Supervisors Commend Youth Climate Strike Organizers

Earlier in October the County Board of Supervisors issued a proclamation:

“BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Clara does hereby recognize and commend the Silicon Valley Youth Climate Strike Organizers for bringing together thousands of climate protesters through a march from Diridon Station to San José City Hall and a rally at the San José City Hall steps to signify a powerful new wave of the climate justice movement.”

Two of the Climate Strike Organizers are Mountain View residents: Jamie Minden and Lexie Crilley. Jamie attends St. Francis High School and Lexie attends Los Altos High School. Carbon Free Mountain View congratulates these two young climate champions.

Photo below inside the Board Chamber (Left to Right): Supervisor Dave Cortese, Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Helen Deng, Sophie Wang, Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, Lexie Crilley (holding the proclamation), Abhimanyu Jayaraman, Jennifer Zhao, Supervisor Joe Simitian, Sanat Singhal, Supervisor Mike Wasserman

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Photo below outside the Board Chamber (Left to Right): Supervisor Dave Cortese, Jennifer Zhao, Sanat Singhal, Abhimanyu Jayaraman, Lexie Crilley, Sophie Wang, Helen Deng, Jamie Minden (holding the proclamation), Sindhu Vajrala, Navya Pariti, Sian Bareket, Roisin McElarney

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Local Climate Activism Leads to Major Investments in Sustainability

From Mountain View Sustainability Manager Steve Attinger:

Hello Task Force,

In case you haven’t heard the news, last night [Oct. 22, 2019] was THE most significant night in the 12 years I’ve been steering MV’s sustainability ship. The City Council did two amazing things:

  1. They approved a building/EV/PV “Reach Code” more stringent than staff recommendations that mandates that ALL new construction, starting 1/1/20, will have to be all-electric (with a few exceptions), AND include a significant number of EV spaces or installed EV chargers, AND include solar PV. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe this makes Mountain View one of the first 3 or 4 cities in the state to pass such progressive building requirements. The SVCE press release is available here.

  2. They adopted Sustainability Action Plan 4 (SAP-4), comprised of 81 new actions, 10 new staff positions, and a budget of $10.6M. SAP-4 was directly a result of your 2018 recommendations, so I’m thrilled to let you know that all your efforts have culminated in a very aggressive plan for the next 3 years. The 10/22 Agenda, which includes the staff report as Item 7.1, is here.

For those of you who showed up last night to provide support, again, thank you so much!

To everyone receiving this email, I can’t thank you enough for your dedication to a sustainable future, and we look forward to continuing to engage with you as we begin to execute the 81 actions. (Oy vey!)

I’m sincerely humbled by your commitment, and last night’s 2 major wins are directly attributable to YOU!

The Mountain View Sustainability Team

CFMV Has Revised its Mission

We have heard that some community members are citing the City’s existing focus on constraining absolute GHG emissions as a reason to oppose redevelopment.  We emphatically disagree with this perspective.  It represents an overly simplistic view of what the City’s GHG goals should be – a view that until recently CFMV was also guilty of. 

After delving more deeply into the issue as a result of our service on the Environmental Sustainability Task Force in 2018, the CFMV Board revised its Mission Statement on Feb. 5. 

It previously was “Our goal is for Mountain View’s GHG emissions in 2025 to be 40% lower than they were in 2005.” 

We have changed that to “Our goal is for Mountain View’s GHG emissions per service population in 2025 to be 50% lower than they were in 2005.” (Service population is the sum of the number of residents and workers in Mountain View. We estimate that as of 2019 there are 82,000 residents and 98,300 workers for a total service population of 180,300.)

This revised goal is compatible with continued growth in Mountain View’s residential population and employment levels. Importantly, the goal can be more easily achieved if new housing grows faster than new jobs. This will improve the city’s dreadful imbalance between jobs and housing.

Recommendation M2 from the Sustainability Task Force asked the City to make this change and adjust its goals, and we hope that they will do so in the near future.