Climate Ready 2030

OUR VISION

Acting decisively by joining and inspiring others across the world to initiate a massive local economic impulse and model 21^st century green architecture, landscape design, and engineering to restore ecological balance and economic stability. To this end, we aim to achieve greenhouse gas carbon neutrality for the City of Petaluma by 2030.

WHAT DOES CARBON NEUTRAL MEAN?

Carbon neutrality refers to balancing greenhouse gas emissions/climate pollution. Carbon neutrality is achieved through reducing carbon emissions and balancing carbon emissions through carbon offsets (programs that sequester/remove carbon from the atmosphere to make up for emissions elsewhere).

CLIMATE EMERGENCY FRAMEWORK

The Climate Emergency Action Framework is the result of collaboration of the Petaluma Climate Action Commission with input from city staff and volunteers in the community. Its purpose is to outline principles to guide the City’s ongoing response to and discussion about the climate crisis and to guide and inform subsequent policies and implementation strategies. These principles establish Petaluma’s shared vision of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable community. By setting the shared intention of this framework and working from the framework in subsequent planning efforts to create policy and implementation, the City will actively work to avoid catastrophic climate change and adapt to its expected impacts. The Framework consists of the following four sections:

Equity and Climate Justice discusses the ethical imperative to solve the climate crisis simultaneously with the crisis of inequity. This involves divesting from systems that harm public health, the economy, and the environment and invest in community-based solutions that create community stability, greater public health, and economic well-being for all community members.

Mitigation and Sequestration involves identifying the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Petaluma and taking action to reduce them, as well as how Petaluma can remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Adaptation and Social Resilience is about preparing our community for climate change impacts and develop the means to withstand the impacts that cannot be avoided.

Community Engagement discusses the necessity of a robust community conversation to address the climate crisis in order to work together to set and meet climate action targets and to strengthen the community in the process.

The City Council adopted the Climate Emergency Framework at its January 11, 2021 special meeting, directing staff to incorporate the Framework’s goals into future planning, policy, and action to help Petaluma be carbon neutral by 2030. We strongly encourage you to read the Framework, learn about what the City has done and is doing to combat climate change, and what you can do personally to stop climate pollution and help our City be healthier and more equitable.

We encourage you to sign up for our City Newsletter updates, which will regularly feature Climate Actions, as well as for information about Climate Action Commission meetings.