Honorable Mayor Taylor and City Council Members, I have been deeply grateful for your leadership on climate action; the Declaration of a Climate Emergency and the “Reach Codes” for clean, electric new homes and buildings are regional models. Today I write to express enthusiastic support for the proposed new Climate Action Plan and goal for Zero Carbon emissions by 2030, recommended by the Environmental Quality Commission. My husband and I moved to California from Boston six years ago to be with family here, also living in Menlo Park. We both spent our lives in academia, he as a scientist at MIT and Harvard, I as a public health professor at Harvard and then president of Wellesley College. We both now have Stanford appointments. I am spending much of my time on issues related to climate change and I am tremendously heartened by the strong local leadership you are providing on the climate emergency here where we live. The global pandemic, followed by the worldwide protests of the murder of George Floyd and so many others, have highlighted the issue of environmental justice. In spite of our affluence as a community, Menlo Park is already seeing the face of the climate emergency in more intense heat waves, increased fire danger and smoke, species extinction, and stressed vegetation from droughts and weather instability. These problems will only intensify. Of special concern, though, is the reality that the worst impacts will fall on communities with the fewest resources to cope and the smallest carbon footprints. That rising sea levels pose a particularly serious flooding threat to the community of Belle Haven, with the highest proportion of people of color in Menlo Park, is but one example of widespread inequities, as the Environmental Quality Commission points out in its plan. I applaud the Climate Action Plan and strongly support the recommendation for a new climate target: Zero Carbon by 2030. It sets the stage for us to continue working toward an equitable, fossil free, and climate-stable future for our community now and in the years ahead, and for others that we hope will be inspired by the example you set. Please vote unanimously to approve this historic Climate Target and Plan. Sincerely yours, Diana Chapman Walsh 36 Mansion Court Menlo Park, CA 94025 617-833-8319 (cell) Received on Sun Jul 12 2020 - 17:00:21 PDT
