By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner

San Franciscans will be able to purchase absolution for some of their environmental sins under a new city program that will use the funds to reduce climate changing emissions from government work and from local businesses and residents. Activities powered by fossil fuels or bio-fuels, such as driving, flying or building a bridge, change the Earth’s weather by increasing the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air — a phenomenon scientists call global warming. An array of new businesses have recently begun selling what’s known as carbon offsets, which reduce the effects of carbon dioxide emissions by paying for projects that fight global warming. Read more »

San Francisco Examiner
Editorial Originally Published July 16, 2007

In one of the more practical visionary plans to emerge from the San Francisco municipal government during recent years, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Task Force on Green Building has laid out a detailed blueprint for phasing in green standards that would make The City the most environmentally advanced in the nation by 2012.  Advantages to the public from adoption of such rigorous environmental standards for all new private and government-funded construction would include projected savings of 220,000 hours of electricity and 100 million gallons of drinking water, elimination of 60,000 tons of CO2 emissions and 700 million pounds of construction/demolition waste. Read more »