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An aerial view of a hillside landslide brought on by heavy rains in San Clemente in 2023.
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Mario Tama
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Just eight of 34 Orange County cities, plus the county, have made progress on local climate action plans, while only six cities have approved plans, according to a report from local non-profit Climate Action Campaign.
Why it matters: Local governments need climate action plans to receive certain state and federal funding that can help improve infrastructure, lower pollution and otherwise address the impacts of the climate crisis. Orange County receives some of the least funding per capita in the state.
The backstory: This is the Orange County chapter's second annual climate action plan progress report. The effort was started by Orange County residents who wanted their local leaders to do more on climate.
What's next: Read on for more details on which Orange County jurisdictions are moving forward with climate action plans and which are falling behind.
Just eight of 34 Orange County cities, plus the county, have made progress on local climate action plans, according to the latest report from the non-profit Climate Action Campaign.
Orange County jurisdictions — despite facing high risks of worsening landslides, sea level rise, fire, heat and flood — are far behind other Southern California counties when it comes to having climate action plans, according to the California Climate Action Plan Database, which is compiled by researchers at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. (You can also check out different types of climate-related plans submitted by your community to the state here.)
And Orange County, the sixth most populous county in the U.S., is one of the biggest counties without a climate action plan. But, slowly, that appears to be changing, in large part due to grassroots organizing by local residents.
“It is well beyond time to act,” said Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley at a press conference in Santa Ana about the new report. “I’ve been working on these issues since I was on the planning commission in the early 2000s in Costa Mesa. So we have been struggling, but I think now we are making forward progress.”
Orange County jurisdictions have fewer climate action plans than surrounding counties, according to the Climate Action Plan database from Cal Poly.
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Courtesy Cal Poly Climate Action Plan Database
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The county was called out in last year’s report for not having a climate action plan, but has now completed a draft plan that Foley said will be presented to the board of supervisors for approval later this month.
Local organizers celebrated the progress.
“When we published our first report card, some people suggested that we were being too hard on local governments and that we were expecting too much from our leaders,” said Tomas Souza de Castro with the O.C. Climate Action Campaign.
“But now that we have experienced unprecedented heatwaves and fires in our own backyard in just the last week, we know that there is no cavalry coming to save us. We can create a climate safe, climate resilient future here in O.C.”
What is a climate action plan?
Climate action plans, or CAPs, provide a long-term roadmap for governments to reduce planet-heating and health-harming pollution, and adapt to worsening disasters driven by climate change, such as increasingly extreme heat, drought, fire and floods.
They are most effective when legally-binding and are only effective as long as they’re actually adhered to.
Local CAPs are important because different cities and counties have different sources of pollution and require their own specific ways to adapt to the changes occurring as a result of global heating.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing and adapting to the climate crisis, and state and national plans can often be too broad for practical use by local governments. The climate crisis may be global, but it’s experienced and addressed locally.
Climate action plans generally focus on two buckets: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. A robust plan has a detailed inventory of where greenhouse gas emissions come from, and has plans to reduce that pollution in everything from transportation to industry to households.
A robust CAP also focuses on adaptation, including strategies to fortify infrastructure, develop a sustainable water and energy supply, reduce waste, expand access to green space and address inequality in climate impacts.
CAPs are particularly important for local governments to receive certain types of state and federal funding. According to 2021 State Controller data, Orange County receives some of the least spending per capita from the state.
A map from the Climate Action Campaign report of cities that have adopted or are developing climate action plans in Orange County.
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Courtesy Climate Action Campaign
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CAPs can also be replicated and scaled. For example, the report points out how both California and the United States eventually adopted the city of San Diego’s CAP target for emission reductions.
At this point, none of Orange County’s jurisdictions have adopted a plan that meets the state’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below the 1990 levels by 2030. Globally, scientists say greenhouse gasses must be reduced 45% by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Where progress has been made and stalled
The report highlights Orange County, Laguna Beach, Santa Ana, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Tustin, San Clemente, city of Orange and Irvine as taking steps in developing or implementing their climate action plans, while acknowledging there’s still a long way to go.
Each of those cities is in the process of developing a plan, with several such as Santa Ana, Buena Park and Costa Mesa hiring dedicated staff positions to help carry out the plans.
Orange County has also now successfully completed its draft CAP. Supervisor Foley said it will help the county apply for funding from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, and includes greenhouse gas inventories for every city in the county, so O.C. cities don’t have to spend time or money doing that themselves.
The report says Huntington Beach, however, has taken steps backward. While the city approved a climate action plan in 2017, last year the city council voted to dissolve its Environment and Sustainability Committee and stopped working on its Sustainability Master Plan.
The report also highlights how the city left the Orange County Power Authority, which supplies participating cities with renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar.
