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When the Tuolumne County Government’s Natural Resources Committee last held a public meeting focused on the county government’s controversial climate action plan in June, county staff and committee members heard from people which evoked the United Nations, Communist China and Nazi Germany.
Since then, county supervisors and staff have also received dozens of reasonable questions and comments. In an effort to focus on the facts, address legitimate concerns, and crack down on misinformation and disinformation campaigns, county officials generated eight pages of questions and answers that they grouped together and titled “Frequently Asked Questions About the Plan Tuolumne County Climate Action Plan – July 2022”.
Quincy Yaley, director of the county’s community development department, presented the FAQ to council in brief remarks at a July 19 public meeting.
“We’ll post them on our project webpage. If you go to the county’s homepage and search for the climate action plan in the search bar, you’ll be there right away,” Yaley said. “We will also be issuing a short press release and emailing those who have provided their contact details and want to keep up to date on the project.”
The eight-page FAQ briefing package is a response to comments received by county staff during a public comment period that ended June 15, Yaley said.
“At this time, staff and our consultants are working on revising the climate action plan in response to this feedback, and we look forward to presenting it to the planning commission and to your board, hopefully in August, September, maybe a little further, depending on how long it takes us,” Yaley said.
Later at the July 19 meeting, County Supervisor Kathleen Haff said she had spoken the previous week with Yaley and county-hired consultants with Ascent Environmental about the draft environmental plan. 117-page climate action released in April.
“I got a lot of my questions answered, and I think there’s still a lot to do,” Haff said last week.
“There are a lot of constituent emails I’ve sent about this, and I imagine you all have been too.”
The day before, July 18, County Supervisor Anaiah Kirk took to social media and talked about the climate action plan and FAQ.
“A lot of opinions are stirred because a few people seem not to have read the climate action plan,” Kirk wrote alongside a video he posted. “No, that won’t get rid of your chimney.” Yes, you can still burn in your yard and no, it won’t ban off-road vehicles… to name a few.
Kirk said someone recently organized a rally in Courthouse Square, although he did not name any individuals or groups.
“Basically, a lot of misinformation. I don’t want to call it lies, because a lot of people haven’t really read the document,” he said. “The climate action plan has not yet been presented to the full board. It’s going in the near future. I will give my opinion on that at that time. What I want to do is I want you to be more informed and not waste your time wasting a lot of energy on things that aren’t true. Because it won’t eliminate wood stoves. This will not eliminate yard burning. This will not eliminate all-terrain vehicles.
Kirk said he would copy and paste the FAQ below the video and added “hopefully this clears up a lot of the misinformation that is spreading out there and hopefully educates you more.”
Two days earlier, on Saturday, July 16, a group calling itself the Tuolumne County California Freedom Alliance staged a protest in Courthouse Square, which they billed as a “protest against Tuolumne County’s globalist climate action plan.” .
The plan, if passed, “will ban your woodstove, gasoline engines, reduce farming and ban wells,” a member of the group posted on social media along with photos from the protest. “It’s basically the same plan in the Netherlands.”
Alexander Horat, 18, of Tuolumne, who came to a county natural resources committee meeting in early June to ask questions about the county’s climate action plan, was at the July 16 protest. In early June, he and others with him asked if the county’s draft climate action plan had anything to do with the United Nations, and they compared the county’s efforts to deal with climate change with China. Communist and Nazi Germany.
Horat recently qualified to run for the Tuolumne Utilities District Board of Directors, which governs the county’s largest water and sewer utility provider. He is currently the only candidate to have filed for the new District 4 seat, with the filing deadline being Aug. 12.
California Freedom Alliance organizers say online that their group was formed “to bring freedom back to Tuolumne County and our state. We would like to reduce unnecessary expenses, reduce taxes and preserve our God-given rights. We would like our county to be a 2nd Amendment sanctuary.
The group meets at Oak Hill Presbyterian Church, 14892 Peaceful Valley Road, every first and third Tuesday of the month.
The county’s climate action plan has also come under fire from a group that calls itself the Sierra Club’s Tuolumne Group and identifies itself as one of 11 groups in the Sierra Club’s Mother Lode chapter.
The Sierra Club, which bills itself as one of the nation’s oldest and largest environmental organizations, was founded in 1892.
Leaders of the Sierra Club’s Tuolumne group lambasted the county’s climate action plan in its May 2022 Sequoia newsletter, calling it “Tuolumne County’s Climate Non-Action Plan” and stating that for years , the county government has delayed creating a plan required to lay out what actions the county will take “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our region to help reduce climate change.”
The Sierra Club’s Tuolumne Group Sequoia newsletter states that “Due to politics and pressure from climate change skeptics, the climate action plan turns out to be next to nothing but rhetoric, with no real demands or mandates that will actually result in greenhouse gas reductions. emissions.
The county’s plan amounts to a “nothing is actually required” “no action plan”, which should be inconvenient for county residents,” the bulletin said.
“The Climate Action Plan is a free-flowing document with beautiful graphics and important words,” the bulletin says, “but it imposes absolutely nothing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or to achieve climate change reduction goals, or to do anything meaningful.”
The County Climate Action Plan FAQ begins by asking “Why is Tuolumne County developing a Climate Action Plan?” and the short answer is that developing a climate action plan is a policy set out in the county’s 2018 Master Plan — a roadmap for development in the county that’s updated once a decade — and a 2015 state law requires California cities and counties to incorporate climate change vulnerability, adaptation strategies, and emergency response strategies into their overall plans.
In other words, the county government is developing a climate action plan because it is legally required to do so.
The entire next page of the County Climate Action Plan FAQ is devoted to “How to Read the Climate Action Plan”.
The eight pages of Tuolumne County Climate Action Plan FAQ information are available online at https://bit.ly/3JeFZ3R. The 117-page draft plan released in April, which as noted above is currently being revised in response to public comment, can be viewed online at https://bit.ly/3JfsuRz.