What's Newsom?

Grist talks to San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom about greening the city

Posted by Kate Sheppard at 3:04 PM on 20 Jul 2008

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom stopped by Netroots Nation on Sunday to introduce Van Jones, and he also talked to the crowd about some of the green accomplishments his city has been able to make so far.

Newsom has proposed the toughest building standards in the country, and in November 2008 he was planning to submit a carbon tax to voters for their approval (he's now pushed that back to 2009). In March he signed into law a requirement that the city's taxi fleet be converted to low-emission vehicles by 2011, directed city departments to purchase 100 percent recycled paper and reduce overall paper use by 20 percent by 2010, and backed a tidal-energy project in the San Francisco Bay. He's also working on projects to boost the city's use of small wind turbines, and they've banned plastic bags and toys that contain bisphenol A and phthalates.

We grabbed a few minutes with Newsom to talk about what the city's accomplished and what they're planning to tackle next:

(You may note that the person operating the camera isn't doing a very good job. In fact, they don't appear to even understand how to turn the camera off at the end. That would be me. Ahem. I apologize. I was using one of these do-hickeys for the first time.)

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5 Comments | Post a Comment

same-sex marriage

Let us not overlook the big cute fluffy animal in the room: outside the Bay area, Gavin Newsom is nationally known as an adorable LION (or else, in ignorant prejudiced circles, a despicable weasel) for showing generosity, wisdom, big-heartedness, golden-heartedness, kindness, sweetness, fairness, and justice, for his extra-judicial decision to allow same-sex couples to be married within his jurisdiction.

He won, basically, in California. But with pain. The same people whom he married in 2004, whose marriages were later cruelly invalidated, are now returning, in embarrassment, yet again, to see if once again their mature adult confessions of love matter to anyone.

Dear Californians, if you want to be leaders, if you want to be leaders for goodness, then support Mayor Newsom's wisdom and good-heartedness, and STRONGLY oppose the anti-same-sex-marriage ballot.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:16 AM on 21 Jul 2008

Silly California

directed city departments to purchase 100 percent recycled paper and reduce overall paper use by 20 percent by 2010

So the state that has been having so much trouble with wildfires, (which emit copious amounts of CO2) wants to decrease the incentive for companies to manage local forests thus increasing the chances of future forest fires? This seems to be counterproductive if his goal is to decrease CO2 emissions.

I'm certainly not saying paper recycling is bad, just pointing out the irony that California is probably the place that needs it's forests managed (sustainably) the most.

by alphaniner at 9:14 AM on 21 Jul 2008

Silly alphaniner

Wow, that's temerity! Blaming the California wildfires on insufficient logging sounds like a line straight out of the logging industry playbook. Why not attribute it to climate change like rational people do?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0722-06.htm

by bluegreen at 12:52 PM on 21 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

Actually, Logging Causes Fires

It has been proven that logging is one of the main factors causing more, bigger, and and hotter wildfires than would occur naturally. By removing forest canopy, logging makes the ground hotter from lack of shade. By removing the biggest trees, because they are also the most valuable, the most fire resistant trees are removed while the smaller, least resistant ones are left because they're not as valuable. Of course, I say this in the context that wildfires are natural and necessary to the ecosystems in which they occur. The only issue is whether they' more frequent, bigger, and/or hotter than normal.

But I don't at all understand how global warming could be causing unnaturally large or hot fires in California. The natural climate here is 4-6 years of wet winters followed by 4-6 years of drought, then back to wet winters again. We had around ten really wet winters for the first time in thousands of years, and are now only into our second drought year, the first being a very mild drought. So exactly how is global warming causing more, bigger, or hotter fires in California?

by Wolverine at 4:34 PM on 21 Jul 2008

Chaparral

Whatever you think of proper forest managment, a large portion of California wildfires occur in chaparral environments, which aren't exactly prime logging areas!

by gradstudent at 10:11 AM on 22 Jul 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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