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SUSTAINABLE SAN FRANCISCO A PROJECT OF THE TIDES CENTER Q U A R T E R L Y |
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| Volume 1, Number 3 |
November 1997 |
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| Index
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Contents Supes Say Yes To Sustainability Plan Sustainability In The Media Online Television Sustainability In Politics Commuter Choice Act Central Freeway A Perspective On Sustainability: Closing the Loop Volunteer Opportunities |
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Sustainability In The Media On-Line A new local web site called Reinhabiting Home is hosting online discussions about the implementation of the Sustainability Plan. The goal is a searchable "knowledge base" of the accumulated wisdom of San Franciscans who are striving to live-in-place in a responsible way. How does our city work? How does it change? What's worth doing? To participate, point your web browser to http://www.lumiere.net/home. If you only have access to email, send the message "subscribe sf YOURADDRESS" to majordomo@lumiere.net. Television WETA-TV, a public broadcasting station in Washington, D.C., produced a three-part television series called Planet Neighborhood that aired early in September on PBS. The series focused on the environment and sustainable development practices at home, our workplaces, and in our communities. The next showing has not been scheduled, but keep your eyes open-it's worth seeing. |
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Sustainability In Politics Commuter Choice Act The Transportation section of the Sustainability Plan recommends implementing "parking cash-outs". This would allow commuters the choice to receive cash instead of free parking. Studies show that parking cash-outs reduce single occupancy commutes by 14-20 percent. A bill now before Congress, the Commuter Choice Act (HR-878), will help us move closer to implementing this action. Currently, if you drive to work, you can get up to $170 per month of free parking, tax-free. But if you take public transit, you get only $65 per month, tax-free. You get nothing if you commute to work with your feet or your bike. The Commuter Choice Act would allow employers to offer the same tax-free monthly benefit to all employees, whether they drive, carpool, walk, bike or use public transit. Let your congressional representative know you support the Commuter Choice Act. Central Freeway Proposition H is an initiative on the November ballot which calls for doubling the width of the existing elevated Central Freeway. This proposal is the most costly and the least safe of the options considered in a public process prior to the placement of this initiative on the ballot. Additionally, Proposition H would lift the ban established by the SF Board of Supervisors in 1992 on construction of any new above-ground ramps to the Central Freeway north of Fell Street. This would open the door to the possible reconstruction of freeway ramps over Hayes, Grove, Fulton, McAllister and Golden Gate. Commuters were frustrated with the closure of the Central Freeway, but this ballot measure is not the answer. There are safer, less expensive options under consideration which would mitigate traffic congestion while preserving the integrity of San Francisco's neighborhoods. Contact the Committee for Sensible Transportation Solutions at 263-3996 to learn more about the ballot initiative, and to get involved with the campaign to defeat the measure. |
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A Perspective On Sustainability: Closing the Loop Geof Syphers, Marya Glass, and John Kennedy Everyone talks about sustainability. Environmentalists are promoting sustainable energy, politicians and economists are talking about sustainable growth, and architects are designing sustainable buildings. But is everyone talking about the same thing? One popular definition, by the 1987 Brundtland Commission (and the one used in the Sustainability Plan), states that sustainability is, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This usage identifies a key theme of intergenerational equity. The sense that our children should inherit a world no worse than our own is certainly one of the most important moral aspects of sustainability. The question is, How do we work toward a sustainable society? The concept of intergenerational equity doesn't provide clear direction on this issue-especially with day-to-day life. Without resources like forests, topsoil, and clean water, any generation will suffer. In fact, physical sustainability is a prerequisite to social sustainability. We cannot pass on a world full of opportunities to our children if we've consumed the drinking water and redwood trees which made those opportunities available to us. It is important to look at our use of the basic resources upon which all generations depend. Resource or physical sustainability requires us to do one of two things: use and recycle a resource forever with no loss of material (very difficult!), or use resources in such a way that they completely regenerate in natural ecosystems. The way we currently consume resources is indeed sobering. However, by examining our consumption habits we can also find innovative solutions. Take the nutrient cycle of a forest, for instance. To date, humans have been moving nutrients contained in trees out of forests and into cities and landfills. This one-way movement of material is not sustainable, and planting new trees does not replace all the lost nutrients. After their useful life, wood and wood products must be returned to the forest ecosystem for decomposition and regeneration. Only then is the resource loop truly closed. Fertilizing a forest may sound like a daunting task, but when you think about how trees are removed from a forest, pieces of a solution emerge. Logging trucks haul trees out of forests and return empty. Couldn't these trucks return full of compostable wood products? While this is far from a complete solution, resource sustainability helps us see the problem with one-way delivery systems. Beyond uncovering some interesting solutions, resource sustainability has the enormous advantage of being scientifically provable since it is nothing more than a restatement of the basic law of physics that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. This is useful in science, as well as policy. Remember the carbon tax? The authors of this tax proposed to charge a fee for carbon emissions on the basis that this would cut cases of respiratory illness and help forestall global warming. Even though many agreed on the method, no one could agree on the numbers. How much is the delay of global warming worth? If you think it's difficult to come up with a dollar amount by yourself, imagine trying to build a consensus in Washington. The difficulties of finding the indirect costs of pollution and overconsumption can be largely avoided by basing taxes on the cost of closing resource loops. For instance, the sustainable cost of using mercury in fluorescent lamps can be calculated by finding the cost of recovering all of the mercury from used lamps. This involves several steps including transporting used lamps back to the manufacturer, capturing the remaining mercury gas, dissolving the mercury and phosphor from the inside of the lamp and extracting usable mercury from the solution. When these costs are included, mercury-free lamps-which are currently more expensive-become a cheaper alternative. As "sustainability" becomes entrenched in our everyday language, it's important to ask what is sustainable? Recycled paper? Green buildings? Products or items can never be sustainable by themselves. They must be a part of completely closed resource loops. Understanding physical sustainability helps us make choices about which paths to take. Generally speaking, the paths will not be perfectly sustainable. But some will be better than others.
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Volunteer Opportunities Administrative support from your home. We need you to make local phone calls for our various activities. Newsletter mailings-come sit around a kitchen table and help get the newsletter in the mail. Plan implementation advocate. Call the office for more information. Join our newsletter committee. We need people to write stories. Call us at 415-285-6106 |
Sustainable San Francisco |