With the reality of climate change, Fresno County’s transportation planning must adjust
Fresno County decision makers are operating in a false and dangerous reality, one rooted in injustice and lack of regard for the health and well-being of the communities they purport to represent.
As reported by Bee staff writer Melissa Montalvo on March 1, our Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected a grant award for their own public health department to study and assess the vulnerability of communities most at risk to the impacts of climate change.
Concurrent with the board’s nonsensical vote, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an alarming report detailing what many of us know and feel acutely: climate change is a direct threat to our health, our communities and our livelihoods.
The time for action was yesterday. Despite clear and mounting evidence — historic droughts, dry wells, excessive heat, raging wildfires and unnecessary death — our decision-makers refuse to act. They have failed to lead responsibly, humbly or with integrity. And they will continue to fail until we hold them accountable.
Consider Measure C, our sales tax for transportation expiring in 2027. The day after the supervisors’ bad vote, staff and consultants of the Fresno Council of Governments and Fresno County Transportation Authority proposed a new 30-year spending plan through mid-century that fails to account for climate change, public health, workforce development, affordable housing, clean air and, equally important, how to connect more than a million people to education, jobs, medical care, groceries, and services in our climate-altered future
Since 1987 Fresno County taxpayers have contributed $3 billion to Measure C. Now we could be asked to vote this November on $6 billion more through the year 2057 based on a plan drafted by staff and consultants without the benefit of a robust public process or meaningful discussion of the need for climate action.
Billions of dollars are at stake, as are all of our lives, and we deserve a transportation sales tax measure that invests in people, cleans our air, supports healthy and thriving neighborhoods, and connects households, especially low-income ones across urban and rural communities, to opportunity.
The goals and objectives of the Measure C renewal effort must explicitly seek to address and prioritize environmental, racial, economic and climate justice. Leveraged with state and federal once-in-a-lifetime transportation investments, we can facilitate transformative investments that support the health and well-being of Fresno County’s most vulnerable communities. We must also begin the difficult but necessary work of undoing a legacy of discrimination and historic disinvestment in lower-income communities and communities of color.
The failure of local officials to meaningfully discuss and take action to confront the impacts of climate change, whether the issue is transportation or vulnerable populations, cannot continue. Ignoring humanity’s greatest crisis is to neglect our greatest personal responsibility. Delay only increases the cost of our response financially, ecologically and through loss of life.
Impacts are unavoidable. The science is inescapable. We must take meaningful, positive steps now toward a climate resilient future. Let’s begin with equity in transportation spending through Measure C. We’re ready to engage. When will our elected leaders be?
