Dear Honarable Mayor and City Council -
I'm writing to urge you to continue your climate leadership and please disregard the white noise of a small number of climate lagging community members and the Daily Post (largely in their overtly biased Monday Opinion Section) recently who are questioning your well-researched approach to tackling emissions in our community. Buildings and transport account for the largest sources of emissions in our, and most, community(ies) and MUST be addressed through gas phase-outs and elevated EV charging stations. The evidence is unequivocal, the playbook is clear, your direction is confirmed, and our Climate Action Plan must deliver these emissions reductions now, not in future years.
It is certainly easy to retroactively call these measures into question through a public post versus showing up to the dozens of meetings you have hosted, and where staff has spent hours preparing documentation. These residents can certainly be encouraged to join future discussions when items are proceeding (e.g building code adoption), as will those of us who have supported the rigor and ambition of Menlo Park's Climate Action Plan, emissions goals and key measures over the past decade+. I have encouraged this through a post earlier on NextDoor as a start (linked below), but stand ready to further support the Council, Staff, Menlo Spark and our climate by implementing the key actions of our collective Climate Action Plan to ensure the future of our community, family and single planet Earth.
-Erin Cooke, Cambridge Ave/Allied Arts
https://nextdoor.com/p/wT-qZWZW-t4x?utm_source=share&extras=OTUyNzk1
Neighbors - Taking a moment to share my appreciation for our City Staff, City Leadership, City Council, the Menlo Spark team, and our residents who have each well researched and analyzed the urgent approaches required to reduce emissions and slow global warming/climate change. There is a great deal of misinformation circulating and calls for debate, particularly regarding the phase-out of natural gas and increase of EV charging stations, despite the clear and unequivocal evidence (yes, even gathered by "Stanford Scientists") that these decarbonization transitions are ESSENTIAL for our generation to reverse our rather dire future if we elect to delay their adoption. The health of our environment and families benefit when we phase out fossil fuels, the longitudinal data is vast and has been well assembled by an incredibly capable City Sustainability Manager, supplemented by residents and Menlo Spark who have decades of deep experience in this field, and reviewed (and approved) by a cautious and thorough Council who's responsible for acting in the best interest of our community. Their actions will enable Menlo Park to improve the air quality in our homes and on our streets and have the co-benefit of allowing our seat at the global table in "doing our part" to directly mitigate the climate impacts that arise from our community. Let us read, rally, and ready our houses, neighborhoods, and great green city for these climate critical changes we need now, not next year. Let us be a community that is not divided or divisive, but instead united (and leading) by using the tools our City has empowered us with to fight society's greatest and continued threat of climate change. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/climate/article/California-braces-for-extreme-2021-wildfire-16091995.php https://www.switchison.org/ https://ilsr.org/cities-kicking-gas-reliance-to-curb/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717953/ (more available - send me a DM if you'd like links/to chat!).
