This image from the State Climate Strategy outlines the State’s goal for GHG emission reductions between now and 2050. The NDEP report I mentioned in an earlier post projects a 23% reduction by 2025, mostly due to reductions in GHG emission from our electricity generation. This projection falls short by 5% or 2.6 MMTCO2e of our 2025 goal. We need a plan to close this gap for 2025 and to give us a chance of meeting the more aggressive goals for 2030 and 2050.

As an example, let’s say that we plan to close a part of this gap by getting people out of their cars and onto public transportation. Could the plan include commitments from the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) to increase ridership by some number of rides and from car commuters to switch to public transportation? I believe a combination of systemic and individual changes does two things. First, it individuals to make connections between our individual changes and our plan to address climate change, an awareness I believe is desperately needed to maintain our resilience. Second it allows us to more closely monitor our progress on these targets and adjust our actions when we miss the targets.

How else are we thinking we will actually meet the State Climate Strategy goal?