Move CA—a project of Move LA—and our northern California partner SPUR just completed the third Zoom meeting in our three-part series to talk with elected officials, experts and advocates about our proposal for a major statewide funding initiative to clean the air and curb climate change. We have learned a lot, and we are sure those of you who joined us learned a lot too.

Below is a link to the video of that Zoom meeting and videos from the two Zoom meetings that preceded it. We'll follow up with a second e-blast on major take-aways from the most recent conversation, which was lively and rich with ideas about how to we can stave off this double threat to Planet Earth and all who live here.

The third Zoom meeting focused on Super Pollutants, also called short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). Scientists consider SLCPs to be our biggest and most important near-term opportunity in the battle against climate change, and that it is imperative to reduce them at the same time that we reduce CO2, for several reasons including:

• SLCPs are much more powerful climate forcers than CO2. They include methane, black carbon, HFCs and tropospheric ozone, and are responsible for at least 40% of global warming.
• But these super pollutants decay much more quickly than CO2—some in a matter of days, others in as many as 15 years, while CO2 can last 200 years or more.
• If we prevent more Super Pollutants from entering the atmosphere, existing SLCPs will soon decay and we can actually roll back climate change. Scientists say that if we act quickly to reduce them we can roll back back climate change by as much as 0.6 degrees Celsius.
• If we do this it will keep us within the boundaries that have been set internationally to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. 

No one on the call contested the fact that we have to do something, and we have to do it now. In fact, Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC-San Diego and member of the international Climate and Clean Air Coalition, pointed out that he released his first study about the importance of Super Pollutants 40 years ago!

The video of Zoomposium #3 is HERE. 

Here is the video of Zoomposium #2, a discussion on Dec. 3 with climate and clean air experts about the need to focus on the transportation sector, which poses the biggest and most immediate challenge, and what we can/should do about it.

Here is the video of Zoomposium #1, a discussion on Oct. 1 with elected officials, state agency leaders and experts, and environmental and environmental justice leaders about what we should do, and whether we must do it now.