CC 12-01-20 Oral Communications_Late Written CommunicationsCC 12-01-20
Study Session #1
Climate Action Plan
Written Comments
1
Cyrah Caburian
From:Shiv Shah <shiv.v.shah@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, December 1, 2020 4:18 PM
To:City Clerk
Subject:Non toxic bicycle oil and car chargers for todays city council study session
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Hi, I am Shiv, a student at Cupertino High School and a member of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action.
As we know, our earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable. I am planning on moving up to Washington or British
Columbia for college because I do not want wildfires taking away another 2.5 months from me. The firefighters are saying
the fires will get worse for 20 years. After hearing that, I was imagining myself as a fat couch potato when I grow up
telling my fat children that once upon a time when the air was clean I was strong enough to compete at track and field
meets and bike up mountains. I even had trouble getting my homework done and even playing videogames because of the
wildfire smoke this year.
I understand that the climate crisis is a big problem that requires big solutions, but what frustrates me is that there is so
much we can do with the technology that we already have. Getting our 2 local bike shops to use non toxic bicycle oil and
grease is something that can be done very easily. I personally use oil from Green Oil by Simon Nash from Britan. I am
willing to go out of my way to buy oil from a small company in a different country because I know it will be beneficial for
my health and safety. Since their oil is plant based, I do not have to worry about washing my hands for 5 minutes with a
lot of soap after touching the chain on my bicycle, especially when I am outside where I don't have a place to wash my
hands. More importantly when the oil washes off or drips off my chain, it will get into the stevens creek, and eventually
into the water I drink. Many urban cities already have unsafe amounts of PTFE in their water supplies so we need to do
everything we can to keep more of it from getting into our waters. Some may argue that we can install filtration systems to
remove the PTFE, but no filtration system is 100% effective, and that is a step away from an ideal world where the water
is clean enough that we do not need a filter.
Another problem I would like to talk about is car chargers. Although I believe we need to and we can make the sell of
new gasoline cars illegal by 2028 based on new and upcoming technologies, I think our city should wait a year or two
before installing chargers in our cities. Right now, figuring out what type of charger to use is complicated because Tesla
drivers will not want to use non tesla chargers because they are slower and may be more expensive, and non tesla drivers
can not even use tesla chargers. Additionally, I have read about people damaging their car batteries because they used a
charger that was not specifically designed for their car. Standardizing charging is in the brainstorming agenda for the state
advocacy team of Sillicon Valley Youth Climate Action, and once we can find a solution to make sure every charger can
work with every car, then we can start making charging widespread.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions. Thank you.
From, Shiv Shah