Bay Area climate leaders call in from COP29

“It’s becoming more clear to me that that is where the action is and that there’s a good reason it should be taken at that local level, because that is the only way to ensure some of the equity concerns are addressed,” he said. “These very large programs really can’t take into account individual communities and how they’re going to react to this energy transition, but at the local level, you can.”

As debate continues at COP29 around raising as much as $1.3 trillion to help developing countries’ transition to renewable and lower-carbon energy sources like wind and solar, Fine also emphasized that Bay Area counties had been making financial commitments of that nature already.

He cited tens of millions in incentive funding to ease the transition into renewable energy with electric vehicles and green businesses, as well as community reinvestment of hundreds of millions of penalty dollars that refineries pay for violations.

“We are walking the walk here, and I think that sharing those examples of what we do in the Bay Area to other local, regional, state and national jurisdictions is one of the things we are proud of and want to do, because it really multiplies our impact on mitigating climate change,” Fine said.

One step that Bay Area jurisdictions need to take is the creation of a regional climate plan, Fine said.

While progress might be slow on the talk’s main negotiations, there has been an opportunity for Bay Area climate leaders to speak with other advocates and delegates from around the world, Board Chair Davina Hurt said.

“We’ve been learning from their approaches, their technologies, looking at the showcase of climate initiatives and really discussing how local action contributes to global goals,” she said, citing transportation and building decarbonization as the Bay Area’s two biggest goals. “Those two areas are an issue common throughout other countries.”

Hurt cited zero-emission vehicles, water heaters, appliances and mindful travel and consumption as important individual-level steps. She also spoke on her recent Belmont City Council loss — Hurt’s challenger, fellow Councilmember Tom McCune, was bolstered by more than $23,000 in supportive mailers from an oil and gas industry group, the Committee for Jobs and the Economy.

“It is true that I lost the race by a few and Big Oil plunged a lot of money in. It’s unfortunate that in the city of Belmont there are no refineries, and they sought to remove an effective voice,” Hurt said. “If you look at all the changes in the work that’s been done at the Air District, at the California Air Resources Board, where I stand, this was their way of silencing a voice.”

Hurt has been silenced only for the short term, she promised, and asked others to continue to speak out on climate issues.

“Keep raising our voices, resisting against those who would like to keep the status quo,” she said. “We talk about the cost of living, which is an important conversation, but just imagine what cost our children will have to deal with in this changing climate if we don’t begin to change.”

Both Hurt and Fine touched on ongoing concern about how a second Trump administration could stand in the way of climate goals, which has been a topic of conversation among delegates. As green energy becomes more intertwined with job opportunities in both red and blue states, it will become more challenging for any one White House administration to halt that momentum, Hurt said.

“We think that, at the end of the day, people want jobs, they want opportunities,” she said. “They know we need to have a different transition and have cleaner energy, and it’s going to be hard to pull that rug out from underneath folks.”