October 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8aesEV85O4

Miami GHG Plan.

34:40 P4F Question: Question about Outreach. The Climate Emergency is in many ways similar to the Coronavirus Emergency, except that it threatens human civilization. I believe we can learn a lot from the Coronavirus Emergency and apply it to the Climate Emergency. We can ask the question: How is it possible of March within one week everybody knew we are in a public health emergency. How can we spread the word to the entire population of 470 thousand residents?

Mayor Suarez: Part of what we do right now is a community engagement that is far more robust than we’ve ever done before…On the community side, you guys are doing a wonderful job in your social media in particular getting the word out. (36:45) You have my full support in terms of leveraging my accounts. Instagram or twitter, and we also have a full blown communication department, and we have communications teams that allow us to do things on the media level. If there’s anything you think we can do, from a press conference… we’re open to ideas. 

Alan Dodd: And I would add that we have learned so much over the past nine months of the covid crisis that it’s changed our way of doing business. ..

 

November 24th 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhUCCLg35qk

 10:45: P4F and FF worked to get the city to recognize a Climate Emergency, and one year later we still don’t have the Climate Emergency on the city’s Website. The Climate Emergency is a bigger emergency than the Covid Emergency, people in the city of Miami need to know about it. I know that the city has a Mitigation plan, but the implementation has been delayed to next April with the reason that the city needs to seek input from the population. But at the same time, we see that the Climate Emergency is not on the website, not on Instagram etc. So here is my hypothesis about what is going on: The city of Miami is not interested in acting on the Climate Emergency. 

Answer: Mr. Dodd: We are trying to completely rebuild our resilience website.. I think it may be close to the point where it may be finalized…. 

Mr. X: We have pages with how Climate Change impacts the city of Miami, what the city of Miami is doing regarding Climate Change including climate adaptation, carbon mitigation…

P4F: Can we make the distinction between Climate Change and Climate Emergency. I was teaching about climate change 20 years ago. Now we are in a Climate Emergency. I am speaking specifically about the Climate Emergency which was recognized officially by the city a year ago. So the question is: Is the city going to post on its homepage the Climate Emergency? Not Climate Change, the Climate Emergency.

Mayor Suarez: Let me take a shot at that. We have declared a climate emergency,... because of that we have entered into C40 where we have pledged Carbon Neutrality, we have signed onto the Paris accord,...I advocated yesterday with the President Elect regarding climate, so we’re going to be potentially the point person for the new administration regarding climate, … the President-Elect wanted to hear from me what are the best investments for mitigation and for resiliency…. But declare something an emergency doesn’t mean that we can solve it overnight, I wish we could, trust me, if I could, I would. But I wanted to declare an emergency because we need to heighten it, and you know, (16:30) the fact that we are meeting on a monthly basis just as a resiliency action group, to me is an indication that we are taking it as if it’s an emergency… 

(38:30) P4F: My neighbors know about Covid 19 but they don’t know about the climate emergency, and we need to educate them the same way we educate them about Covid 19.….Could you put a banner on the homepage, so the people know what’s going on.

 

Mayor Suarez: I think putting a banner is essential to get the website to have the amount of traffic that it should have… But I can tell you from my conversation with the President-Elect that he is making climate not just about resilience, he is making it about national security, and I think that changes the conversation significantly for a lot of people…. You elevate the discussion to a place where it’s life or death, so we hear you loud and clear. 

 

December 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdfydttGSr4

Issue  Putting a Banner on top of the Homepage advertising the Climate Emergency just like COVID. 

Answer: There is too much information at the top of the page. 

19:40 Thank you for placing a link on the Homepage and linking the Climate Emergency Resolution. What is at stake is the life of the young people and all life on Earth. 

We are trying to bypass the inertia the Human System. 

 

January 2021: Meeting was cancelled...

 

February 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo0iQPUK2mU

City presented its GHG Reduction Plan

 

March 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIA_a1vb3lE

Issue raised: 26:26 Have you asked the population what GHG reduction targets they want? 

Are you open to have your GHG plan being audited?

Answer Mayor Suarez: An audit would imply that something is being audited. 

 

April 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDcwN7ecsyA&t=1s

Issue raised: 50:00 Why do you keep quiet about the worst case scenario.

Issue raised: 57:21 We have a lot of questions for all of you, we put them in our Open Letter. Please see our Earth Day April Open Letter Please see them and answer them because our lives depend on it

Answer: Thank you very much. 

 

May 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9at6SwOLBUk&t=2980s

Issues raised: 

19:30 Does the City set a GHG Reduction goal that is in line with the Science

34:00 Miami’s Plan depends on FPL converting to 100% renewable by 2035, but FPL has no intention of doing that. 

See discussion in our April Open Letter

Climate Emergency on the Homepage of the City. 

Answer: It will be on the Resilience Page

 

June 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELe6NBd379w&t=15s

Issue raised: min 20:25  and 40:47 Negative Emissions: counting of future generations to clean up the atmosphere of the excess emissions in order to maintain a livable climate. 

We discuss the issue in the July Open Letter 

 

July 2021: The city told us that the file “got corrupted”.

Issue raised: The conflict of interest at the heart of C40: Bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg writes that fracking is a good idea and has investments. 

Answer: “C40 is not Michael Bloomberg”

 

August  2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQntzNk6N58&t=40s

Min 39:00: Issue raised: Reaching out to the population, listing Climate Change, drawing attention to the #climateemergency on social media

Reaction: NONE

 

September 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fODzoEUtMqw

Min 14:00 Question: Does the city of Miami have a Gag Rule against talking about the Climate Emergency? Why does the city not talk or post on the issue?

Answer (commissioner Russell) No gag rule. We post. We should do better. 

Effect: Commissioner Russell posted one time on twitter with #climatemeergency after the mtg

 

October 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7pSKsgYsA8

Min 5:00 Question: Is the Mayor’s Resilience 

Min 25:00 Question: (Highschool Student) Why are you relying on Negative Emissions? Can you help me understand whats going on?

Mayor Suarez: Ari thank you so much for your advocacy, one of my main motivators was [people in your age group , when I met with some of the people who were protesting outside demanding that we issue a Climate Emergency, I got all the cities in America to issue a Climate Emergency. So we are all well aware of the emergency nature of this issue and we've taken a lot of steps in conformity with that emergency. There’s always room for us to get better, and it’s important for us to get pushed, because we have a lot of priorities…

https://youtu.be/x7pSKsgYsA8?t=1772

28:00 Commissioner Russel: Question for Alissa: Could you help me understand Mihai and Ari mentioned that our GHG plan passes on the responsibility, what are they referring to?

Alissa: Yes, basically, what they are referring to.. Is that at a certain point we’ll overshoot 2 degrees, and in order to get back to a level that is better compatible with the future of civilization, we’ll have to invest in Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies to pull that carbon out of the atmosphere. The alternative to that is a rapid shift toward renewable energy. Our perspective here is that the globe moving towards that level, the country moving towards that level is outside of our control, so given the externalities, we feel that the projection curve that we have chosen is the most realistic. 

 

29:30 Commissioner Russell: What lever we should be pulling and we are not pulling, both logistically and politically or financially… Because I don’t want is for people to come and advocate AGAINST C40 GHG reduction plan, when we should be on the same side of this issue because it doesn't go far enough or that it’s missing some elements.

 

~45:00 P4F: The question of Agency and actionable items: 

48:00 Alissa: We are just trying to balance what is scientifically realistic with what is politically and financially reasonable and we are trying to meet in the middle. 

50:00 P4F: We agreed last time with Commissioner Russel that the city should do more to spread the word about the CE, and he put out a tweet. During this month he put out one tweet about potholes. One tweet about the CE that can sink the whole city, 1 tweet about potholes. There is an order of magnitude difference between these issues. 

53:00 Alissa: Thank you, and something that we are going to continue to talk about here is that we continue to spread the message. One thing that we want to be is solutions oriented…