By Lisa Leff
Associated Press

Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to ask voters next year to approve a "carbon tax" on businesses that he says would provide a financial incentive for conserving energy and motivating workers to use public transportation. The ballot measure would increase the city's 5 percent commercial utilities tax by an as-yet-undetermined amount to encourage energy-saving steps by hotels, offices and other nonresidential buildings, Newsom said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. To keep the higher rates from becoming an economic drag on the city, the initiative would carry a corresponding decrease in the 1.5 percent payroll tax on for-profit businesses in San Francisco, according to the mayor. Read more »

By Carolyn Marshall
New York Times

Claiming it now has the largest green fleet in the nation, the city of San Francisco this week completed a yearlong project to convert its entire array of diesel vehicles — from ambulances to street sweepers — to biodiesel, a clean-burning and renewable fuel that holds promise for helping to reduce greenhouse gases. Using virgin soy oil bought from producers in the Midwest, officials said that as of Friday, all of the city’s 1,500 diesel vehicles were powered with the environmentally friendlier fuel, intended to sharply reduce toxic diesel exhaust linked to a higher risk of asthma and premature death. “Just like secondhand smoke, diesel is one of the worst things we can breathe,” said the city’s clean vehicle manager, Vandana Bali of the Department of the Environment. Read more »

By Wyatt Buchanan
San Francisco Chronicle

Attention San Francisco shoppers: Plastic grocery store bags are going, going, gone. Starting Tuesday, large grocery stores in the city can no longer use the traditional plastic bags that are a staple of the supermarket checkout line, as a city ordinance passed earlier this year to ban the bags takes effect. "People are used to getting free bags and thinking there is no real consequence to them, but there is a cost," said Jack Macy, commercial recycling coordinator for the city's Department of the Environment, which is implementing the new policy.

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By Michael Cabanatuan
San Francisco Chronicle

The Bay Area might need smaller houses, higher gas taxes and tolls on busy roads and congested business districts if it is to meet the state's goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases, transportation and land use officials said Friday. The good news, however, is that a new poll shows that many Bay Area residents are ready to take those steps if it means a better future for the state and world. Setting goals is significant, leaders with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments told a crowd of 800 at a conference at the Oakland Convention Center. But making the lifestyle changes to meet them is far more challenging. Read more »

By Tamara Barak
San Francisco Examiner

Combining the fight against global warning with a Web-based community is a match made in the Bay Area. Although EarthLab.com was born in Seattle, local residents are flocking to it in record numbers since its launch on July 7, in conjunction with the Live Earth concert. The green-focused Web site, which is unique in its ability to calculate the environmental footprint and carbon output from each individual and compare scores across regions or zip codes, has attracted 38,000 users from the Bay Area in less than two months, said site founder Duane Dahl. Read more »

By Zach Church and Holly Kaufman

The tools to develop a sustainable energy system are available to us in San Francisco today, and the City is already implementing many of them. San Francisco has abundant ocean, wind and solar energy potential, compact development that presents opportunities for efficient transportation, and citizens possessing an entrepreneurial spirit, technological know-how, and a commitment to environmental progress. San Francisco can continue to promote sustainable energy solutions that will help achieve Mayor Newsom’s 20 percent greenhouse gas reduction target, save money, create jobs, strengthen the local economy and increase the quality of life in our City.  Each of the suggestions below should be part of the City’s comprehensive, integrated climate change and energy plan.  Read more »

Jane Martin, Founding Director
Plant*SF

Ironically, the very imprecision of the term ‘greening’ may be its strength – for the concept is hollow if not holistically applied.  To some “green” connotes a cosmetic layer of beautification.  To others it is a degree of material sustainability.  For all, it is a reminder of our society’s prevailing mode of facilitation, money.  It is only through the mutual inclusion of these three aspects, however, that the application of greening to San Francisco’s streetscapes will be truly successful.  By way of example, traditional forms of public space plantings such as raised beds and hanging flower baskets may provide an immediate beautification lift, but because their soil is isolated and exposed to wind and sun, they require frequent watering even when climate adapted plants are selected.  This is neither environmentally supportive nor fiscally responsible.

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By Jared Blumenfeld, Director, SF Department of the Environment
Susan Leal, General Manager, SF Public Utilities Commission
Originally Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents enjoy some of the nation's highest quality drinking water, with pristine Sierra snowmelt from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir as our primary source. Every year, our water is tested more than 100,000 times to ensure that it meets or exceeds every standard for safe drinking water. And yet we still buy bottled water. Why? Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water. Read more »

By Elizabeth Ridlington, Policy Analyst, Frontier Group 
Rob Sargent, Energy Program Director, Environment California

Rising global temperatures, unpredictable weather and alarming scientific predictions have led to increasing public concern about the impacts of global warming on the environment, health and society. But while the Bush administration continues to resist efforts to reduce global warming pollution, many states are taking effective actions to address the threat—including the adoption of the “Clean Cars Program,” which sets limits on global warming pollution from cars, light trucks and SUVs. The global warming benefit will be significant. Read more »

In the heat of the last campaign for Mayor, Michael Moore didn’t support Gavin Newsom.  Since then, Mayor Newsom has led San Francisco to become one of the greenest cities in the world and has stood up for same sex marriage when most other politicians ran the other way. And he, along with Supervisor Tom Ammiano and our partners in labor and the health care community are delivering universal health care for every San Franciscan. Read more »