Climate Change

TRANSDEF’s organizational focus is the reduction of GHG emissions from transportation. TRANSDEF has a long history of advocacy in climate policy, in an effort to help the state meet its goal. We have divided up the comments we submitted into these separate pages:

Scoping Plans

SB 375 Regional GHG Emissions Reduction Targets

Caltrans

Much of our work has involved the state’s policy-setting agency for climate change, the California Air Resources Board, or ARB. ARB has produced generally excellent climate change plans, called Scoping Plans. However, it has consistently been weak in the area of reducing GHG emissions from transportation, despite having determined that half of the state’s GHG emissions are generated by the transportation sector.

TRANSDEF suspects that high-level officials in state government are unwilling to take on the inevitable controversy that would accompany a serious effort to shift how Californians travel. Not only would this represent an unprecedented level of cultural change, it would require shifting transportation funding to exclusively low-carbon modes, which entrenched interest groups would resist.

ARB’s lack of courage in this sector is generally unrecognized, even within the climate advocacy community. TRANSDEF’s concern is that without significant reductions in transportation emissions, the state will not reach its goal of 2050 GHG emissions 80% below 1990 levels, the percentage reduction identified as needed to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2° C.

We also have blogs on Climate Change.

TRANSDEF asserted that the draft Funding Guidelines and associated Quantification Methodologies were an open invitation to widespread application fraud in its Comments on ARB’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Guidelines.

TRANSDEF requested the Air Resources Board provide guidance in the use of its mobile sources air emissions model, EMFAC, so that regions properly determine their regional GHG emissions without including State-level emissions reductions measures. This is important because SB 375 calls for emissions reductions from the regions, above and beyond what the State does.

Older Comment Letters
Sonoma County Comprehensive Transportation Plan EIR–2009
Supplementary comments on the Draft LUSCAT Report –2008
Draft LUSCAT Report–2008

Past Writings
TRANSDEF’s President David Schonbrunn wrote several articles for Thinking Highways magazine and spoke at their climate change conference:
View from Another Planet
Thought Piece
MegaProjects
Climate Change Conference

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