Politics

Sierra Club Crticial Of County's Draft Climate Action Plan

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published March 23, 2012 at 8:30 AM PDT

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

San Diego County's Draft Climate Action Plan, released in February, acknowledges that “Climate change is one of the most urgent global issues, and scientists are already seeing the effects of climate change around the world.”

Melinda Dickenson, legal chair of the San Diego Sierra Club, said the plan does not meet its own goals, which are to come up with "comprehensive and enforceable greenhouse gas reduction emission measures" that will achieve 17 percent reduction in county operations and 9 percent reduction in community emissions.

“Unfortunately the Climate Action Plan that was circulated doesn’t actually achieve those results, It just has language saying, ‘we’re going to try, and we think that these are some good ideas that we’ll try to get done.' But we are past the point of talk,“ Dickenson said, “we need the result.”

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Dickenson said the County could generate more solar power on its own buildings, or pass policies to help people get to work without a car, instead of subsiding parking lots.

The Climate Action Plan addresses population growth in the unincorporated areas in the next 25 years. It’s designed to mitigate the environmental effects of the General Plan Update by finding ways to cut greenhouse gases, even as the number of people living in the area increases.

The draft plan will go to the County Board of Supervisors after staff has responded to the public’s comments. Staff declined to comment on the Sierra Club’s comments until they have been analyzed.

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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.