Press Release - Cool Petaluma hosting event on January 12, 2022 to launch their campaign to reach carbon neutrality by 2030
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Neal Gorenflo
Press Liaison
(415) 867-0429
Cool Petaluma hosting event on January 12, 2022 to launch their campaign to reach carbon neutrality by 2030
Petaluma, CA – On January 12, 2022 at 6:00pm Pacific Time, Petaluma’s Cool City Challenge moonshot team will host a Zoom event to launch their campaign to help Petaluma reach carbon neutrality by 2030 without offsets. All those interested in joining this adventure to transform Petaluma into a beacon of climate hope are invited.
The virtual launch event will share the Cool Petaluma vision, introduce Cool Petaluma stakeholders, and invite all Petaluma residents to get involved.
Residents and interested journalists can register for the launch event at this link:
http://coolpetaluma.org/kickoff
Petaluma is one of the first three cities participating in the Cool City Challenge. Cool Petaluma’s launch event follows months of effort by Natasha Juliana, a local business owner; D’Lynda Fischer, a city council member; and teammates to secure a $1 million grant and consulting support from the Cool City Challenge, a program of the Empowerment Institute.
Fischer said about the historic initiative, “The Cool City Challenge provides us with precisely the tools we need to engage everyone in our City to meet the audacious goals set forth in our Climate Framework Action Plan. It sets us on the path to have fun, take action, and collectively participate in a meaningful way.”
In order to win the grant, Juliana, Fischer and team had to recruit 200 Cool Block leaders, 25 community partners, and write a plan for Petaluma to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 without offsets, the latter being the most aggressive carbon neutrality goal in the United States.
Petaluma is one of three California cities that won Cool City Challenge grants, along with Los Angeles and Irvine. As part of their winning grant applications, the Los Angeles and Irvine teams persuaded their city councils to pass resolutions committing to carbon neutrality by 2030 without offsets, joining a small handful of cities around the world with such an aggressive target. Petaluma passed the same measure earlier in 2021.
Natasha Juliana, a small business owner and co-leader of Petaluma’s moonshot team, commented on the Challenge, “it provides a clear way forward when a lot of people want to act, but don’t know what to do. And the scalability is what makes it so exciting.”
Please register for the event here. After registering, you’ll get all the information you need to join the Zoom event on January 12, 2022 at 6:00 pm.
About the Cool City Challenge: The Cool City Challenge mission is to accelerate the decarbonization of the world’s cities which emit 70% of the planet's CO2. It will do this by empowering cities to create moonshot strategies that integrate bottom-up and top-down climate solutions. This is complemented by building the transformative capacity of moonshot leadership teams assembled from the public, private and civic sectors. Combining these two elements creates a whole-system climate solution with the ability to accelerate the speed and magnitude of change. The Challenge also provides multi-sector moonshot teams with the financial resources, tools and consulting support to help their cities reach carbon neutrality by 2030 without offsets. The Cool City Challenge is a program of the Empowerment Institute.