Supervisor Ted Williams’ innocuous sounding legislative platform proposal — “Proposed Amendments to the 2026 Mendocino County Legislative Platform” — sparked an odd mini-controversy on Tuesday when his colleagues worried that his use of the phrase “climate change” in the text might trigger grant denials by the Trump administration.
Williams proposed to replace page 13 of the County’s already unwieldy legislative platform (aka fantasy wish list) which had been titled “Climate Resilience & Renewable Energy” with text titled: “Climate Change.” The title change was accompanied by three pages of associated generic particulars all beginning with “support” or “advocate,” but which used the phrase “climate change” a shocking five times. The text was so generic that we suspect it might be a violation of the County’s no-artificial-intelligence policy.
In theory, these supposed goals — conservation, energy efficiency, electric cars, solarization, etc. — might lead to “net zero” emissions someday, not that anybody’s actually measuring.
The Williams proposal said that because of climate change Mendo’s FEMA Risk Index is quite high for wildfire, drought, earthquake, landslide and “riverine flooding,” but he did not mention tsunamis. So whew! — no need to worry about them, thank Jah.
Williams’ intro concluded, “Climate change is driven by environmental degradation from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions globally. And while Mendocino County forests and ecosystems sequester more global warming carbon emissions than the county emits, it shoulders a disproportionate burden from the negative climate change impacts of global warming driven sea level rise, wildfires, flooding, severe storms, heat waves and droughts.”
and,
“As a low income rural region with constrained economic capacity, Mendocino County needs state and federal assistance [aka grant cash] to remediate global warming impacts and adapt to the new environmental conditions climate change imposes.”
Supervisor Madeline Cline said that county staff had recommended avoiding use of certain words in grant applications that might trigger denials from the Trump Administration.
Supervisor Williams asked to see a copy of what staff had recommended. Cline couldn’t produce a piece of paper, but CEO Darcie Antle agreed that staff had recommended avoiding use of certain no-no words and phrases that the Trump administration frowned on to make federal grant applications more likely to be approved.
Supervisor John Haschak read from a news article on his county computer screen describing a recent lawsuit where the State of Illinois won a legal case after “use of language and those touch words like women, blacks, diversity and climate change” had led to the denial of a grant. Illinois won the suit and got the grant, but it took a lawsuit to do it. “This gives us hope that we don’t have to walk away from our belief that there is climate change,” said Haschak, “or go for net zero emissions or diversity. We don’t need to compromise our language.”
But later in the discussion Haschak seemed to reverse himself mentioning a recent example where his Third District lost a $40 million FEMA wildfire safety grant because “DOGE” (Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency) had flagged it, implying that there may be other ways to say “climate change” without actually saying “climate change.”
Supervisors Bernie Norvell and Madeline Cline didn’t object to the generic objectives of Williams’ proposal, but worried that changing from “climate resiliency” to “climate change” might trigger “retaliation” from the Trump administration via denial of federal grants.
Several members of the public who were involved with or supported the Williams proposal staunchly defended the use of “climate change” and urged the board to stand on principle.
Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said that somehow in the shuffle the Williams proposal didn’t incorporate parts of the previous legislative platform that should still be included. Williams agreed that he didn’t mean to delete whatever those were.
With that, the Board saw an opportunity to side-step the issue and have Williams come back at a later date with a revised proposal that incorporates the previous stuff that apparently didn’t have to do with “climate change.”
Given Williams’ view that his Fifth District constituents strongly support continuing to use “climate change” in the legislative platform, the language question is likely to trigger another discussion the next time the subject arises.
Be First to Comment