Strong climate goals for the City of Columbus will have wide ranging impact to its surrounding communities. The economic activity of shifting priorities towards climate goals will have implications all over Ohio and our region. It is the best interests of many small and midsize businesses to support these goals.
Since early last year, Sustainable Columbus has been working on the city’s Climate Action Plan (CAP). The first draft, released in November 2020, called for an overall reduction in the city’s carbon emissions of 25% by 2030.
In response, members of several groups — including OSBC, Simply Living, Ready for 100, Sunrise Columbus, Green Columbus, Our Revolution Central Ohio, and more — formed a coalition to provide feedback on the first draft of the CAP.
We wrote emails, filled out feedback forms, and testified before City Council to say a 25% reduction in carbon emissions was not in line with IPCC science, which has stated that we must reduce emissions at least 45% by 2030 to have a chance of a livable planet. We combed through the draft plan to identify dozens of areas where we thought the ambition could be increased.
On September 20, 2021, the city released Draft 2 of the CAP. We are pleased to see overall emissions reductions raised to 36%, thanks to significant increases in several areas of the plan. However, Draft 2 still does not get the city to a 45% reduction in carbon emissions, despite the IPCC science becoming even more urgent.
Click here to see and sign the letter to the city providing feedback on Draft 2 of the Columbus Climate Action Plan.
Our coalition thinks there are still several weak spots in the plan where emissions could be further reduced, and we invite you to sign on to our letter to Sustainable Columbus outlining our thoughts and alternate goals.
Please consider signing on to our letter providing feedback for Draft 2 of the Columbus Climate Action Plan. You can get a link to the letter and sign it at bit.ly/capdraft2
If you would like to see Draft 2 of the Climate Action Plan and provide your own feedback in addition to this letter, you can do so before Friday, October 1, at 5 p.m. at https://www.columbus.gov/sustainable/cap.
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