In addition to those stories that we regularly hear about, there are those we don’t — like the health risks faced by children and the aged due to tainted air and hotter summer temperatures, or how fossil-fuel-induced pollution is affecting supplies of clean drinking water. Climate change, pollution and other harms from fossil fuels are becoming everyday realities in Southern California and around the nation.

This is why the CEC is refocusing its mission to find solutions to this historically intractable problem.  We will push for a regional solution to these problems, which, if followed in other regions, may eventually solve many of our national and global energy-related environmental problems.

In addition to encouraging this generation and the next to reduce the impacts of our energy use through conservation and better energy efficiency, we have launched a bold challenge to the tri-counties region: our Fossil Free by ’33 campaign.  Our ambitious goal is to lead the tri-counties to fossil fuel independence by 2033, a mere 27 years from now.  We plan to promote great energy efficiency and use of our abundant renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar, biomass and wave energy to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.