Menlo Park City Council Members: Mayor Cecilia Taylor, Vice Mayor Drew Combs, Betsy Nash, Catherine Carlton, and Ray Muelier, I read in the July 17th issue of "The Almanac" 'Council Sets New Priorities to Slash Green House Gas Emissions City Wide'. I'm sure Menlo Park could go a long way in reaching its goal of carbon neutrality by 2030 just by depending more on the sun for our daily needs. This is not done by using an electric clothes dryer, to dry our clothes, heating our home with a heat pump, which is quite noisy, lighting our homes during the day with electricity, and buying most of our fruit and vegetables at the store via solar panel on our roof or relying on a company like Peninsula Clean Energy, (I am grateful for the company), to provide us with renewable energy. We need to be more dependent on the sun that radiates its light and heat on our property and our homes. It is free and available to most all of us in the SF Bay area. Passive solar is QUIET and requires no appliances to work. There is little or no maintenance for its operation. If the power shuts down, and the sun is still shining, one can still remain comfortable. The sun's energy is free to all and belongs to each of us. This does mean property owners have an obligation to keep their trees trimmed, opened up, and pulled down so they do not shade the neighboring properties. We should all be doing what we can to help ourselves and our neighbors save money and our natural resources and have a healthy planet to live on. Another way to cut back on global warming is to encourage companies to hire locally. People could walk or bicycle to work promoting better health and more affordable housing. We have often heard it said "Buy locally" The same applies to hiring. Save time, promote health and prevent pollution. Building city to city apartments and commercial spaces is not expressing "Sustainability". This is factory farming, where animals/people have little room to move around. Asphalt, concrete and stucco absorb heat, and then radiate it out. Cool summer breezes are prevented from entering our homes, so we turn the air conditioner on. This only wastes our natural resources and adds more heat to the atmosphere. Family Planning needs to be vigorously supported by the whole world. 7.8 billion people is a lot of people to expect our planet to care for. Many of the challenges California has faced in the last two year, floods, wild fires gangs/violence, immigration, homelessness, and affordable housing could have been greatly lessened had California kept the goal of destroying climate change firmly in the forefront through common sense and practical wisdom. Thank you for letting me share these ideas. Jackie Leonard-Dimmick Note: Heat pumps are noisy!. Former next-door neighbors put in a heat pump, taking out the gas furnace due to allergies. It was distressing to put up with, day in and day out.. Why can't it be insulated? Two of us built a box around it with two by fours, fiberglass insulation hard cloth and hardware. It had three side panels and a roof. No two sides were parallel to each other. The side panels were placed on bricks so air could flow underneath and the angled ends were open for air flow. This 5-piece structure cut the noise down considerably and made two people less stressed. The neighbors did move and took their heat pump with them. I was grateful. Received on Wed Jul 29 2020 - 14:00:50 PDT
