducing greenhouse gases over the next 25 years. Regional leaders will give it their best shot tomorrow; they have to decide targets for cutting carbon emissions by 2035.

The San Diego region is poised to come up with goals for reducing greenhouse gases over the next 25 years.

San Diego’s regional leaders will give it their best shot tomorrow; they have to decide targets for cutting carbon emissions by 2035.

Rob Rundle is principal regional planner with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). He says San Diego is responding to Senate Bill 375, which requires all California regions to draft greenhouse gas reduction targets.

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But he says most carbon emissions come from cars, and the state has cut almost all of its funding for public transit.

"The state is imposing this requirement on us," he said. "At the same time it has taken away a lot of the transit funds, so it puts us in a really tight spot because we don’t have new funds to implement this."

SANDAG’s board will decide on a figure somewhere between a 5 and 19 percent reduction of greenhouse gases.

Rundle says 5 percent would require few changes from the region’s current transportation plan, whereas 19 percent would require radical lifestyle changes that SANDAG does not have the power to mandate.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.