Letter | Charlottesville City Hall kicks climate action to the curb, again - The Daily Progress

Letter | Charlottesville City Hall kicks climate action to the curb, again

By now, the pattern is all too familiar. Charlottesville city government undertakes a major initiative with the potential to address this community’s longstanding contributions to climate change. In the end, the policy direction selected perpetuates fossil fuel habits rather than charting a climate-responsible course to the future.

On Tuesday, City Council considered the alternative fuels study for Charlottesville Area Transit and endorsed a plan to dramatically grow the city’s fossil fuel burning, dirty diesel bus fleet to its largest size ever. It also moved towards a transit plan that will irresponsibly dump, for years, copious amounts of transit-based air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions into our neighborhoods. City Manager Sam Sanders summed up the meeting well while thanking Kimley-Horn consulting for their plan contributions: “You just did the job that we asked you to do.”

Why would city officials double down on fossil fuels, given what is known about the rapidly growing, negative impacts of climate change? The answer is simple. City Hall is committed to a narrow vision of social justice and dedicated to addressing socioeconomic and racial inequities at every turn. Any other consideration, including urgently needed climate action, is secondary to efforts intended to combat classism and racism. Addressing these two ills is fully appropriate, and I support priority action against them — but not without equal, simultaneous effort to fight climate change. City Hall asserts that the CAT plan is “the best” way to provide reliable transportation to those without cars. That is impossible, given that the plan irresponsibly ignores the maturity of battery electric buses and charts a course to rapidly increasing diesel exhaust and greenhouse gas emissions.

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In reality, the endorsed plan hurts disadvantaged residents. It betrays the goal of social justice. Sadly, climate change is not an equal opportunity menace, as its impacts fall most heavily on those least able to protect themselves. We have seen repeatedly that poorer and disenfranchised individuals suffer the most from climate degradation, whether in heat islands, flooding, utility bills or toxic pollutants. The city’s disregard for the climate and the well-being of neighbors is part of a multiyear pattern of missed opportunities to protect people and planet.

Charlottesville City Council unanimously adopted a pair of greenhouse gas reduction goals in July 2019. Subsequently, in March 2021, the city unanimously adopted an Affordable Housing Plan that made no attempt to weave together housing affordability and climate change solutions. In November 2021, the city unanimously adopted a Comprehensive Plan that included an incomplete environmental chapter with no climate action plan. Fifteen months later, the city amended its Comprehensive Plan by “bolting on” a terribly tardy Climate Action Plan. By then, the city’s vision of zoning reform was already well established. In December 2023, the city unanimously adopted a new zoning ordinance that does little or nothing to protect tree canopy, manage stormwater, disincentivize tear downs or motivate the construction of energy-efficient-, clean-energy-ready and enabled buildings. The new code includes bonuses for the construction of more affordable housing, but there were never discussions of bonuses for building more environmentally responsible housing.

Over the years, climate action by the city of Charlottesville has been, and continues to be, an afterthought. Despite the input of hundreds of community residents urging climate action now, Charlottesville City Hall’s ongoing, callous indifference for the environment, and continued embrace of fossil fuels, shamefully harms all people and our one, shared planet.