April 7, 2021 — Environmental Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:18] good evening everybody so this my name is Brett Karan I'm the city of Boulder climate initiatives liaison staff to the environmental Advisory Board I'm going to introduce the protocol for our online public meetings and uh after that takes place we'll then um let the chair kick off the meeting so we're pleased to have you all join us to strike a balance between meaningful and transparent engagement and online security we have these rules that we established for all of our online meetings to ensure that these oper these these meetings can proceed effectively

[1:01] so this meeting has been called to conduct the business of the city of Boulder any activities that disrupt delay or otherwise interfere with the meeting are prohibited there is a time for speaking the public comment period in which if you're interested you would have three minutes to speak and that time is bounded to that that point in the agenda no person shall speak except when recognized by the person presiding and no person shall speak for longer than that three minute period each person shall be registered to speak at the meeting using that real the person's real name any person that's using a synonym will not be permitted to speak if someone comes into the meeting with a telephone number or a name associated with a specific device the host may ask for a full name before allowing the individual to speak uh no video is permitted except for the ones that are actually conduct recorded as a part of this meeting meeting and all others um other than the

[2:02] invited speakers will be by voice only the person presiding the meeting shall enforce these rules by muting anyone who violates the rules if the chat the the chat function won't be enabled except for to uh Heidi who is basically administering the meeting and that and the chat is only used for technical questions uh there's no back and forth with any of the participants and only the host and the individuals designated by the host be permitted to share their screen during the meeting okay with that Marty I'll turn it over to you okay thank you Brett so we'll call the meeting to order to start our meeting here on the 7th of April welcome everyone and um what we're going to do I think first in the agenda is we're gonna of course welcome um heran villain NOA do I pronounce your name correctly heran yeah okay close enough for government work

[3:00] um well welcome and um I know that we uh have a procedure to have you do an oath of office um so perhaps we'll do that and um Heidi would you administer that uh lead us or how do we do that I I believe uh Hanan has the um I got the document so I can just I could I could read it y beautiful okay um should I go ahead yep all right I Carlos hernand V NOA to Solly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and of the state of Colorado and the charter and ordinances of the city of Boulder and Faithfully perform the duties of the office of a member of the environmental Advisory Board which I am about to enter okay perfect

[4:00] so I'll introduce this next section because it's a little awkward for Marty to do this the um the process that the environmental Advisory board has um historically used for the selection of its chair and vice chair is simply the seniority process of the board members going through the offices so as you as you can see on the website the the terms are all staggered so that we only have one person leaving the board each year and that sort of sets up a nice cycle by by which eventually every person on the board gets to serve in the vice chair and chair's role and so since Marty is um in his last year term then he has the uh honor of being your chair for this year and then the person who is the second most senior person would be the vice chair in this case Michael San cled so inless other other boards do operate differently but this is the way this board has operated

[5:00] long time so unless anybody has any concerns or wishes to challenge that approach then um we would simply go through essentially a formality to endorse Marty to be the chair and Michael to be the vice chair Marty that I'll turn it back to you Okie do well it's a pleasure being chair I assume that the votes have been counted and that the results were unanimous and Mike will join us here shortly um what I like to First do is is have us um look at the minutes from the last meeting on the March 3rd which now I was looking at the minutes and I know typically we are pretty quick in approving those minutes and seconding that but I'd like to maybe just pause for a brief moment part heran you weren't fully involved in the meeting last month and um we had minutes that seem to be longer than most typical minutes we had a lot that happened in the last meeting um a lot of ground was

[6:00] covered and we'll keep circling back to some of the issues are not by any means resolved um and I would just wanted to point out um a couple of items before we um approve those minutes and and one that struck me I just wanted to Circle back to very briefly was from the student presentation which I really enjoyed and had to do with um the uh GIS interactive story map that was a recommendation that came out of the student project which is intended to provide um Boulder residents with information about the actions that they could take if air quality is deemed to be poor in a particular region in a particular day and I know we've also talked a lot about simply monitoring to know what is the air quality and that's of course the first thing you need to know what are we talking about but even if you knew the action may not be obvious and I really like this aspect because we'll Circle back to this um terms of other um ways

[7:02] that I think our board um is working with the city and that is to to think about the information flow that goes back to the city and eventually back to the residents about how they can be sort of um let's say environmentally intelligent they can they have a sense of their space and they also have a sense of their actions so I just want to emphasize I thought that was an important part of the student project that and we'll see how that if that develops it's a recommendation so um it wasn't clear to me whether that recommendation goes to the city or to whom and I and then I just want to maybe toss that out does anyone have a sense um as to who would act upon some of the recommendations that came out of the student project well um this is we'll talk about this more when we get into the topic of air quality down below it it I think we've started to see is is that air quality is a is an issue that

[8:02] falls into a gap within the city um that's been an area that's typically been the County's purview and so theoretically that would go to the county but I think we're starting to see that there's some need for the city to take action but we haven't quite figured out how to proceed with that okay great and and know just sort of tied into Jonathan Cohen's presentation to us that's also in the minutes which was to where he was introducing some of the community climate action plan we'll come back to the action plan on today's agenda which is important for this committee I think to um board to to discuss but he talked about resilience and you know part of resilience building is also knowing how to act when the situation requires moving out of Harm's Way and so I just want to come back to as part of the resilient strategy um the informing and empowering the public with what their options are when situations in the environment are a threat to them is really important and I

[9:00] think is part of something that we should be returning to in the EAB as we U you know work to advising the city all right I think that's just what I wanted to take away from the minutes of last month's meeting any other comments that they want to add if not uh we can move forward to approve the minutes so um hearing no objections I'd say let's approve the minutes and if we can second that approval I'll second that motion okay it came down to the race as to who can find your mute button fastest thank you Susan um so now we have public participation and we saw the terms of that participation we have two people joining us welcome to Paul and Ryan and perhaps in the order I'm just looking from left to right if Paul would like to begin with his uh comments uh for three minutes so

[10:00] Paul okay I'll just take a minute um want to uh congratulate Amon for being on the board um I'm totally impressed with your resume and your uh public presence during the the question and answer period you did a great job and I'm sure you do a great job on the board thank you and congratulations Marty for being chair um so you may or may not know that I'm totally focused on stopping burning fossil fuels that that's that's the source of a lot of our air quality problems as well as a lot of other problems and I'd like to see the board do whatever they can in terms of let's burn fossil fuels not at all or at least as little as possible thank you that's it okay thank you Paul appreciate that

[11:01] um Ryan if you would like toh take your three minutes for sure um good evening everyone I don't have any on the planned comments tonight I plan mostly to listen in and kind of get a feel for Advisory Board here I mostly spend my time listening to the transportation Advisory Board and getting up to speed there but I know that uh the environment is highly tied to our form of transportation and I will second Paul's comments on you know our transition away from possible F burning as soon as possible so yeah happy to just listen in tonight thank you all it's great to have you Ryan and Paul again thank you both of you um so I think at that point um just looking at the agenda we have no public hearing items on this month's agenda that I see here so that takes us to um discussion items um and maybe also just sort of a maybe a matter of um um future meetings

[12:00] in which we may have um presentations from staff or other um people who bring information to the board that we need to consider that's relevant to the EAB such as we had Jonathan give a presentation we had um last month we Al we also had Carol give a presentation Carol Elam gave a presentation on air quality at the local level um and that is um to consider how we would actually interact with a Q&A and uh we we've been pretty um liberal about how we've been doing that that's worked for the most part but maybe they give it structure especially now with with a new member here on on board um I think it might be nice when we do have um presentations given to us formal presentations that um the chair or the vice chair who ever is in the seat at the moment um basically solicits um a a roll call that will go see sequentially through the board memb so everyone will

[13:01] know they'll have an opportunity to ask for a clarifying question um regarding the presentation that was just shared and so I you know I'll try to do that to make sure that everyone to manage that and regulate it that everyone has a moment in which they can give a clarifying question and then this also the speaker will know that they're going to get some feedback um or clarification forthcoming for which they can provide an answer to those and so in this manner we have some structure we know that we'll all get a a say in what we heard and likewise the speaker will have a structure for which they can clarify some points that weren't clear so if that's okay everyone I'm sorry Marty it's have you just had experience in the past where you haven't felt like you've had your questions addressed no no not really but I think it just is a good way of of I think running the meeting rather than just having us jump in um sort of sporadically without structure Miriam this is actually um the pro the pro

[14:04] process that Marty's describing is is the process that was used for quite a long time and just to just to embellish it just slightly it's it's really got you typically would have two two rounds for the board the first round is to ask questions um just to make sure that there's the the board understands what uh was being presented and then the second round is for the board members to be able to make comment and part of what that enables is for us to be able to track the commentaries more clearly in the notes and to be more effective in be able to to to be responsive to those comments Ria thanks for claring clarifying that I forgot about the statement part of it too um and this will make it easier for Heidi um uh and in looking back at last months notes Heidi you did an amazing job of transcribing all the conversations uh so thanks for doing that so hopefully this will make it a little bit easier for

[15:02] you okay so um again welcome to um to heran and U maybe if I can just invite you to say a few things about yourself we don't all we didn't all participate in your um presentation to council so um if if you can take a moment or two just to tell us who you are and what your interest is here what you hope to achieve and and what this board hopefully will achieve together with you okay um so my my full name is Carlos Hernan via but I got by my middle name because there a lot of Carlos in my family alone in my house there were like another two so you know I can get confusing quickly um I'm originally from Peru I grew up in Lima and U I came here to the US when I was 17 to study so I ended up in Kansas um the University of Kansas I studied engineering there for four years years then I moved to Boulder back in

[16:02] 2011 to study my PhD also in engineering and I graduated uh in 2016 and uh currently I'm working for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California but I was able to work at a deal with with them where I can work you know from Colorado which is nice and um I what I said in my um during my interview process with city council was um I think I'm interested in um improving um the efficiency of of um residential and commercial buildings built so that means like uh you know um work with the building codes to ensure that new construction meets uh certain um efficien see goals and I I feel I

[17:01] believe that that is the most Bank bank for your buck that you can get uh in terms of um you know reducing um energy waste and uh my second approach and something that I would like to work on with the board hopefully is uh try to um whenever we think of a new project or a new initiative here to always consider the the ability to be able to reproduce this in lower income communities because I sincerely believe that you know while Boulder has a lot of good initiatives and a lot of good ideas sometimes this can be pricey and I I feel like you know fighting um climate change and achieving our goals is going to be a group effort uh not at the city level but you know the county level then at the state level and then at at the federal level so we

[18:00] can take into consideration the cost that um other communities may have to incur to you know Implement our goals um maybe that will give us a better chance of convincing our neighbors to also participate in our initiatives and that way we can reach our goals together thank you yeah that's great um welcome to the board and I don't know um eron if you were on listening into last month's call but I'm just kind of scrolling back to my own little chicken scratch notes here that I can read um Carolyn talked about um you know achieving Net Zero for um building codes um and I and it was a term that I wasn't quite sure how um the city is defining this or at least how she was using it in her presentation let me be specific and and what she was describing the goal to get to Net Zero for buildings and the code that's required to achieve

[19:00] that is that once a structure is built that it would generate energy itself that's equal to the consumption of energy by that building um does is that sort of your understanding of how to achieve um a net zero at least for the architectural and Engineering aspects of buildings um yes but I I don't know how um at least short term Net Zero uh is in terms of feasibility but I do feel that you know if not Net Zero we can get close to Zero by um enforcing in the building codes use of like um like new insulating materials that you can now find at Home Depot or um yeah basically that right like new materials that are now available and are cheap enough a like a Home Depot or a or

[20:01] a lows that um contractors can use for their project and basically reduce the energy waste you know the the energy consumption of a home or um or or a building and uh something that I also mentioned to um city council is maybe push harder uh with the what's it official term like um rebates I guess or tax credits that people could use both I guess contractors and the citizens of Boulder to be able to um retro retrofit their homes to meet these uh efficiency goals because I guess you know um for example if I wanted to add moreone my my house was built in the 50s I could add moreone insulation and and luckily I

[21:00] could afford it right but maybe like um for other members of the community it might be a tougher sale because your return on investment is you know 10 years down the road so what's your incentive to do it now if it's 10 years down the road it's going to cost you a lot of money now so maybe we could like you know just give it that little push with I don't know um tax incentives or more rebates maybe they will be more motivated especially landlords because um I know the city of Boulder has smart regulations I don't remember the official name that program that they have to meet certain criteria but if we wanted to go a little further I I do think you know we need to go into the tax credit realm Marty I wonder if maybe the board could all just briefly introduce themselves to Hanan thank you okay um Susan would you like to start sure Hermon I was the new kid on the Block until you got here so thank you that um this was my first year on

[22:02] the environmental Advisory Board and my background is also engineering I studied civil engineering and practice structural and then moved to electrical and um I have a master's in business as well and I've been active um in all kinds of environmental issues around the city primarily having to do with renewable electricity um but I'm also very interested not only in individual ual homes being Net Zero but in our urban planning in general being a lot Greener a lot more regenerative and taking a look at our land use codes and Zoning codes and I've been attending the planning board meetings just bringing myself up to speed on that a little bit so that as an environmental Advisory Board member I can hopefully can contribute to moving that in the right direction great I think I think actually we have met before I think you were

[23:01] there last year uh and I was there too getting in do you start your turn last year yes okay then yeah I think we we must have talked for like two minutes uh last year uh when you were waiting for your interview so I I I'm pretty sure I recognize your face so oh I probably look a lot younger now it's nice seeing you again I guess you too and Miriam um okay I'm Miriam hacker and have been on the board for a lot longer than it seems like I've been on the board um uh for at least three years now um my I I'm also an engineer but my specialty is in uh the air quality realm environmental and enir and air quality realm and uh I've been focused on helping the city and the EAB um move towards uh addressing air quality in the

[24:00] city and the region uh on a more active level that's primarily what I do has been exercising remarkable patience I might add yeah yeah right and um Eran I'm I'm Marty hurling and when I joined a board my hair was your color and you see what happens when you're on this board too long so I wish you better luck but no I'm just kidding um this has been an exciting board to be part of because it is an important problem and we hear that from the public and of course we're all on this board for very similar Reasons I'm actually a a climate scientist I work for Noah um and I've been doing climate change research for quite some time and and so um I'm very interested in some of the um meteorological manifestations of climate change that would matter in a area like Boulder so we we we are concerned about flood risk and how those might be changing so there there's a resilience

[25:01] to flooding that is something of interest to me and then there's the heat island and and just of Heatwave heat island concern that comes together as a sort of a compound problem with the air quality so Miriam's doing a great job in discussing the air quality concerns and how we Monitor and climate change is working in a way to probably promote more fires um just because of the um drying effect in in in in our forest and and Community um but then also on top of that is the heat that comes along with it almost at the same time so how are we resilient to dealing with that and and the equity different parts of the community may be more resilient than others um and so all these are interesting topics for me and I'm glad to be on the board for those reasons and be able to engage the city as they need some information that that can be provided by this board so um I think with that um we move on and I think we have an air

[26:01] quality update perhaps some next steps and this goes back to um Brett and Miriam who've been working on this problem a little bit since the last meeting any new updates yeah Miriam I'll start and and um then please fill in I I think as I mentioned before Miriam has been a real leader in bringing to our attention some huge gaps that we have around both the um the availability the quality and the accessibility of information about air quality and I think as part of that process it's it's been underscoring something that we learned last fall when we had the fires which is that we don't have a well-developed city-based response process around bad air quality events like the

[27:01] fire particularly for those who may be most at risk and um so I think the the the sort of positive or the effective first step is that we've kind of surfaced the problem I think where we now sit is trying to figure out what the next step should be for the city the city doesn't really have any Department that's charged with tracking and addressing either air quality or air quality risks we've typically that's a County Public Health function and I think because of the work that Miriam initiated the county convened a regional round table and that from that there will be some steps toward improving the the information side of that that that's something I guess Mar I'd love to hear your thoughts about kind of what you think the next

[28:01] steps are going to be based on that Regional group and where there might be gaps around that in a meeting that Miriam and Carolyn and I had recently I think what what Still Remains to me as a as a place where we don't really have any clear sense yet of how to proceed is around how we prepare the community for the next bad air quality event and make sure that people who are most at risk have some access to ways to U mitigate that risk for them so let me stop there and Miriam please carry forward sure um so as Brett mentioned I I have been well maybe he didn't mention this I've been participating in the regional meetings that have been occurring around this topic um there are there have been two groups established among the different city Representatives city and county Representatives um everybody from at least the Front

[29:01] Range region is is participating and then there's also other cities around the state that are participating as well in this effort um there's one group that's focused on the messaging that will be put forth and the idea is to try to have consistent messaging and and messaging that can be well understood by all of the population um and so there's CU professors there's CSU professors there's um other Advocates that have also been involved with uh this group that is helping the city's Representatives formulate uh um the best type of messaging and way to put it forth um and I have not been directly uh associated with with that group um but I

[30:00] am party to the notes and everything and I I can actually share that with us uh with our board would that be something I should do sure yeah yeah so I can share them the minutes from both of those meetings for you guys the other group that has been meeting is around the data the air quality monitoring data that is being collected around the state and how do we present that data how do we put it into a format that is understandable um and what is kind of very exciting right now is you guys have all or some of you have met Michael ogal tree who is city of Denver um specialist he has already initiated a program where he has the platform that that uh will be used or

[31:00] that he's proposing will be used to put the data or collect data and then be able to distribute it from and he's invited all of the different city representatives and counties to share their air monitoring data and have it available from the same resource um there's still a lot of question about you know how the presentation will look that'll be coordinated with the messaging group of course uh and there's still a lot of detail to be worked out but Michael is at the point right now where he is trying to um to gain or to establish agreements with the different cities and counties to share the data uh and that's kind of the level we're at right now we have another meeting that will be happening in the next week or so to to really work through some of those

[32:00] details we also I I insanely volunteered to help lead that group with Michael um so I uh am gonna get to participate in a meeting that he's having with Mar Copa County which is in Arizona which has a very robust program that they use and present data through um so we're going to try to learn from them and and how they put their system together as well but I will I will go ahead and share those notes I think you all will be very interested with the messaging notes as well yeah one of the things that came up in the so so I think Miriam thank you there's these two tracks that this Regional initiative that Miriam actually frankly you really stimulated coming together but there's these two tracks then one is around data

[33:00] Gathering and synthesis and integration and the other is around messaging um one of the things that we noted in our last conversation is that um even if we can get the information uh better integrated and better presented in some sort of say website context that doesn't necessarily mean that the people who are most vulnerable will be able to access it because they may not go to websites or what have you and so I think one of the gaps that we acknowledge that we need to consider somehow is how do we determine what the most effective way to get that information once it's more effectively aggregated and uh presentable is um so so Brett can I just yeah but in your just a little bit I I I know that the messenging group is addressing that as well um and so that is a topic that's of high level of

[34:00] concern for the whole region um there's a lot of talk around how do we get to the right people the people that really need to know the information okay so so that is part of that group's Focus as well that's great um so I do want to come back around and ask more about your thoughts around this sort of the sort of almost more like emergency response or incident response kind of context but on the data aside you you've been a strong advocate for figuring out ways to promote more of the um what are they called purple hearts or purple air uh they're sensors they're they're air quality sensors that measure particulate so do you still s think it's useful to try to somehow sponsor more adoption of that censoring around the city well in actually in talking to some of the other players and and to

[35:01] Michael um they think that we have you know a fairly robust uh set of monitors in Boulder already just through citizen scientists post you know putting them up so so there's actually a fair amount of data already present here if that is all that's going to be implemented um the other thing ozone is the other focus of this group it's not just particulate um and we do have a cdph ozone monitor uh up at the reservoir um and both of those pollutants will be the focus of the data collection and presentation and and then also you know how to react the reaction thereof from you know um but I still I I think you know we have a

[36:01] certain level of monitoring available to us I think we can start with what there is especially I mean Michael is pushing this very hard because everybody's talking about getting everything going and and done by June When The Fire season starts wow um so um it it's kind of a manic push at the moment um um so so this all sounds really positive Miriam and actually seems like we're moving in the direction that you were hoping you would go right what about this last category of you know it's one thing to know that the air quality is bad and it's another thing to be able to do something about it we I forgot to that one of the people we had on the phone was a g named Elizabeth Crow who works for the city and who did a lot of environmental justice work and she made the com I think was very important to remember that just giving somebody

[37:01] information is actually sometimes counterproductive because if they can't act on that information because they don't have the resources or for any other reason then it's actually an act of disempowering them because we're saying essentially okay now you have the information it's your responsibility even if they can't actually do something about it so that we need to be very cognizant about how we're also setting people up to be able to act effectively and I'm wondering what your thoughts Miriam are about where we stand and what our options or needs around that might be so I I really liked what Elizabeth had to say I mean I think it's very important she was mentioning pulling in community leaders like um church leaders and Community organizers that are involved with no the lower income communities um those are the people that we need to reach out to and get on our team to help distribute the information

[38:00] that needs to be distributed yeah that that was the primary point I pulled from what she said yeah Again part of what I think about though is just because a family might know that it's unsafe for them their kids to be outside or for their Elders to be outside if they don't have the $300 it takes to BU an air quality monitor that's not going to help them much and then some don't need the monitor they need the stuff to put inside their house to make their house safe right filter yeah so I mean that's that goes to Nan's um way of thinking Pro perhaps and and how do we make our houses safer and and and make our bu buildings more tight and efficient um there there's there's a lot of work that can be done in that Arena and there's a lot lot of work that has been done I mean there's there's a lot

[39:00] of air filters out there because of the the fire Seasons that have occurred in California and and all over the the states there's a lot of information out there and resources we just need to help find it and and bring it to people's attention We There are lowcost options out there or maybe it's something the city provides to people you know you know maybe it's you know a program where you just this is something that will give you Susan I saw you yeah yeah I the part that really resonated with me about what you said Brett was if we don't know what the sources of air pollution are and what we can do about them it can be disheartening to people just to know just to feel like it's something that's out of their control and you know we do a really good job I think on the city's website of capturing um our greenhouse gas emissions and what the key sources are but we don't do that same kind of thing

[40:01] for air quality and I don't know is that because that's too hard or because people don't really want to know but I I would like to see as much transparency about the sources of our air quality as I see about our greenhouse gas emissions which are related but not the same so so historically Susan the city has completely relinquished all control of air quality over to the county and so the County's website does address air quality and and they do a pretty good job I don't know you can take a you can take a look at their website and see if you find it understandable um and helpful but I mean that's a point that I've been trying to make to to Brett like and I feel like a broken record um but it's very it's pretty it's pretty easy for the city really to just put up another web

[41:02] page you know that addresses air quality I it's not that hard or you know add to their existing website Brett Brett pushes back on me on that one because he doesn't think that um people will go there he doesn't think it will be an effective mechanism to get information to people and just to clarify I'm I'm not in any way against and I think we probably should stand up something uh there's two things about that one is because of what you've done so far Miriam I think you've caused the county to rethink its own website I haven't seen them change it yet but they they're making noise about improving that and then the second part of that is we should then I think somehow track or be working in tandem with them

[42:01] for whatever we're going to do and I guess I've been sort of waiting for this messaging and Communications work that you're saying is going to happen before we try to stand up something that's independent of what that best sort of practice is that's absolutely right I think that's the right route to go because what at least these groups are proposing is that we we give persistent consistent messaging and information among the different cities and and counties so I think that's a good thing to do and I I will say I think um the public is a lot more attuned to it after almost two and a half straight months of smoky days in Boulder last year right right yeah and it looks like we're working up to another Fire season where that's going to be the same so um air qu quity just needs in my opinion to be a lot more front and center and I

[43:00] thank you for all the work you're doing on it Mariam you're welcome eron had his hand up yep yeah to mention I I just tried to send out a link but um you can't get it online without a subscription but there's an great article in National Geographic this month on air quality and the relationship to Public Health with great stats uh around the world um and of course Erman the relationship between lowincome communities and the terrible impact on public health is more severe um in places around the world where they burn terrible fuels and that kind of but it's really great AR they have a chance to check that yep a on definitely um okay so I am new to all of this so I have a lot of questions here written down so I wonder what's the best

[44:02] or maybe most effective way for me to get caught up if I should just you know hog a lot of time right now and just ask you the questions or if we should just talk separately you and I Miriam and can of you can catch me up with um so like everything I think what might be very helpful is if I send you the notes from these meetings that that could potentially help you understand at least um what's happening on a regional basis at this point um and then I'm I'm happy to talk with you now or or any other time okay yeah okay okay maybe yeah I'll start that that way maybe um let me check the meeting so I can kind of understand the status quo and then from there whatever I don't understand or if I need more information I can just ask you that sure um so in terms of thinking about next

[45:00] steps um Miriam can I ask a question jump next um and and this is sort of my experience with um systems that seek to collect data and systems that seek to inform basically what the message is from those datas that are meant to engage some response and so you know I've worked in the past with um the national drought information system which is sort of a there's an analogy here right the drought information system collects indicators of drought and they may be monitored from different sources and then they message that into a product that is Meaningful at a scale to which people experience that phenomena and then presumably there's some response this could be a countywide response for Drought declaration um it could be a variety of things another example would be um fire risk if

[46:00] you go into our national parks especially in the warm season you'll see there's a dial a very simple dial that says high risk or low risk or no risk I forget all the categories it's cute reminds me of the Old Smokey the Bear cartoons and that they would advertise it that way and so that is also an early warning system right and it was informed presumably by some local knowledge about the uh cumulative conditions on on stress of vegetation and risk Rel related to Future expectations and crowd issues but they're easy the communication just real quick the communication is very simple um there's a simple dial that you that anyone who enters a park sees and so what I'm wondering here this is my question Mar sorry to take so long to get to it is is there a simple visible early warning that can be provided either uh through it could be sort of a a location within a community that has an indicator could be a color indicator could be a dial or

[47:01] something that says low risk high risk air quality today that translates all of the data and all of the expert assessment of that data into a um item of statement yes there is discussion among the Ming group about using a uh Flags to um to identify what the air quality is the level of danger that the air quality is under at a particular time um the problem is creating a system where an understanding of those levels is a you know is is well understood right and and the nice thing about those dials is it has you know High fire danger or low fire danger and and it's really easy to understand what that means right so but what if you see like a red flag how do you know how do you know that that means

[48:01] the air quality is so bad you should not go run outside today you know how how do you um interpret that color or or put that interpretation out there so that people truly understand what that means and I and that's sort of a jog with a cross through it right wrong message maybe but I mean that's the conversation that's happening among this group and how do how do we get the the very simple method of information out to the world got it my my sense is for most people the data is is above their heads and really it needs to be synthesized by the experts who who can who can work with the data for other purposes too including science and research but you know basically at the end of the day you just want a widget that boils it all down to hey what do you want me to do today yeah absolutely thanks I saw Heron had

[49:01] another followup and welcome Mike by the way you can see Mike yeah Will introduce himself to Nan in a moment here okay so is the problem the early warning or just the warning in general um like those I'm having issues understanding like if I go to my phone and I open the Apple weather app I can see the air quality right now M or if I go to bouldercast um which I know is pretty popular here in Boulder I can also see the air quality they don't match exactly uh but is is that the problem or you know and then it says you know you can I usually look at the air quality on my phone yeah me too like it's right there like the purple the yellow right that's so you know how to interpret that right I mean does the does the phone app give you a good indic what that means good or bad or hazardous

[50:00] or don't go outside or dangerous in a big word right above it right okay and I mean who knows what that's based on what data that's based on right but a problem is a problem the data because like if I open it says you know more data there's a right here where is that measurement coming from is that coming from the airport and in in Boulder is that coming from Denver is that coming from um I mean that's the problem because it says you know like I mean it's so convenient because I already have my phone right I don't have to do anything else right and and actually the uh the system that of data collection and and identification that Michael is proposing is includes a phone app where you can actually you know geolocate monitors that are closest to you that can tell you exactly what the air quality is where you

[51:03] are but I mean but that would involve people installing an app right couldn't wouldn't it be better I guess I will suggest like just provide the data for free so then companies like this one can just use it I mean everybody's not going to use the same thing right well I mean is a weather app right it just goes from installing all iPhones like I mean yeah it's not used by all everybody but a huge chunk of people I'm sure and I'm sure like Android comes with a default weather app and then you have bouldercast which is really popular on Reddit and you know then you're targeting a huge chunk of the population I mean not many people go for a specialized weather app I just use this because they already came with my phone well I do I go to National Weather Service to get my air data yeah thank you for doing that Mar yeah but this is your field right I mean I'm talking

[52:00] about this is not weather is not my thing so I mean this is more than enough information that what I need I'm just saying because you know is that's the that's the question is that good information for you I think I see her on point though because like I I was kind of talking about this with my wife and like she's not a scientist at all she hates science she's like I think math is for calculating tips and nothing beyond that like that's her kind of view world and she's like I would never download an app about air quality CU it's already on my phone like like I don't care that's too much information like like I just want to look at what comes there I don't want to know more than that cuz I don't care okay but would a flag work work for her if she saw a flag that said as long as she never had to actively seek out the flag beyond what as a default on her phone yeah I mean like I see her on you know yeah thinking part of my background was you know my wife has an online business where she teaches art and calligraphy like a super Visual and I've done studies on how people interact with the blog and these studies I've done uh

[53:00] you know match other studies that I've seen from other websites where people don't read anything like they just look at the pictures and you know if you have to make like just adding like let's say you know somebody wants to buy something on the website adding a few extra steps results in a Hu a significant loss of sales like it's like a funnel you know like everybody who LS on the website then the more steps you add the more the less sales you make so I started optimizing it such that people can use just like Amazon you know it's like click click click done I'm done I bought the thing so it's like I feel like if you have to make people get an app you're gonna like lose a huge chunk of the of the of of your target audience already like I feel like it will be better and this is of course just my opinion but like Target what people already have like Okay so this weather app that Apple installs on all iPhones

[54:00] where does it get the data and how can we where does it get the data yeah but how can we make it such that whoever is getting that data can access the data from the state that is going to be more I mean it's beneficial for them right because they have an incentive to provide good data like that's their incentive as a private business that's how they make money so if the data is already there for free why wouldn't I use it as a business and improve my you know my reputation and then it's like like Boulder cast I mean they're local so it will be easy to contact them and ask them you know where do they get your how do you get your data how can we make it easier for you like if I go to the bouldercast website right now um I can see the air quality and they said you know we get this data from this uh weather station in Boulder it gives you the location yeah that's that's done through Anar that I that one I trust but so so yeah one thing is like why wouldn't we help them get better data and I mean they already have they have the data it's they're gonna they're

[55:01] using the same data that this would use yeah so people already use the service then right like I'm saying like if you provide a new app or a new service you're going to have a VAR of Entry because people have to download something you have to tell them to download it first then they have to actually have the will to download it and then they have to actually use it okay so maybe not everybody's going to use it but just not making it available is I mean why no no I'm not saying no I'm not saying not making it well are you talking about the app or the data no the data is available I mean the purple air sensor data is available you can go to Fair fire air now website and see the them air quality according to the sensors right now so problem then so the problem is getting people to because people don't look at that yeah but that's I mean that's a behavioral like it's hard to get people it's just it's just a resource to be able to get the

[56:02] information into a format that is translatable maybe I can interrupt here a little bit um just just because I I know where you're going or not these are great conversations um and you know and I followed what you just said I went to weather.com just to see what they have under air quality it says it's 49 it says it's good 49 is a good number claims and then it's said you can get details I clicked on the details and so do we know and this is back to mirian there are uh let's see one two three six different um constituents that are being monitored by someone in some location there's ozone and there's a value um there is sulfur dioxide there's a value there's pm10 PM 2.5 carbon monoxide and NO2 right um and so where are those numbers actually coming from and if I read that

[57:02] here you know I'm west side of Boulder and you know wherever we are in our homes is that number relevant to where I'm at right now in the manner which we want it to be relevant for our community no so is that the problem that you're you and your folks are trying to address is to make it more specific to our very local needs I want to have some thing available to the community and maybe the the iPhone app is good enough maybe that is enough impetus for them to go solve their problem but having the actual data available doesn't hurt anything I mean having it available you know they're already the data is being collected and the cities the region is going to try to do something that's a consistent message a cons consistent level of information that is

[58:00] translatable to the general public and understandable um I don't I mean these apps are are maybe good enough maybe they're good enough for for people to just get on and say okay the air quality is good I'm not or the air quality is bad I'm not going to go outside today but I don't know how many people do that I think sorry go ahead maam the first step is is just having the data available able the second step is what do I do and how do you help your community take care of themselves yeah I think I think maybe there's I'm I keep hearing three steps there's getting the data um that we have confidence in there's communicating it to the community and then there's the capacity to do something with the knowledge that that uh contains and so it seems like maybe where we are in this process is and it you've said Miriam that everybody's on a fast track because of the coming Fire season which is great

[59:01] so it seems like we will probably have some at least interim products um like you're leading the or co-leading the process on the data side there's another group that's working on this communication and messaging piece and so I I think maybe we should come back to reviewing where what those efforts have developed or generated maybe sometime May or early June and then I think what I I just sent an email out to to Colin Tom who's been leading this at the county to ask this question of what what then are we doing especially for those at most risk to help them act on the information they're getting if they're getting it and I I'm interested to see what she says in response so I copied you on that Miriam and I think that's one of those areas that I'm not sure I'm hearing what what we're doing there might be people who are working on that piece I just don't know and it's probably the piece that the city most is most interested in yes

[60:00] I I did try to relay that but yeah this is a good conversation I I often worry you know I my wife and I get into TI fortad sometimes when when she asked me what's the weather and I said well um you know I'm looking outside and and then she no no no what does it say on your phone I said well I don't know what it says on the phone but that information is a Dia and here we are in the west side of town so that's not going to help you too much and so we often get into these little battles about well where's the data actually coming from that actually meets my local need I think that's part of the problem that Nan has raised in in in his questions and uh and we'll just keep coming back to this because I think that's really at the Crux of the matter too is providing data that's locally specific and actionable is the data that we now get that's easy to access through apps and whatnot or on your phone is that actually actionable you know you want actionability here I think is is that fair to say that maybe it's the action ability that's in question yes okay than you all right that's great M

[61:00] because I yeah I totally get that totally get that that's that's the bit we have at home all the time um if we're okay with this subject for now we'll return to it obviously this is going to be ongoing all all year for us uh Brett if you're okay we can I'd like I'd like Mike to introduce himself um no heran he dropped off oh oh so he did did heran drop off let's see I thought it was just my screen um Aron do you know that you are not visible to us right now maybe your internet connection he's trying to get in he's trying get back inok there he is is he back in yeah he's back might have to unmute him great I you still there yeah h on can you hear us now there you go soft

[62:00] mute that's the shortest term on the board we've had of any person he was on for about an hour and five minutes he back now yeah I think you're it's a great contract if you can get it minutes so what what were we doing was I introducing yeah just introduce yourself and and you know what what your interests are and and how long you've been on the board and when do you want to become president of the United States things like that oh okay sorry guys uh my computer just complet 100% just died no worries my you're back now my our puppy like ripped the router out of unplugged the router on me during a zoom call a few weeks ago you both got puppies at the same time they seem to do the same things too it sounds like they do but uh yeah Eran it's nice to meet you um I'm Mike S Clemens um I let's see I lived in Boulder for about 13 years um I have a PhD in um so bio geochemistry and I work for the national ecological Observatory Network um where I lead the

[63:00] terestrial science team for the National Science Foundation and I'm also a faculty member at C Boulder I've been on the board for uh I think four years this is my last year and um yeah and I'm really interested I think you know we've talked about a lot of things over the last over the last four years um I'm obviously interested in our soil health issues but I'm also really interested in this Urban heat island issue that we've been talking about lately I feel like that's one of real interest to me because I feel like um I don't really like the Heat and I hate when I walk around downtown in the summer and it's super hot and I I just feel like that's something that's really interest me too because I feel like it's something really local and actionable that's probably easy to make a noticeable impact to the community so that's one of the ones I've I've been excited about lately um and yeah and I got a puppy at the same time recently as Marty got I'm late so I my daughter at a soccer game Sorry tonight so but other than that yeah so nice to meet you yeah nice to meet

[64:00] you too yeah all right thanks Mike and we're glad that you were able to make it um I think if we can move to the next item which is something that is going to be coming back because um there'll be a um sort of a some revisions to the um Boulder so climate action plan if you will um here the draft document that you all should have received is called The Boulders climate commitment document it's a form of an action plan from 2017 and um one thing that might be worth doing that I would like us to spend well we have a fair amount of time almost 50 minutes is to maybe discuss a little bit the contents of it so that we're familiar with it so when we begin seeing suggestions for how to update to the next version and uh Brett gave us some flavor for that in a few meetings ago and we'll hear more about that I'm sure Brett from you um at least we know the context we know the Baseline as to

[65:00] where the community stands at least where it stood in 2017 and still this is pretty much I think the enforced document at this point in time that's being reconsidered on some levels um is that about right Brett yeah Susan has a question yeah I'm embarrassed to say I haven't seen that document I haven't either I don't know it was in the agenda I think you might actually have a link to the document so okay well I'm GL I'm glad you missed it too then maram don't worri maybe you can pull it up on your screens you know and and follow along you know I did the faux paw and printed it out so there's a carbon footprint that I'll bury this in the backyard when the meeting is over um sequester it as best as I can but the dog will dig it up um so but you know all I wanted to really do is take through a few elements in this and um if if that's all right um

[66:01] so the packet that is in the link is just the the minutes the minutes I've opened it many times yeah it's on it's it's on the second page it's sorry it's on the first page item seven C it's a clickable link uh it would have been I guess a little highlighting on that or something would be good I okay I'm in the meeting invite it it's not it's on the agenda the agenda oh there it is and Marty maybe if you wouldn't mind Marty maybe I could um yeah take the lead in starting the the walk through here because I'd like to just provide a little bit of context on this thanks so does everybody have the document now open no I'm still working on it okay well while you're while you're um pulling that

[67:00] up uh I think actually one of the things I'd like to do is is um maybe take you to page four of that document because I think a little bit of historical context is actually really important to understand why you're about to see um some new content and approaches in the climate action plan that the staff is working on that we'll be talking about with you next month so is everybody now on page four the timeline okay so one thing that's I think important to have in view is the kind of history of city-based climate action and where it kind of got its start and and that really comes from to a significant degree the Dynamics that

[68:00] took place around the first International binding agreement to address emissions which was the Kyoto Protocol agreement which was negotiated in the 90s and approved in 1997 Ironically in the Clinton Administration and the US did not sign the Kyoto Protocol um it was a issue with congress not wanting to endorse signing it I think um but the point was that the US did not sign that International agreement and there were other major countries that didn't as well and that's what really stimulated this movement of cities around the world saying well our government may not have signed that but we're gonna essentially say we're signing it even though of course they weren't actually signatories because that was a nation state agreement but the city said we're going to make a commitment to achieving this emissions reduction goal so Boulder as a city passed its

[69:02] first resolution regarding that in 2002 and that's when we committed to achieving the Kyoto agreement now remember that that agreement was to reduce emissions by 7% below 1990 Levels by 2012 so we agreed to do that and then short after that it was by I think 2006 we published our first emissions inventory uh and and by the way Boulder was one of the first cities we were kind of in this early Vanguard group of cities that said we're going to sign this even though our nation state hasn't and so we signed on and and we wrote our first climate action plan I think in 2008 and we formed the community working groups that resulted in what became the tech team in 20089 and we started and that's when the effort started because we started realizing that the only way we were going to have a deep emissions reduction

[70:00] was through dramatic decarbonization of the energy of the electricity sector and so that really kicked this whole system off um it's interesting for me at least that I started with the city in 2013 and I was hired to write the next generation of the climate action plan because our first climate action plan was tied to Kyoto and the Kyoto um goal date had passed and that was the case for many other cities around the world who were signing on to this kind of climate action movement of cities and so we started to work on our new climate action plan in 2013 and then in 2014 a whole new and this is part of the reason why we didn't get our climate action plan done in the nine months that we thought well I'll hire this guy and he'll write the climate action plan in nine months and we'll move on well we knew that Suddenly by 20 late 2013 14 we knew that there was a whole new round of science that was about to be issued so the ipcc the inter intergovernmental panel on climate change issued its next report in

[71:01] 2014 and that's the report that said well folks things are getting a lot worse and so we're gonna actually have to achieve a much more ambitious em emissions reduction Target so now we need to be achieving 80% emissions reduction by 2050 well that was obviously a huge jump from a 7% emissions reduction to an 80% emissions reduction but the good news was well we had until 2050 to get there so I remember very vividly these conversations in the city like we don't really know what the pathway to 80% emissions reduction actually could be for sure but the argument was well we we should set the ambition and we should show that we're committed to that and we have time we have till 2050 and so that's the goal around which this plan was built an 80% emissions reduction by 2050 and we'll see this as we go forward and meanwhile this city was putting in place all these additional measures we started the energy smart program in

[72:00] 2010 we issued the first um Net Zero building code trajectory in 2014 um we launched smart RS in 2014 the the rental um building improvements and then by 2016 we did the universal building ordinance for commercial and Industrial spaces and we continue to work on the mun pieces and then in 20 after this plan was done in 2018 the ipcc issued and well and it should say right after this plan where right as we were getting this plan done we had the Paris climate meetings right one of the most historic meetings on climate well the most historic meeting on climate ever 196 signatories to uh two degrees or less or or what you know supposedly around 1.5 degree commitment right and quasi binding um well not so binding but commitments so that happened in 2015 so there was a sort of sense of like okay

[73:00] we're the world is getting itself together to really take this on and this was shortly after the 2014 ipcc report so it's like okay we're aligning with that science then in 2018 the ipcc issued its next report which said that basically we weren't anywhere near to be on track to the commitments that were made in Paris in 2015 and they basically they they completely upended the existing understanding of what climate action had to be by saying what we we need to now tell you is that it's getting worse still and that emissions reduction alone will no longer be enough everything up to that point had been framed in the context of emissions reduction and then in 2018 the IPC says that won't be enough we've already put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the only way we can get there is to still do all that emissions reduction and even faster really by late

[74:01] 2030s we have to be down to that 80% number and we have to be implementing carbon draw down sequestration efforts and rapidly growing them to the scale that in fact if you read that report and you do the numbers it says that we have to create a carbon draw down economy that is as large as all of the fossil fuel Industries on the planet today based on the amount of money we that carbon would be worth to draw it down to achieve stabilization and they said in this 2018 report climate change will now Advance at such a rate that we have to prepare our communities for significant disruption so that is the most recent science that we now have to respond to building new climate action plans around and that if you if you take that science and say what does that mean in terms of a goal that we should be

[75:00] setting that's really meaning that Society should be at something like Net Zero by 2035 and so the the conversation that's actually been taking place in a whole bunch of cities is should we come out with a new climate action goal of Net Zero by 2035 and this basically I think has finally fully revealed a fallacy that we got started with in the very beginning of the movement of city-based climate action which is that a city can act like a nation state which It ultimately of course cannot when we signed on to Kyoto it was a 7% emissions reduction by 2012 we thought well maybe there's enough things that we can work around the edges that we have control of that could achieve that level of reduction but now we're talking about essentially uh Net Zero goal a huge proportion of which the actions of which

[76:00] we don't control we don't control the whole energy grid we don't control the Dynamics of the transportation system um and and there are whole aspects of the consumption system by the way that are now implicated in climate in ways that weren't before that we don't control either so the point I'm reaching is this part of what you're going to hear from staff next month is that we're going to be saying to council the city is not a nation state and we cannot set a net zero 2035 goal and be able to accomplish that by actions only within our boundaries that's simply an impossibility and that we have to rethink our our model of what the city's role in climate action is and how cities start to create or support the more fundamental systemic change that has to happen for for the whole species the whole societies to be able to achieve this goal because obviously the other thing

[77:00] that's true and this is something I I'll send out the the memo we wrote for Council in 2019 and it's a very important I think foundational document for what we're going to be talking about next month because part of what it says is that the research now shows that this notion of cities on the hill like if Boulder can do it then everybody else will do it as Hanan has been saying like that doesn't necessarily work that's not the system that makes change it's almost like that same old it's basically sort of the myth of individualism taken to the city's level it's like well if Marty can get solar panels and electric vehicle then I guess I can too well no that's not actually true I mean if I if all of their circumstances are the same but there are many many people who are not in our privileged position to be able to do all those things and so one of the things we said in the 2019 memo is we have to make it so that the right thing to do is the easy thing or the only thing to do as opposed to now where the right thing to do do is often the most expensive and the most difficult thing to do so so I I wanted to set that

[78:01] context of what the the historical evolution of city-based climate action is as we now look at this plan and then set the stage for what we'll be coming back to discuss with you next month um as we prepare to go to Council on June SE June 8th yeah just to add a little color because we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the first ipcc report something that's called the far report the first assessment report was released in 1992 I have it on my screen here one of the interesting comments that was um uh recommendations that came out of the report this is the decade before Kyoto was Long Live gases will require immediate reductions in their emissions from human activities of over 60% to stabilize their con concentrations at today's level 1992 levels so in 199 the greenhouse gas emissions were uh on the tune of if I have my units right

[79:00] something like 3.5 gigatons per year um or maybe it's 35 I forget where my decimal point belongs there today they're about 40% higher so rather than being 60% less as per recommended they're 40% higher most of the increased scales are global population so if you look at a graph of global population since 1990 you come up with almost the same ratio so you know some of the headwinds we have is that we have an ongoing world that's becoming more populated and that's becoming more advanced in its in its use of fossil fuels but not necessarily more somewhat more efficient to be sure in fact it looks like by 2015 we've almost peaked on our rate of emissions we haven't really grown that much globally since about 2015 2016 not going down but it seems to have found a certain plateau and I don't know if that's a permanent plate so or not there some questions about whether that's going to be true or not but it's said it's by no means the

[80:00] 60% reduction that was recommended by the first ipcc 30 years ago yes that's that's right I mean I that so in 2019 um and some of you some of you might remember I sent you a sort of non-public draft of an introduction um in January in 2019 the um the UN put what they call the the Gap report to look at what the progress has been since the um ipcc and basically it says that the Gap continues to be enormous and that we're just we're nowhere near where we need to go so part of all this is just to say globally we're starting to realize that this incrementalist approach is not going to get us there and we need to be thinking about an entirely different approach so let me just take you through a few high points in this document so that we can and be able to contrast with the one you're going to see yes Susan sorry I just wanted to comment on the timeline and

[81:00] this this may be a reflection of the fact that I'm probably older than everyone on the call and I remember the 60s but to me to say bolder's history and accomplishments to date with regard to climate start in 2002 really kind of understates the issue to me that since the 60s or maybe even the 50s Boulder has taken aggressive climate action in the form of an open space tax and our Blue Line policies and our bike pass and you know I I I think some reference to the fact that yeah this has been our response since climate change has become so acute but we have a Heritage inv Boulder of strong climate action so that's number one I I think that there should be some reference at least to that um and and number two when I look at climate action here I don't see any reference to the

[82:01] city's attempts to have a municipally owned Electric System which was going to be one of the biggest things to contribute and and voters voted for that several times and it seems like that ought to be captured in the history and accomplishments yes absolutely and what I would say is I mean I think some of us believe that we succeeded despite not realizing or that our municipalization efforts succeeded in ways that we hadn't anticipated even though it failed According to some in others but we because of the municipalization effort we pushed Excel to go far further than they would have and that they now have have created reductions that are that are benefiting us far more than if it were just Boulder because it's across their entire service territory so absolutely Susan yeah I I agree with that and I think that should

[83:01] be captured here and I think there should be some reference to Decades of history and accomplishments even if it's not captured in this timeline yeah well um again I think this is a little bit just as a sidebar it's a little bit of an interesting point that our department used to be called climate and sustainability which meant that it recognized that we were working on both climate things and other things that are not NE I mean yes in some ways you could say everything relates to climate but then there are the things like ozone pollution and and I think one of the interesting dilemmas that I think we have in society right now is that in some cases we become so focused on the climate piece that we miss other local environmental issues like air quality because we're so focused on co2 we're not realizing like our kids are getting asthma because of ozone so I just think we we have to be cautious to not lose sight of some of the other environmental things that Boulder has been leading on in addition

[84:00] to climate so I entirely agree with that okay and just one other quick thing I'm so sorry I I did not see that this was on tonight's agenda because I would have liked to have review it in advance and I unfortunately have a conflict so I need to sign off in about five minutes um so I wonder what the timeline is for this if we need to have like an interim meeting to review it because this is to me a really important document well it it's it's it's an important historical document Susan but I'm saying is that this is not the foundation of what we're saying going forward this is what we said for our plan up and was submitted in 2016 so it's valuable for you to look at it but you'll be getting something else all right yeah and my apologies that I have to leave early I have a hard conflict no no worries just a a quick comment on this document or the document that's going to replace it um sometimes people look at the climate change as something that's yet to happen in a

[85:00] material way they they always hear about how bad things will be in the future and there's an image in here for example that Boulder will look like Albuquerque and by the way I um I like Albert Kirk but I present that image um I don't think it will but but that that point aside it it will be you'll hear hear more of this coming out of the press in coming months is the verification of the projections that were rendered 30 Years Ago by the scientific Community now you can verify 30 years ago the forecasts were that the global temperature would rise by 1 degrees Celsius by 2025 relative to 1990 as we sit now they're up by about 085 degrees Celsius so it's going to hit the mark remarkably well the prediction was that land would warm twice as fast as as the oceans and indeed land temperatures have risen about 1.7 de C compared to oceans which because of the therminal inertia so and then other things the Arctic would warm even more than the rest of the land

[86:00] would warm so there are there there is a a um a skill a record of skill that should inform the urgency when the forecasts are that these are going to continue at a certain clip because there now is a good track record of doing the science and doing it skillfully and sometimes that gets lost because we're always talking about year 2100 or 2070 to 2100 say well that's then that's then they don't know what they're talking about so I think it's there space to be made here for establishing a track record of guidance that has come to pass with remarkable degree of skill well but it also illustrates another important Point Marty which I think we were talking about in a similar way during the air quality discussion which is that I think for a long time there has been a presumption that if we can just give people better information then they and that they will fully recognize the degree of the problem then they'll act

[87:00] and that isn't that's clearly not the case I don't think that this is necessarily an information deficit problem it's in and in fact the analysis that we're going to give to you is that fundamentally it's a systemic problem when when it's your when it's when when the easiest and cheapest and most accessible way for you to get across town is an El is a is a a combustion vehicle and in fact because of your income class you can't afford a high efficiency in com then that's what you're going to drive you know think if the thing that heats your house is natural gas and it's the only and you can't afford an $8,000 heat pump then that's what you're going to heat your house with right exactly and it's like the the choices that result in where ending up where we want to be that have to be the most convenient easy ones and that's how you have to shift it so that those are the convenient easy ones for people otherwise people aren't going to do it Brett I wan to I want to ask um how involved is city of Boulder if at all

[88:00] with the greenhouse gas road map that came out through the state and how does that how is the city coordinating with that and also there's some bills that are going through the aqcc in the next month or so around the greenhouse gas budgets around transportation is the city involved with that at all yes so in fact we've said that unexpectedly in some ways our most effective climate action work has been the role that Boulder has taken in leading the policy pieces that the state ended up developing actually right now the state's climate action plan is more ambitious than ours in part because we helped to lead and we in fact Boulder and Boulder County created this organization called Colorado communities for climate action CC 4ca and that group was one of the instrumental bodies in help helping to develop and Lobby for that state level policy so part of what

[89:00] we're really getting to is yes we want to encourage Energy Efficiency locally yes we want to keep pushing our building codes but until and unless we can actually change policy and law and markets at State and National levels then people are going to keep getting these perverse incentives you know they're acting rationally in an irrational system right that's the context of most people's lives and I think that this this notion that for a long time decades frankly we've been saying well it's all about personal Behavior change well no people are acting rationally in an irrational system so I think we we we what I'm trying to illustrate in part is that this plan was really developed in a different Paradigm of thinking around where we need to go but I also just want to set the frame so you'll see in fact on page five what are goals were that we set for ourselves during this plan this was the 80% emissions reduction by 2050 100%

[90:02] renewable energy by 2030 um this was a part of what was the driver to keep pushing for the muni project um there was no path by which Excel could achieve 100% uh renewable electricity by 2030 at that time we'd asked them repeatedly to do so there actually is now um that's how much our advocacy and the system have been changing between now and then I do want to actually go to page seven this is the page that that Marty was saying he took some offense to this um this characterization of but what Boulder would look like that's actually I think you're right in this Marty we shouldn't have said what Boulder would look like but this came from the Western water assessment and it was their report as to say what would the climatic conditions in Boulder be like not what it what its landscape would look like yes but by their projections our clent will look more by like Albuquerque than what we customarily experience as Boulder by

[91:01] roughly 2050 and frankly we're on this trajectory or an even more extreme one now right yeah it's the landscape and I worked some with the university on the west because I used to manage the Western water assessment before um 2010 um so this was always a matter of some contention as to what one puts in to illustrate right there's drama involved in this right there's a little shock effect going on this in fact Jeff Lucas told me like this is as much drama as we can ever do right so drama I think I think one of the most um in fact if you'll go to page nine one of the most important things I want to point out to you about this document was this was our effort to take the very confusing array of all the things that you could conceivably do to be taking climate action and distill it down into in this case three

[92:00] categories so you know because people are like should I ride my bicycle or not eat meat or get solar panels or like what what's the most important thing to do and like how does it all fit together and and we sort of synthesize this down to say there's basically three broad areas of climate action that we should be taking Energy Systems change how we the material economy and consump ion and ecosystems so this was a kind of major step in our climate thinking and how we have organized ourselves that you'll continue to see these three major categories we would call them the sort of three causal areas of climate change the emissions coming from from Energy Systems the emissions caused by the consumption-based economy and frankly the emissions from decarbonizing living systems um all the deforestation and all the agricultural practices have actually generated a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well in fact you know roughly we would say that it's about a third a third a third now so what you'll

[93:02] see in the next generation of the climate action plan is these three categories coming forward as well as two more that the community put on the table back in 2019 when we launched this next round and people said yeah we agree with all that except there are two more that you're missing one is land use and the other is financial and economic systems so those are two more categories we'll be talking about in this new plan the last thing I want to just point out about this particular plan the rest of it you can look through you'll see a lot of the customary things of climate action that you're that you're familiar with because again most of it that's quantifiable and specific is related to energy systems because that's what most climate action had been up until around 2017 um is that we did pioneer another thing in this plan which was as sad as is to say Equity like we and it was again through Community input we had taken these three broad categories out to the community and the community said

[94:00] yeah that's pretty good except some people in the community said yeah but you basically Miss social justice and equity and so you'll notice at the end of this plan there's a segment that's on community and just transition and it turns out we were actually a little bit ahead of the curve for what's become a very big Focus now in the climate action movement which is around equity and social justice and you'll again see that um theme come forward again in the work that we're going to be presenting later so I had more that I was going to show you but just given the time tonight I think uh I'll stop there and if there are any questions I mean one of the things again you'll notice is that there's a lot of detail around Energy System stuff and then you start to get down into the resource piece and it's like well that sort of looks like your zero waste program is like yep that's our zero waste program trying to figure out how it's going to be more related to climate and then you get into the ecosystems and that'll be like well that's pretty vague and you're like yep that's right we were just starting to think about it and you'll get a lot more detail I think about those two segments

[95:02] in this next round of climate planning so yeah um maybe well yeah I think I'll stop there here Nan yeah so uh so this is like a historical document like this is what so I guess are there any ideas being floating around as to what the new approaches should be with like you said you know this is more like a global problem um not really there's I mean there's only so much a city can do especially now um when you know these goals need to be more aggressive so what ideas are floating around in in terms of what to do what's what's is there any path for the plan or yeah so um

[96:00] uh in short I guess what I would say is that we have to move um towards more at least state scale strategies than local like energy systems change for example we have to have the utilities being driven by this the Public Utilities Commission to change it across their whole service territory versus trying to do it inside Boulder so I'll give you a really good example in this case in 20 14 or 15 we launched one of the first efforts to look at how we would um facilitate transitioning houses off of natural gas and so we ran a whole series of pilot programs we we pumped up the incentives a lot higher from the city and the county and coordinated with utility to try to encourage people to get heat pumps so that they could replace their natural gas furnaces and we learned a number of

[97:01] really important things one is if you make the incentives high enough yes you can get quite a number of people like we increased adoption of heat pumps by 400% but that meant that we went from 50 to 200 um so and you know and we need to be at the scale of like, 1500 to 2,000 change outs a year to be anywhere close to being on track and we ran into a bunch of other things like well um before I can even spend the $6,000 to get a heat pump my house doesn't have my I have a 1961 house it has a 100 amp circuit or panel like that I do not have the electrical infrastructure capable of being electrified so how would we do that are we going to put the cost of that what we would estimate per household to be probably 20 plus, to Electrify house on the back of a single owner or are we going to say no this is a social cost that we need to figure out a social financing strategy around the easiest

[98:01] which of which would be to Simply say to the utility you must now take responsibility for helping upgrade every house and we're going to negotiate with you a rate basing so that you can stretch that cost across 30 years and then everybody will just get it done it's the easy thing you don't have to think about it I don't have to pick a contractor the utility is going to take care of it and guess what it's going to grow their load it's going to be great for them in the long term but and we can spread that across across the whole that's the kind of solution now that we have to be looking for as opposed to Boulder just increasing its incentives so that a few middle-income people can go out and buy a heat pump uh are there any examples of other cities in the US doing this or is it more like a completely new territory well to be quite honest with you we actually initiated a discussion by sending out a letter to sustainability colleagues across the country saying it's time to come out of the closet and and acknowledge that

[99:00] we're not going to set goals like this that we can achieve and what was fascinating was to all the responses we got from people saying like wow I'm so glad somebody's being willing to say that because we haven't felt safe to say that because who wants to be the first city to come out and say you know what we are not going to set 100% renewable energy or you know 100% emissions reduction goal by 2035 IMM we're not it's not going to happen so we're it's a brand new territory um I would say there are not very many places who are yet have yet made this shift but that's the kind of direction we're going and what what that will create the space for I believe is for us to stop expecting like will Thorton and Westminster and Lakewood suddenly adopt a Net Zero by 2035 goal not even close but would they join in an effort to get the Public Utilities Commission to Simply make the utilities move that they probably could do we just haven't

[100:01] focused on this more Collective strategy as opposed to every city trying to do it on its own and be the proud beacon on the hill a question Brett if I could ask um roughly half I've seen the estimates be 45 to 60% of of our carbon emissions is related to mobility and the combust engine as I understand it from looking at a website link to the city of Boulder we have about 50 Public El 40 to 50 Public electric charging stations as of 2020 21 um people even if those people who uh who can afford such a car electric car is still more expensive but not entirely depends if you're willing to go for a smaller one we'll say well I don't want to be in such a smaller car because once I leave the city limits and I'm driving down Highway 36 or I'm doing some longdistance driving um I want a vehicle that's big and safe for my family I want

[101:01] it to ride High I want it to be like a like a truck there aren't many electric vehicles that are that scale which is probably just as well because you take more energy to build an electric vehicle that scale that kind of starts defeating some other purposes um H how do you how do you see the city confronting the the issue of the gas combustion engine via strategies revolving around electric charging station availability um and also just this I mean this is part of the systemic problem you you you raise it we are a culture that has gotten a tune to be able to buy cheap very large cars that that hold 25 gallons of gasoline so you can drive 500 Miles without refueling um which you generally can't do yet with an EV so where's the city's strategy around that well uh so a couple of things what's what's interesting about the stimulus package

[102:01] that Biden's trying to get past is that it will have massive investments in EV infrastructure and and then as you know the the whole car makers field has taken huge leaps just recently so was it GM that came out that said that they won't sell combustion engine after 2035 um VW says now 2030 so that field is going to move quickly the in fact a field that's moving much more rapidly than we thought it would is the delivery vehicle context that one's going very quickly Long Haul Trucking is moving in that direction so in some ways you know we're seeing positive uh movement I'll be very Frank with all of you to say this what I don't think we are out discussing is the fact that there is no soft Landing now left for us there is going to be a huge amount of

[103:02] climate change and there's and that's going to have a very significant amount of impacts all over the place and that we're increasingly going to be compelled to consider where to put our public resources between actions that are sort of benefiting a global objective of reducing emissions and stabilizing climate and actions which are trying to prepare our community for these now inevitable disruptions uh and stressors that are going to just be a part of trying to live through this period so I think that's one of the things that and several of you have been mentioning through the evening this issue of resilience it's one of the ones that it's an issue that EAB I think should be paying very close attention to the city had an a resilience initiative that started in 2014 and it basically has expired partly because of a whole series of other staff Transitions and things but it's an area that we need to and we know this in the city but we need to

[104:00] pick that piece back up find a home for it or homes for it within the organization and consider how we're going to Resource that like so when I started in the city in 2014 or 13 we were still talking about whether climate change was going to happen so we weren't we really have it's only been in the last few years some for us to realize that we we have to start figuring out we're going to resource for this kind of disruptive stage that we're moving into so I guess Marty what I would say is there there will continue to be I think accelerating progress in technology and other places that will start to bend the curve more on emissions my guess is it's not going to happen fast enough and that even as it happens we're going to have to be trying to address the changes that are coming and and I think what I also believe is true and again this may be an an important role for EAB is that our community probably is not yet fully

[105:00] emotionally prepared for the fact that some this stuff is now a lot of it's going to be sort of inevitable we don't know exactly what form it's going to take right you're the first person that would tell us that Marty like we don't know whether we're GNA have you know torrential downpours next year or this year but we'll know we'll have those and we'll have droughts and we're going to have more fires and that's just the kind of thing we're gonna have to to work with so the fires you know when you think of resilience which is sort of like an ability to bounce back from from a bad blow the ability to recover from from a a disaster um floods are going to be localized you the whole city is going to end up underwater in a flood you know we were pretty aware of our flood plane and there' be some flooding damages but it's fire that to me um and and that may or may not be climate change induced fire we we have population build out and growth into into the urban cor the woi region so whatever triggers it it's it's fire that concerns me if fire rages

[106:02] through the city it could certainly be the scale of the city and then you deal with not just a built structure concern but the environment that's been Des devastated by a fire that is that goes uncontrolled yeah and I think that this is why so I this is I know this a downer conversation so I apologize for that to some extent but I think it's important sort of as a Reality Checking in this one of the things that we're starting to realize is that we have to be much more attentive to the kinds of actions that can be intersectional to both reducing emissions and and supporting stabilizing climate and helping us be resilient to change and one of those places as it turns out is in managing carbon out of the atmosphere into living systems in ways that increase our ability to hold more water

[107:02] and uh create more sort of both H moisture wise and temperature-wise buffered environments and so because there's a there's a close relationship now might correct me if I'm wrong but there's a close relationship between carbon and water the more carbon a natural system can integrate into itself the more more water it can hold and the more water it can hold the more life it can create that then buffers more and that ultimately we can actually potentially have a sort of buffering effect even at the local climatic level so I think what you're going to see is a bigger emphasis on ecosystem related climate actions going forward because they can have this intersectional benefit even as we continue to try to do the work to change energy systems and be more efficient with energy and so on and my point about fires isn't to be a downer on it but to build it back into the discussion about our engineering of buildings right and that they could be

[108:01] made not only energy secure they could be made fire secure so the roofing and the materials used to build new buildings or to retrofit buildings can be made much more resilient to fire than most buildings currently are in in Boulder and I know eran's probably thought about this qu somewhat and could give us some good information about not just the energy aspects and the engineering around that but also the fire prevention related to wise building roof just a roof alone yeah well just to follow on the the Fire theme too again um and for you Mike I think one of the things that we need to be thinking about is the more moist we can keep our local environment the less inclined it is to these kind of EXT dream fire events and so Mike do you think that I've accurately characterized the sort of soil carbon water

[109:01] relationships or would you since you're the soil scientist Among Us no I mean I think you're pretty accurate so organic matter definitely increases water holding capacity right and fertility and subsequently creates vegetation which can reduce the urban heat island yeah no I think it's yeah I mean you can dig drill down into parts of it but that's generally that that's generally it right and so one thing I wanted to come back to Mike that you had said earlier today I I do want to pick the urban heat island piece back up again um and maybe I should say this while for hernan's Al the there's been a bit of a change in the culture of the environment of The Advisory Board process in the city so in the past um citizen advisory boards were especially you know there are quasa you they call them quasi judicial boards like planning board that literally has the right to say something can proceed or not proceed that's not the environmental Advisory Board it's not the parks and recck board you're not a quasi judicial board you're an Advisory

[110:00] board that means that in the past it's meant you uh operate for the benefit of council and to give staff feedback and in that context in the past you wouldn't as a board take initiative on things you would simply respond to the things that are brought to you for comment or feedback in somewhat more recently some members in fact a few of them from this board or past environmental advisor board said look we have a lot of expertise that can be of benefit to this the city and Miriam has actually been proving this in Spades that if you let us take some initiative we can actually further your work and so in some ways the city has been starting to kind of loosen the reins a little bit for advisory boards at least that are interested and this has been one that's been interested to start exploring topics that it's got an interest in and this board has identified a few topics over the past couple of years one of them has been soil Health another has

[111:01] been Urban heat island a third has been air quality and I think has been really helping move that work forward but and just to say Mike to you because you mentioned this we've had a bit of a challenge I think moving the heat island piece forward because for over a year we have essentially been without a planning director and that you know heat island is really an earth it's a land use issue to a large extent and codes but lot lot of and since the sort of head of that process has been non-existent we now have an I think they're about four months in a really good new planning director who I think is really interested in this topic cool I think it would actually be timely for us to invite him to come to the environmental Advisory Board and and to have a discussion about Urban heat as an issue and one of the things that we were talking about though Marty and I is it might be useful for us to look back at the information we had gathered in the

[112:01] recommendations that we had as a as a sort of uh precursor to inviting him to come to that meeting to say like we've done this work here are some recommendations we came forward with we'd like to talk to you about how you might see you know working on this issue so that's really encouraging Brett that sounds great yeah also sorry hold on don't die on us Miriam air quality yeah oh while you're coughing Mike I I mean embarrassed to say this um so the work we did on that preceded Heidi who you know is remarkable at keeping things organized but she wasn't here for that um it was with I think Del when Delaney was with us and she's no longer with us if you have any of that information that you had gathered um during period of time that you can help me I'm trying to figure out where to collect what we did I have a bunch and Mike has a bunch yeah

[113:01] yeah forward me that that would be really helpful okay I'll search for it the next couple days yeah I'll get it to you Miriam you had a point still to raise I think right I did I think maybe it would be helpful for us to provide her and N our letter to city council I is that the one from I think I read it is that the one that you got it okay is that the one from 2019 or something I feel like I read a letter to city council I talk about soil quality so quality and uh Urban heat island that's why actually I came to think I hadn't even thought about Urban heat Islands before that so I think I got it from that letter uh great so then you've got it yeah yeah I'm pretty sure I read it thank you though okay I just want to say one more thing about the fire because we're at the 150th anniversary of the most devastating fire in America that cost more lives than any fires has ever caused in America and to me it's a lesson for something us for us to be very aware of that number one is this fire one Community the name of the

[114:01] community might recognize the name is peso peso is not far from where I went to school um but peso was a community of about 1,700 people of which 800 died in a fire a river ran through that town called the pigo river for which people fled you'll see artwork still to this day about the F the devastation people were burned in their attempt to get to the river even in the river they didn't survive the fire didn't happen in the middle of summer it happened in October it didn't happened um in the west it happened in in the Upper Midwest a relatively humid moist landscape it happened um because well there was an incredible um storm that triggered winds that were on the order of 50 miles hour that persisted for two days and there had been clearing the recent ultural act had promoted the clearing of forested lands in dor County and that Green Bay Area um

[115:00] in which a lot of the landscape was littered with debris of of trees and so forth that had dried over uh months and years that was convenient once ignited this is not too far from our situation in our own backyard so while we can talk about moist Landscapes and irrigated activities and canopies in our city believe you me if we end up with a a weather situation in which you have sustained winds of 30 to 50 mil hour for a couple of days and a fires triggered in the dry ecosystem to our West which is always going to be dry and only getting drier our challenge is not well how much can we how much moisture is in our landscape in our soils here but where will we capture the Embers that are going to be flying through here going to be flying to Longmont the fires on the east side of Green Bay were triggered by Embers that came from the west side of Green Bay so the scale by which fire spreads

[116:00] is just absolutely remarkable and so that's why I I fear that in terms of resilience we're not aware that we're focused too much on our locality which is important we live it locally we have to make that a good environment but the risk is not necessarily for fires that are sort of local but it's wind driven fires that are triggered many tens of miles away even on the other side of the Continental Divide potentially and we saw that last fall for sure yes we did so hence I say you know some of our built structures you know can we make them more resilient to Embers that come floating and and drifting downwards that could otherwise trigger a fire on some of the rooftops that we have around the town well I promise you Hanan that it isn't always quite this apocalyptic in the environmental advisor board but um I think you know this is uh an important moment as we think about this next stage of what the city should be

[117:01] focus on focusing on to bring forward these kinds of of of issues and concerns so we 8 o'clock I guess we should call for an adjournment uh unless there's a last word can I yes Mike I just haven't had a chance to hear Hernan introduce himself because I was a little late like to could you just introduce yourself for my sake to heran just say yeah I'll do it really quick so we can turn um um yeah I'm my name is ernan via I uh I'm originally from Peru uh I came here when I was 17 um to Kansas to study engineering and then after I graduated I came to CU Boulder to get my PhD and um I've been living here since then so I've been here for like a decade almost a decade now and uh currently I'm working for a lab in California um and M was working I was able to work out a deal where you know work from Colorado so that's nice and uh as I uh

[118:01] told um everybody else like um I'm interested in um near Net Zero um residential homes and buildings um you know just try to improve the efficiency of new construction through um building code and to also work in a way that if we Implement any program um like Brett said you know not only be like this light on the hill but actually be able to reproduce this across other cities counties or you know the state level or you know just work together with them so we can Implement better things that you know are more effective awesome thank you um thanks and I look forward to working with you and getting know you that's cool great thank you I yeah Mary reminder I'm sorry to interrupt I sent an email out to e on

[119:02] Monday um that had two sessions for boards and commissions trainings um they are meant to on board the new board members um but all board members are invited and um one is for 00 to 9: the second one is scheduled for this Saturday from 99 to noon um and I did send an email out to everyone with the information but if you have any questions let me know okay great thank you Heidi so um I guess to close the meeting do we um adjourn with a second to formally close the meeting second there we go thank you that's great make sure we note that Eran closed the meeting with the second that was the Breakthrough all right so next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday May 5th according to my notes and um hope to see you all then uh just as a quick uh

[120:02] will we expect to maybe go any more through the climate action plan and the 2017 draft because not everyone had seen it maybe we can add that to the agenda just to cover bases that perhaps we didn't do enough in this meeting does that seem reasonable just as a think ahead a little bit uh that we might still touch bases on that okay good enough see you all have a great uh rest of the week huh thank you you guys thank you take care good to see you bye