Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting.

Imagine the horror of having to put your yucky food waste in a separate bin rather than having your yucky food waste stick to the bottom of your trash can!

From San Francisco on Track to Become Zero Waste City, starring citisven — a San Francisco horror movie!

Granted, it’ll initially only be a voluntary program that would compost about 10 percent of the city’s residential food waste, but in a city as big as New York that will still account for 100,000 tons of food scraps per year.

However, as Mayor Bloomberg said in his most recent State of the City address, this is as much an economic issue as it is an environmental one.

“We bury 1.2 million tons of food waste in landfills every year at a cost of nearly $80 per ton,” he said. “That waste can be used as fertilizer or converted to energy at a much lower price. That’s good for the environment and for taxpayers.”

Imagine all the things NYC could do with the $336 million it spent just last last year exporting most of its trash to landfills in Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

The bad news for all those freedom-loving patriots who prefer to throw their shit wherever the hell they please (because we all know that in the Land-of-the-Free you would never have any rules and laws that would regulate where you can toss your crap) is that this voluntary pilot program will most likely turn mandatory soon with the support of whoever will be Bloomberg’s successor after he leaves office at the end of this year.

Two leading Democratic candidates for mayor, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, expressed strong support for the program — including the plan to eventually make it mandatory.

According to Quinn, the New York City Council will take up a bill this summer to require pilot programs across the city to ensure that voluntary recycling of food waste continues, with a mandatory program in place by 2016, regardless of who is mayor.

“We’re going to lock it in,” she said. “When New York makes composting part of everyday life, every other city will follow through. This is going to create an urban trend.”

That’s right, it’s going to be an irreversible trend once residents of the Big Apple start throwing their rotten apples into compost bins. And us San Franciscans who’ve been composting for years are going to applaud New Yorkers’ “it’s only happening if it’s happening in New York” mentality just this one time, because when a trend is this good for the well-being of the entire planet it doesn’t matter who starts it.

But this issue goes far beyond trash, and New Yorkers are just beginning to learn about the deeper win-win-win situation of composting food waste that has been demonstrated by San Francisco’s zero waste efforts.

Here’s a segment on PBS News Hour that shows how San Francisco has managed to reach this important milestone thanks to its state-of-the-art residential and commercial composting programs and is on its way to zero waste by 2020. (At around 2:10 my sweetie and I get to demonstrate how easy it is to compost in our home)

As I’ve written before, urban composting solves a whole host of problems beyond keeping organic materials out of landfill and reducing methane emissions.

In the case of New York, some of residents’ food waste will be processed into biogas, which would be used to generate electricity.

Better yet, in San Francisco all 1.2 million tons of the city’s food scraps so far have been returned to local farms and residents. Used at more than 200 farms and vineyards throughout the Bay Area, SF compost is one of the most nutrient-rich soil amendments in the country due to its very diverse feed stock-rich food scraps.

San Francisco’s resource recovery company Recology hosting their annual compost giveaway where each resident gets 5 gallons of free gourmet planting soil made from their own food scraps.

Adding to this closing of the food and waste cycle is a little known but remarkable fact about urban compost: According to Fulbright Scholar and former Rodale Institute Research Director Paul Hepperly, applying food scrap compost to cover crops has the potential to offset 20 percent of America’s carbon emissions by adding carbon to the soil and taking it out of the atmosphere.

Vineyards in Northern California apply compost made from food scraps to grow cover crops such as mustard and beans. That stimulates microbial activity and helps turn farms into carbon sinks. Photo by Larry Strong, courtesy of Recology.

Consider that in 2010 less than 3% of food waste in the United States was composted, not only letting 97% of a valuable resource needlessly fill up our landfills and release methane into the atmosphere, but squandering a huge opportunity to use a simple natural food cycle to pull loads of carbon back into the ground. While it has become somewhat fashionable among environmentalists to belittle the global garbage crisis as nothing more than a boutique problem dwarfed by the much larger threat of rising sea levels, super freak storms, and devastating wildfires, more and more municipalities around the world are realizing that the disposable culture we have allowed to thrive in the last half century or so is intrinsically linked to the rise in greenhouse gases, and that zero waste is a key component in addressing climate change.

Thank you Mayor Bloomberg and people of New York for becoming part of the solution!

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from an article I wrote last year that explains why mandatory composting is necessary to get to zero waste, and how it turns out to be no different than “stashing your trash” once people start getting used to it.

Tossing your recyclables in a bin is one thing. Saving your sloppy seconds is another. Sure, you have your early adopters — your urban gardeners and other green-thumb types — but how do you get the bulk of your citizenry that was raised on garbage disposals and anti-bacterial soap to hang on to their avocado pits and sandwich wrappers? Composting, it seems, is as much a state of mind as it is a physical activity. It’s like eating something you’ve never had before; there’s a mental block that’s hard to overcome without a little help. And yet, once we’ve taken that first bite, we quickly forget how much we used to not like what we didn’t know.

The city knew that if it wanted to have a large-scale, city-wide composting program to make an actual dent in the overall waste stream, it would have to be mandatory. Its pilot program had shown that not only food scraps but yard trimmings, coffee cups, greasy pizza boxes and even milk and juice cartons could be broken down at Jepson Prairie Organics, a compost facility about 55 miles east of San Francisco in Vacaville. From there, the nutrient-rich organic fertilizer — perfect for reconditioning soil due to its diverse feedstock — could be distributed to surrounding farms, which in turn sell their produce to SF residents and restaurants, thus closing the loop locally.

After the board of supervisors passed the Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance in 2009, people quickly adapted to the new green carts. According to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, hundreds of thousands of residents and over 5,000 restaurants and other businesses now send over 600 tons of food scraps and other compostable material each day to Jepson Prairie.

San Francisco’s “Fantastic Three”

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~

crossposted at Daily Kos

Chevron touts strong year, skeptics question company’s environmental record

SAN RAMON — During a contentious annual meeting Wednesday, Chevron executives touted the company’s $26 billion in annual profit and robust production efforts, but skeptics peppered management with pointed questions about its environmental practices.

The annual meeting grew heated, with some speakers complaining about the time allotted to talk. One called for Watson to be fired. Another complained that Chevron was not tough enough in debunking what he described as the myth of global warming.

Outside the meeting at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, dozens of protesters demonstrated, brandishing signs saying “Free America from the tyranny of oil,” “Fire Watson” and “Chevron makes orphans.”

This may be the only time I’ll ever be on the same page with Chevron CEO John Watson. I may not be a billionaire but I’m having a great time telling this fossil fool to stop living in the past and go renewable.

The above clip is from today’s business section in The SF Chronicle, which is behind a paywall, but the title Chevron CEO faces down critics (“Chevron Pushes Back” in the print version) gives you an idea of its drift.

There is, however, the very telling interview with John Watson on the SF Gate blog today where he says that cutting carbon will take a long time. He probably means until Chevron and their oily colleagues have drilled for every last drop and he’s sipping tropical cocktails at his Arctic mansion.

“I think we can make some progress on carbon emissions as well, but I think it’s going to take a lot longer than people think if you’re going to balance out all of those factors.”

The next quote I had to read twice.

“One of the things that’s happened is we’re spending a lot of money subsidizing energy that isn’t going to get us to the kind of reduction in carbon emissions that people would like it to.”

First I thought he was talking about the $1.9 trillion a year in fossil fuel subsidies, which would be the only sensible thing to cut when you’re talking about trying to reduce carbon emissions. But no, in John Watson’s alternate universe it’s solar and other renewable subsidies we should get rid off to bring down CO2 levels. Really, in this guy’s carbon bubble we should stop wasting our money on that lazy old sun, the very source of all the fossil fuels it took millions of years to form — those same fossil fuels that will be gone if Chevron follows through on its current business plan to suck them out of the earth and burn them as quickly as possible.

While he stops short of calling money spent on solar power and other renewables wasted, Watson says the country should focus more on conservation and early-stage research on new energy technologies.

He probably means the way Germany has been wasting all its money on solar and renewables and is well on its way to 35 percent renewables by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050. Did I hear “new energy technologies?” You couldn’t possible mean for solar and other renewables, Mr. Watson?

Of course, his enthusiasm level for a carbon tax is very low.

While a carbon tax could drive conservation, Watson sounds less than enthusiastic.

So there. According to corporate philosopher Watson, there’s nothing to see here and nothing we can or should do. Sure, conservation is key, but when was the last time you saw Chevron lobbying for higher energy efficiency? Aside from all the flowery PR, the attitude towards conservation by oil companies remains unchanged from what Goldman Prize winner and German renewable energy rebel Ursula Sladek encountered 30 years ago from her corporate power provider: “Conserve energy? Have you lost your mind? We want to sell energy, not save it!”

Closer to home and most recently, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson sums up the fossil industry’s enthusiasm for conservation: “My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, then that’s what I want to do.”

As mighty freewayblogger pointed out the other day, Chevron should just change its name to 450.org.

And that’s exactly why a bunch of concerned citizens and I BIKED the math to Chevron yesterday: to refute their lazy, greed-disguising argument that change is impossible and Chevron is just giving people what they want — more oil, more convenience, more waste, more pollution, more greenhouse gases.

Below some impressions. All photos are mine, except the ones credited otherwise.

Bike the Math

Wednesday, May 29th 2013, Dublin/Pleasanton BART to Chevron HQ, San Ramon

Deb and I got up bright and early to catch the 6.45am BART train from SF. At Bay Fair a bunch of East Bay folks got on, including 350BayArea.org’s Bill Pinkham, a seasoned activist whose experience with all things bike-related really helped in planning this trip.

I loved his personal pink slip for John Watson.

Bill is an amazing advocate for clean energy and he always comes up with the right sign for each action.

His permanent bike installation pretty much sums it all up.

When we got there, some were still snoozing…

…while David Solnit, the veteran activist and kindred spirit who had hosted a flag making party last Saturday, had already mounted a bunch of flags to people’s bikes.

Here’s David’s flag, that wonderful Obama quote…

photo: Amazon Watch

Of course, some had come to Blade the Math!

The party didn’t really start until my friend Glen and his daughter (The Little One — TLO) arrived. TLO was the youngest member of our group and a total trooper. More on that below.

After I got on my concrete soap box to tell folks how much I appreciated everyone coming out at the crack of dawn on a school day…

photo: Debra Baida

We were off to the non-race, destination Chevron.

photo: Debra Baida

There were about 40 of us as we got on the Iron Horse trail, with a few more catching up and joining later.

It took a little while to figure out how to find the right flow and tempo, but once everyone realized how beautiful, mellow, and non-trafficky this route was going to be…

photo: Debra Baida

…we just floated along in smaller groups.

Here’s Deb, during a break…

It really was a perfect day, cool enough temperatures to ride, slowly warming up as we went…

When we got to Bollinger Canyon Rd, we had one more pow wow.

photo: Debra Baida

The plan was ride down the big suburban boulevard but take a right turn before the Chevron gate and loop around the block, so we would come out heading right towards the front gate for maximum effect. Instead of stopping there, we would turn left while hooting and hollering, then reconvene at the trail head and do the same thing again.

Off we went, into automobile central!

photo: Debra Baida

Deb peeled off at the intersection, so she could catch a photo of us as we got to the intersection right across from Chevron. Stopped at the red light, ready to go!

photo: Debra Baida

We could see Amazon Watch’s awesome gigantic pink slip for Watson across the street.

photo: Debra Baida

And here we come!!!!

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

And again!

Mark DuFrene/Bay Area News Group

It was about 9.30am and people representing all kinds of groups had been there since shareholders arrived at 7.30am. The mood was great and there were people everywhere.

Chevron makes sure that on this particular day nobody gets to step on their property marked by a line on the pavement. There were tons of cops enforcing that line, plus making sure nobody was in the street.

Police making sure I don’t cross the street illegally.

photo: Kirstin Miller

That pretty much leaves the sidewalks. Glen & TLP parked themselves across the street…

Everyone was just crammed onto the sidewalk…

photo: Debra Baida

I started taking some pics of the people who had come out. The ones calling attention to Chevron’s dirty money in politics, like MoveOn and Public Citizen, were getting the attention of commuters…

Amazon Watch had brought 70 hazmat suits calling attention to the incredible pollution Chevron has caused in the Amazon…

and the lovely women from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network had a lot to say about Chevron’s safety and pollution record at the Richmond refinery.

The stage was on the little raised green space, which I guess must still be part of the public sidewalk. Polly Rich of 350 Contra Costa gave an impassioned speech about the potential of solar and geothermal energy, with Amazon Watch’s Adam Zuckerman behind her in a hazmat suit.

Then I got to say a few words about how Chevron’s business model is not only an utter human and environmental disaster but a very short-sighted and downright stupid long-term strategy.

photo: Kirstin Miller

At around 10am shareholders started to come out, and I’m sure they were pretty surprised at this reception. I think there were about 200 people waving and hollering.

Right at the front entrance, an impromptu press conference got started, with folks like Servio Curipoma, a community representative from the indigenous communities suffering the effects of reckless oil explorations in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and Dr. Henry Clark, a fighter for environmental justice from Richmond for over 30 years, telling us how CEO Watson basically blew them all off.

Here is Servio with a photo of his deceased mother and a bottle of “Chevron Water” from his native land he had dared Mr. Watson to drink, before being told by the billionaire CEO that he was being manipulated by greedy lawyers. (with RPA’s Andres Soto, his translator Alex Goff, Dr. Clark, and Amazon Watch’s Adam Zuckerman & Atossa Soltani).

photo: Amazon Watch

With that, we got back on our bikes and rode the Iron Horse Trail for the second time that day, but this time TLO was leading the way.

I’ll leave you with a quote from TLO that sums it up quite nicely…

“I enjoyed the ride, I never rode 12 miles before. I think I did pretty good for the first time. I like the idea of Bike The Math because Chevron is polluting. I watched a video yesterday (ChevronToxico) and Chevron said that the oily water was full of vitamins of minerals, but here are some facts: it can cause cancer, death, severe illnesses causing amputation, and birth defects. Thank you for inviting us, Sven Eberlein.”

No, thank YOU, TLO, knowing that you rode with us gives me hope for the future.

I wrote about how this all came about in Don’t just count the carbon, BIKE THE MATH!.

But really, what makes this story so powerful is how it highlights how everything is connected and how this one mega oil company represents all that is wrong with the way things are. From greed, shortsightedness and exploitation to political corruption, externalized costs, environmental destruction and social injustice, Chevron is one of those entities that are at the core of a planet out of balance with all the pain and suffering that entails.

So here are the specs for our bike ride tomorrow, and below some impressions from today’s press conference that brought together a powerful coalition of people who will be gathering in- and outside tomorrow’s shareholder meeting to hold this rogue behemoth accountable for its actions and bring attention to the true cost of Chevron.

Bike the Math to Chevron’s shareholders at their Annual General Meeting in San Ramon. Let’s tell Chevron to stop fueling climate chaos and become a renewable energy company!

When: Wednesday, May 29th
Where: Dublin/Pleasanton BART, 8am
What: Light to medium 6 mile ride to Chevron Headquarters in San Ramon along Iron Horse Trail, arriving at approximately 9am

RSVP at 350BayArea.org or join Facebook Event page

Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, CA talked about Chevron’s unwillingness to take responsibility in the aftermath of a fire at Chevron’s Richmond, California refinery that sent 15,000 people to the hospital. Rather than fix the aging pipes in their refinery and address worker’s rights issues in Richmond, Chevron is dumping millions of dollars into local elections to install their cronies on the Richmond City Council.

McLaughlin said they finally had to establish a deadline for Chevron to compensate the city for the damage from the refinery fire, because of continued stonewalling by the company.

Next up, a powerful and emotional moment.

Servio Curipoma, a community representative from the indigenous communities suffering the effects of reckless oil explorations in the Ecuadorian Amazon, lost both his parents to cancer from the pollution caused by Chevron, then Texaco. Over three decades of oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforest, leaving local people suffering a wave of cancers, miscarriages and birth defects.

Here Servio holds a photo of the oil wells, from photo journalist Lou Dematteis’ book Crude Reflections. (Also check out my post EcoJustice: Coming to Ecuador, with or without Chevron, with many of Lou’s heartbreaking photos)

He told the story of how Chevron wanted to move the lawsuit to Ecuador because they thought they could easily bribe the judges, but since they lost the lawsuit they have refused to pay the $19 billions in reparations they owe and engaged 60 law firms, thousands of lawyers and billions of dollars to fight the judgement against them.

Here Servio holds up a photo of his mother saying “This is my mothers’s struggle and as her son I will never give up. Not just for my mother but for everyone who suffers in the Amazon.”

Next up was Shoshana Wechsler, who was representing the non-profit corporate reform group Public Citizen and warned about Chevron’s historically large and possibly illegal meddling in elections post Citizens United. She talked about Green Century Capital Management’s shareholder resolution asking Chevron to refrain from all election-related spending. ”They have an awful lot invested in the status quo: massive tax breaks and subsidies and full assurance that investigations into environmental violations will be friendly, not to forget their hefty government contracts,” Wechsler said.

Then it was my turn to talk about Chevron’s role in accelerating climate change by subscribing to the untenable business model of burning as much fossil fuel as quickly as possible. I pointed out that not only is it completely irresponsible for Chevron to follow through on their business plan and wreck the planet for short-term profit, but that is actually a bad business plan.

With an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars due to the fact that at least two-thirds of their oil reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change, they should really be shifting toward renewable energy right now. The fact that they aren’t only shows that they are putting all their stock into and are actively lobbying for inaction on those targets, which is simply morally reprehensible. Bike the Math is trying to give them positive reinforcement to do the right thing, for all of our future, including Chevron’s.

Then it was Dr. Henry Clark’s turn. Dr. Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition has been a presence at Chevron’s Richmond gates for over 30 years, fighting for environmental justice for his community. He pointed to an Environmental Justice Executive Order passed during the Clinton administration protecting low-income communities and minority communities from bearing a disproportionate burden of modern industrial life, saying that his community was already carrying a disproportionate burden when that order was passed and that they’re going to fight tooth and nail Chevron’s planned refinery expansion to process dirty crude disguised as an “upgrade” to the refinery.

Closing the press briefing was Garo Manjikian, legislative advocate for CALPIRG, giving another look into Chevron’s expansion in the political arena with its largest ever super PAC contribution given by a publicly traded company, putting themselves at the vanguard of a new level of corporate interference with elections.

So, as you can see, Chevron really embodies all that is wrong and ill with our system, and the only way to change them and thus the system is to get out there and make our voices heard. There’s nothing they fear more than having their corporate bullyhood challenged by democracy, so that’s why I’m getting on my bike tomorrow in solidarity with the brave people who are asking shareholders to fire Chevron CEO John Watson, and to bring my own renewable message to San Ramon.

My buddy and fellow Bike the Math organizer Bill Pinkham’s bike sums it all up…

As they say, let’s roll!

Bike the Math to Chevron’s shareholders at their Annual General Meeting in San Ramon. Let’s tell Chevron to stop fueling climate chaos and become a renewable energy company!

When: Wednesday, May 29th
Where: Dublin/Pleasanton BART, 8am
What: Light to medium 6 mile ride to Chevron Headquarters in San Ramon along Iron Horse Trail, arriving at approximately 9am

RSVP at 350BayArea.org or join Facebook Event page

The Iron Horse Trail from Pleasanton to San Ramon

It’s easy to despair these days. If the terrifying math of global warming hasn’t put you in a paralyzing funk, the imminent Arctic ice death spiral surely will. The numbers are daunting — 350 parts per million is what climate scientists say is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere, and this month levels surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. The numbers, frankly, are very overwhelming, and coping mechanisms can range from screaming into the computer screen to throwing your hands up in the air and tuning out altogether.

When I interviewed Bill McKibben on his Do the Math tour last November, I thought my main contribution to the Herculean efforts to get us all collectively off the dangerous fossil-fueled path was to keep writing about possible solutions, highlighting the many ongoing efforts, from renewable energy developments to zero waste to simple living to sustainable urban design ideas.

It’s not that I will stop doing that, but talking to Bill made me realize that I had to step up my game. I needed to get out of my comfort zone, defy myself, and take a stand, because if we’re serious about making the big changes needed to keep this planet from frying, the one thing we cannot do is stay the same, both in our heads and in the world.

When somebody asked in the Q&A after his Do the Math talk what we in the Bay Area could do specifically to stop or at least slow the fossil madness, Bill encouraged people to pressure their universities and cities to divest from fossil fuel companies, which is now happening all over the country. It was the next thing he said, however, that made a lightbulb go off in my head. “You should all go to Chevron’s shareholder meeting in San Ramon and tell them to become an energy company instead of an oil company” made a lot of sense to me.

However, I thought we could really drive home the point if a bunch of people rode in on their bicycles to relay that message. Why not bike the math to Chevron, I thought.

I mentioned the Bike the Math idea at the very end of my post, and a day later Janet Stromberg from 350BayArea.org invited me to come to their general meeting. Turns out they had just formed a Chevron Watch campaign and the folks running it thought biking the math to the annual general meeting was a really good idea. We started meeting at the office of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a group that has been fighting Chevron for years over their dirty refinery that is polluting local communities. Next, groups like West County Toxics Coalition, Communities for a Better Environment, and Asian Pacific Environmental Network (who graciously provided another meeting space) joined.

Things really took shape when Adam Zuckerman and Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch, a group that has been arranging for members of indigenous communities in Ecuador to speak at Chevron shareholder meetings for years, joined our meetings. They told us what goes on inside the shareholder meeting and what to expect outside, welcoming our efforts to draw attention to Chevron’s irresponsible business practices and lend moral support for shareholders willing to speak out.

More recently, we found out that groups as diverse as U.S. PIRG, Common Dreams and Tri-Valley Moveon are planning to be there, bringing attention to Chevron’s $2.5 million contribution to the Congressional Leadership Fund and promoting the Green Century resolution directing Chevron to refrain from spending corporate funds to influence electoral politics in the wake of Citizens United.

The True Cost of Chevron

In a way, Chevron represents all that is wrong with our economic, political, social, business, environmental philosophies, but I think there are some upsides to that. For one, it reminds us how all those things are connected and it speaks to the same larger imbalance and injustice within which these corporations are allowed to thrive, offering an opportunity for a larger movement to grow around the various issues.

Even more importantly, it shows that the solutions are interrelated. If Chevron were to shift its business towards renewable energy, it wouldn’t have to drill in fragile ecosystems near indigenous communities or refine ever more oil in aging refineries. Likewise, if Chevron were to become a Benefit Corporation, it would care about the above, plus take the investment bubble in fossil fuels seriously and heed reports suggesting that markets are now overlooking the risk of unburnable carbon.

I’m not naive enough to think that Chevron will become a Benefit Corporation or renewable energy company any time soon, because this is the oil executives’ thinking we’re up against:

Charlie Rose: Whether it’s Alaska or offshore or wherever it may be, is your philosophy “Drill, baby, drill!?”

Rex Tillerson, CEO ExxonMobil: No. My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, then that’s what I want to do. For us, it’s about making quality investments for our shareholders. And it’s not a quality investment if you can’t manage the risk around it.

But I do know what the solutions are and that they’re 100% reachable, so if enough of us start speaking out and pushing the ones stuck in the old patterns to do what’s right, then I think we have a fighting chance to change the entire paradigm.

That’s why I’ll be Biking the Math to Chevron on May 29th, and I hope you will join me.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors Unanimously Pass Fossil Fuel Divestment Resolution urging the city’s retirement system to divest over $583 million from the fossil fuel industry

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFERS) passed a unanimous resolution this afternoon calling on the San Francisco Employee Retirement System to divest over $583 million invested in the 200 corporations that hold the majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves.

The resolution makes San Francisco the third city in the nation after Ithaca and Seattle to push for fossil fuel divestment. If the SFERS Board agrees to the Supervisors’ request, it will become the largest pension fund in the country to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Celebrate good times, come on!

I wrote about this more in-depth yesterday, when it wasn’t altogether clear that this gutsy resolution, introduced by Supervisor John Avalos who said that “divestment is an important part of our city response to climate change,” would pass.

But today, at around 2.30pm in Room 244 at City Hall, after about a 20 minute discussion among the supervisors, the resolution to divest 8.7% of holdings in its Employee’s Retirement System from fossil fuels and reinvest in sustainable alternatives like clean energy and local energy retrofits, was passed unanimously.

The San Francisco Employee’s Retirement System (SFERS) is a roughly $16 billion pension fund that serves more than 52,000 active and retired employees of the City and County of San Francisco and their survivors. According to SFERS Executive Director Jay Huish, the fund currently owns $583.7 million of public holdings in 91 of top 200 fossil fuel companies. Some of SFERS’ largest fossil fuel holdings include $112 million in ExxonMobil, $60 million in Chevron, $26 million in Shell Oil, $17 million in Occidental Petroleum, and $11 million in the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

District 11 Supervisor and sponsor of the resolution, John Avalos, said in his introduction that it is possible to divest with little risk and that in fact fossil-free portfolios do better, as pointed out in the hearing by investment advisors from the Aperio Group and Green Alpha. He pointed to a recent article in The Guardian warning that the carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis.

The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.

Supervisor Jane Kim, one of the more skeptical members of the board, said that while she had initial concerns she was very happy to support the resolution after reading a lot of the data that made it clear this was going to be not only a wise environmental but a solid financial decision. She said that a lot of thoughtfulness had gone into this important statement for the city.

This is Supervisor Kim’s — excuse the pun — money quote:

More than just make a statement, we’re making a statement with our dollars.

Below the fold, a few more quotes from various Supervisors, as I heard them from the seating area.

District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar pointed out that San Francisco has long been a leader in addressing climate change and that the over half a billion dollars that are currently going to fossil fuel companies should be invested in the safety of the community and the public good.

A recent report by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission found that a 55-inch sea level rise by the end of the century would put $62 billion of Bay Area shoreline development at risk and require at least $14 billion worth of static structures to protect California’s shorelines.

District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee said that it is important for SF as a city to make a statement on climate change, and this is a very thoughtful resolution.

District 4 Supervisor Katy Tang noted that this is the largest divestment in the history of SF to date (as well as for the fossil free divestment movement). She felt that it is risky and that it makes her a bit uneasy, but she supports this resolution because it’s the right thing to do.

District 9 Supervisor David Campos called it a prudent and responsible investment, using the power of money to change corporate behavior.

District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen, who is also the board’s appointee to the retirement board, said that this would be a thoughtful but long divestment process and that she is looking forward to communicating with both boards to make it happen smoothly and responsibly.

Supervisor John Avalos made it a point to thank the tireless efforts of 350.org for all the work they have done in inspiring this divestment movement in cities and universities across the nation.

Then it was time for the vote, and….

Resolution passed UNANIMOUSLY

It’s a good day in the City by the Bay!

crossposted at Daily Kos

The bad news is that this is going to be a very close call, as divesting 8.7% of holdings in its Employee’s Retirement System is a big deal, even for a city government known for its pioneering spirit and progressive values.

The good news is that if you are a San Francisco resident you can send a quick message to the Board of Supervisors today to make your voice heard in support of divestment. They do read them and numbers matter, especially to supervisors that might be on the fence about this.

This is where the action will be tomorrow morning, and I know that Bill, Jamie and the rest of the 350.org gang will be watching closely. If you’re not a SF resident writing a letter you can still send some big love and abracadabra vibes towards this place mañana…

Below, some more thoughts and pics from the hearing a couple of weeks ago when Supervisor John Avalos introduced the resolution that urges the retirement board to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest in sustainable alternatives: clean energy, local energy retrofits, and more.

Remember, it’s San Francisco, anything can happen!

On April 10 hearing, Supervisor Avalos introduced the Resolution urging the Retirement Board of the Employees’ Retirement System to divest from publicly-traded fossil fuel companies (file #130123):

The San Francisco Employee’s Retirement System should immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuels, and divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.

Over 50 students, doctors, indigenous leaders, investment advisors, environmentalists, and everyday San Francisco residents turned out for this budget committee hearing to push for divestment.

Room 244 at City Hall was packed and sizzling, something you don’t see to often at ordinary hearings. In fact, there was a bunch of city business on the agenda, but when Supervisor Avalos at one point asked who was there for the divestment introduction, every single person in the room raised their hand.

Supervisor Avalos, a very smart and eloquent representative who understands the deeper causes and ramifications of climate change, made the case not only that as a coastal city San Francisco is extremely vulnerable to rising sea-levels costing billions of dollars in infrastructure and property damages, but that the city who prides itself in being visionary and bold has a moral obligation to be an early adopter of the divestment strategy, making it easier for others to follow. Avalos also mentioned the divestment campaigns of tobacco and Apartheid in the 90s as examples of successful campaigns that nobody thought possible at the time.

Next up was Jamie Henn of 350.org, one of the official experts testifying, making a strong moral argument for divestment as well as a tight financial case.

Investment advisors from the Aperio Group explained how divestment would increase portfolio risk by such an insignificant amount that it was basically just background noise. Garvin Jabusch from Green Alpha Advisors showed the benefits of investing in a green economy. Aside from the fact that it is morally wrong to profit from wrecking the planet, a key argument was that investing in fossil fuel companies is investing backwards, as their portfolios will inevitably become less valuable once carbon emissions become more strictly regulated and their true cost apparent. Jabusch pointed out that fossil fuel portfolios might become so risky in the future that they will become subprime assets.

Jay Huish, Executive Director of the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, gave a rundown of the total fossil fuel holdings in the city’s current retirement plan. He said that the city is currently invested in 81 out of the Top 200 fossil fuel companies, constituting $528 million of the city’s $8.6 billion in public holdings, or $8.7. He didn’t want to answer Supervisor Avalos’ question as to how quickly those $528 million could be divested, but indicated that they would and could do it if the city gave that mandate.

Then it was time for the public to step to the mic, and boy, did they ever.

Rebecca Solnit, SF native and author extraordinaire, warned about the instability represented by fossil fuels and pointed out the importance of getting on the right side of history early. She thought a miracle was possible, but only if we are courageous enough to break our bad habits.

Person after person stepped up to the podium, urging their city to show the same early adopter courage and moral compass on divestment that it demonstrated on gay marriage or zero waste. It was really quite heartening, and in the end Supervisor Avalos skillfully maneuvered around a much more skeptical Supervisor Mark Farrell to bring the resolution before the full Board of Supervisors. And that day is tomorrow.

As Jamie Henn writes:

This new divestment movement is already making a big impact: over 300 colleges and universities have joined the campaign and more than 100 cities and towns are now running local petitions. Getting San Francisco to move towards divestment would be a game-changer, but it’s only going to happen if we all pitch in.

If you’re in SF, please send a letter to the Supervisors today!

The planet thanks you!

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o

According to the SFMTA, there are now almost 40 companies running these shuttles with over two hundred stops across the city. Google alone runs over 100 buses and 380 trips daily across the Bay Area, which has earned them the honor of being the poster child for the luxury liner phenomenon. However, the trend was first started about 7 years ago by some of the more established biotech companies in South San Francisco like Genentech. It wasn’t really a big deal when there were just a handful, but the last two years has seen such a rapid explosion of these behemoths into our neighborhood streets that it feels a bit like an invasive species.

Most of these buses are anonymous entities that often make everything and everyone else dwarf in comparison and clog up the streets…

but some of them are a bit more ostentatious in their destination…

They load and unload in the public transit (MUNI) bus stops, and quite frequently just double-park right in an intersection.

Two deep, about to unload “customers,” cars honking and pulling dangerous maneuvers to get past.

They are pretty much everywhere now, even on Valencia St, which has been transformed into a bicycle highway and people friendly walking corridor in recent years, but as a cyclist during rush hour you now have to contend with these guys turning on and off at random intersections. I guess this is one way to get big corporate billboards into a neighborhood that prides itself on protecting its small local merchants from chain store invasions.

There are some much touted benefits of reducing automobile trips on Bay Area roads, and I definitely appreciate and applaud the good intentions behind these buses, but as someone who has written quite a bit about sustainable urban design, these buses, while addressing one small transportation sliver of the whole livable city ecosystem, raise a whole range of other social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues that are basically being treated as externalities by the people who are enabling the flooding of these private “yachts on wheels” deep into city neighborhoods, without much public discussion.

SPUR’s description of the panel had me excited because I thought it would delve into some of the broader ramifications of this transformation:

Those big buses are tough to miss. As employer shuttles sprout up across the Bay Area, what do they tell us about our region, its workers and its employers? What are the benefits and challenges that accompany their increasing presence? This forum will take a closer look at how and why some employers manage worker transportation.

Alas, it did not live up to its billing, and my hope is that this letter will spark further discussion and perhaps another panel where this issue can be addressed on a more meaningful level, perhaps inspiring more integrative solutions to the unsustainable way of life we’ve created for ourselves.

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~

Dear SPUR,

Thank you so much for putting together the panel on the corporate limousine buses with the folks from Google, Genentech, RidePal, and SFMTA today. I appreciate you trying to address this new phenomenon that is so rapidly changing our city and our neighborhoods, giving us a chance to listen to Daniel McCoy, Brendon Harrington, Dominic Haigh, and Carli Paine’s side of the story.

That said, I felt that the way this panel was set up and the treatment of the topic was pretty shallow and far from integrative thinking. Right off the bat, Ms. Paine, who I suppose was the lone representative of the public interest on the panel, proclaimed that the discussion would be limited to transportation issues exclusively, not about any social concerns that may be arising from what Mr. Haigh coined the “collaborative consumption for corporate commuter shuttles.”

With all due respect, but for anyone who has seriously thought about livable cities and sustainable urban planning, having thousands of wealthy young professionals (and growing) escorted en masse into vibrant, often working class neighborhoods in supersized luxury coaches is more than a transportation issue. I say this partly as a concerned Guerrero Street resident who has seen the neighborhood I have lived in for over 15 years morph into a pricy boutique destination over the last couple of years — coinciding with the ascent of “The Google Bus” — but also as a core advisor of the International Ecocity Framework & Standards Initiative that outlines 15 diverse conditions that need to be addressed for any city to consider itself ecologically healthy.

5 of these 15 conditions fall into the socio-cultural category, from an equitable economy to community capacity building, and that is no coincidence. Pretty much anyone who has seriously thought about environmental issues in the last 10-20 years knows that solving the problems of climate change and resource depletion are as much, if not more, about social, economic and justice issues as they are about counting carbon or taking a few cars off the road without looking at the effects on people and the commons. There is a reason why the UN has put all its climate change and environmental policies within a sustainable development frame: you cannot solve environmental problems without addressing poverty, inequity, social injustice, and the well being of the most vulnerable among us.

In the context of The Google Bus, what does it say about these companies that they’re so fixated on reaching 30, 40, or 50% customer rates (Yes, both Mr. McCoy and Mr. Harrington kept referring to their employees as “customers”) while rents and housing prices in the neighborhoods that they’re encouraging and actively recruiting their “customers” to live in have risen by the same percentages, if not more (I see small 2 bedroom apartments rent for $4000 a month on my street, and the 1100 sqft condo next door is currently on the market for $900,000 (update 5/6/13: the condo sold for $1.2 million), with literally hundreds of buyers lining up). Perhaps even more puzzling to me is that the city, who is supposed to be serving its residents and not “customers” from corporations headquartered in the suburbs (presumably because it is so much cheaper for them than to operate in the city), is bending over backwards to accommodate these private luxury liners on its public streets.

Muni meets The Google Bus.

During the Q&A, we were basically told that there is nothing that can stop the rapid expansion of even more buses on more streets. The suggestion that maybe there could be only 10 pick-up and drop-off points was quickly dismissed by Mr. McCoy, who openly admitted that his only concern was with the growth of his private enterprise that would suffer if his “customers” did no longer have the convenience of door to door limo service. Furthermore, the suggestion that perhaps Google build a thriving ecovillage on their campus or invest in making Mountain View more livable pretty much got a non-response. The question whether these corporations should pay the city fees/taxes for road maintenance and using Muni stops wasn’t asked, but it would be an interesting one.

Basically, the Googles and Facebooks of the world are going to keep using San Francisco as a recruiting tool to attract the brightest and most expensive minds in the world but will invest nothing in any kind of public infrastructure to support civic life beyond their own corporate interest. The message here seems to be, tough luck for the old-time residents, the artistic and cultural backbone of the Mission, who are the very reason all the young and hip tech wizards want to move here in the first place; don’t worry about all the traffic every morning and evening, backed up behind growing fleets of diesel-spewing behemoths loading and unloading throngs of headset-clad twenty somethings staring into their gadgets, you’ll soon be priced out of the neighborhood anyway.

New kids on the block, waiting for The Bus.

I can understand the very narrow and self-serving motivations of these corporations — they are, after all, primarily in the business of making money. I don’t even question their good intentions in terms of wanting to reduce their carbon footprint. I just don’t think they’re quite as smart as they think they are, as their thinking seems to be painfully linear rather than rooted in a deeper whole systems analysis. And even their single-minded focus on transportation is not really yielding the kind of success their powerpoints claim, seeing that last year the Bay Area was one of the worst three congested urban areas in the U.S., on par with L.A.

I have a much harder time though understanding why the city is so single-handedly fixated on transportation stats instead of looking at sustainability from a broader cultural and socio-economic perspective, and why SPUR would fail to get anyone with a deeper knowledge of urban development on this panel. It feels like nothing was resolved at all, and the conclusion of the event was that this is just the way things are and how they’re going to be in the future, just more of it with better apps.

Not to sound too NIMBY about it, but for me as a long-time Mission resident with a starving artist income, that means not only more tinted-window buses double parked outside my house, but more expensive restaurants, more boutique shops I can’t afford, and never being able to move again if I want to continue to live in my city. As far as the highly touted reductions in CO2 from the corporate commuter buses, has anyone at Google ever done an analysis of the type of carbon footprint that comes with the expendable income of someone who can afford a million dollars for a tiny condo? Imagine all the stuff people with a million bucks can and will buy, and the fossil fuels burned to manufacture and ship it. That’s the kind of question I would like to hear addressed on a panel like this.

My hope would be that this discussion could be continued and broadened, talking about the broader social, environmental, and economic effects, a discussion about the meaning of the commons and shared civic responsibilities, the class division between the lavish luxury buses and scrappy old muni buses, the effects of the buses on Caltrain and other public transit, and other things of a more meaningful holistic nature. For example, why not invite someone like author and San Francisco native Rebecca Solnit, who has written a very eloquent critique about the socio-cultural and economic ramifications of The Google Bus? Or perhaps BART Board Director Tom Radulovich who could offer some very valuable livable city insights?

Just some thoughts from a concerned citizen and resident.

Sincerely,
Sven Eberlein

Update, 6/17/2013:

Commenter ML decided to write the Transportation Manager at Google, Kevin Mathy. Below is the response he received, adding “I am going to follow up with the SFMTA but I think the response really says it all.”

In fact, there was a certain artistry and synergy in the sequence of the three places that were calling me that I couldn’t help but think of my day as a triptych, the 3-paneled format often used in photography, stringing together separate images that are variants on a theme.

Under the broader themes that could perhaps best be summed up as SOIL ∞ SOCIAL ∞ SURVIVAL, here’s my visual interpretation of the day, captioned by the event links, and some more thoughts and photos of the journey below.

The Great Compost Giveaway || “B” Socially Responsible || Climate Ride

First Frame: Soil

The Great Compost Giveaway – BYOB (Bring Your Own Bucket)

San Francisco, Calif., (April 6, 2013) – Today, Recology hosted the Great Compost Giveaway as a thank you to San Francisco residents for participating in the curbside compost collection program and for helping San Francisco move one step closer towards achieving Zero Waste by 2020. Drawing thousands of San Francisco residents, Recology handed out over 15 truckloads of nutrient-rich planting mix made from the City’s food scraps.

While I personally don’t have a garden to grow food in, I’m a big lover of all things soil and compost. It’s probably a combination of my seed trader ancestry, a deep interest in my city’s kickass zero waste initiative, the potential for compost not only to be the solution in restoring soil and agriculture but in sequestering carbon, as well as my artistic fascination with the underground as a metaphor for the human soul and the potential for transformation.

So when my city and its worker-owned (zero) waste management company Recology are hosting their annual compost fest where each resident gets 5 gallons of free gourmet planting soil made from their own food scraps, I have to be there just to see the joy of so many dots being connected.

Through the curbside compost collection program, residents have composted more than 1.2 million tons of food scraps, plant trimmings and other compostable materials, keeping the material out of landfill, reducing methane emissions, and returning nutrients to local farms. Used at more than 200 farms and vineyards throughout the Bay Area, SF compost is one of the most nutrient-rich soil amendments in the country due to its very diverse feed stock-rich food scraps.

I mean, just look at this stuff, it’s luscious and will put a smile on anyone’s face!

In some ways, the smile tells an even bigger story than the numbers. There is something about digging your hands in this luscious source of life that connects us on a deep level to who we truly are: parts of a magnificent interconnected organism rooted in an eternal web of give and take. We are in this together, and there’s something about your food scraps coming back in the form of plant nutrients that also brings us closer to each other and our community.

All in all, Recology volunteers handed out over 15 truckloads of compost at three locations throughout the city. Let’s just call it Soil Pride!

The spirit of camaraderie and community was the perfect energy to carry us into our next frame of the day…

Second Frame: Social

“B” Socially Responsible Conference

This year, i-Immersion, the B Lab, and Lokey GSB Net Impact Chapter at Mills College are co-hosting and recognizing the wide array of successful business enterprises that pride themselves in embracing the concept of “using the power of business to make a social change.” Come join over 200 Bay Area business professionals and students in the First Annual “B” Socially Responsible Conference as we explore prospects in the dynamic fields of technology, education, finance and community development.

No matter how hard I try to be a tree-hugging, lovey dovey ecomuse, every time I dig a little deeper into any given environmental issue, the ultimate obstacle in creating an ecologically balanced and sustainable solution almost always turns out to be the shortsightedness of capitalism as we know it and its soulless corporate entities whose only measure of success is quarterly profits.

For example, you wonder why it is that despite all the known benefits of urban composting, from restoring soils and boosting organic agriculture to reducing waste and methane emissions, the national composting rate in the U.S. for food scraps in 2010 was a dismal 3%. Well, the simple answer is that filling up landfills is the most profitable business from a short-term perspective. Just as Chevron and Exxon can continue to get filthy rich by burning every drop of oil they’re sitting on as quickly as possible, garbage giants like Waste Management Inc. make their biggest profit margins by throwing as much garbage in a hole in the ground as fast as they can.

In other words, if your only raison d’être is to maximize your shareholders’ quarterly profits, you’re going to indiscriminately throw everything in big, greenhouse gas-emitting piles until the whole damn planet looks like a scene out of Wall-E.

This is the reason why building a movement of companies whose mission is beyond their immediate bottom line is so crucial if we’d like to keep any hope of a livable planet for future generations. It’s why companies like Recology that are willing to make the long-term investments in state-of-the-art composting facilities and transition from being a garbage company to a resource recovery and waste zero company are so important, not only to reduce waste but to show that it can be done and pressure inspire others to follow suit.

Imagine if one of the big oil companies said,

“After careful consideration we have decided to shift from being an oil company to being an energy company. This is not only in the best long-term interest of our shareholders, but of all stakeholders, from land and people affected by ever more dangerous oil exploitation and communities affected by refinery pollution to life on earth itself that is increasingly endangered by climate disruption from CO2 emissions.”

That, in essence, is what B Corps are about, and the central theme at the “B” Socially Responsible Conference at Mills College was how companies and people can think bigger than this sidewalk stamp we found on our way to the Business Building…

Note: B Corp is a voluntary third-party assessment, like USDA Organic or Fair Trade, verifying a company’s social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability on an ongoing basis. It is frequently confused with Benefit Corporation, a legal designation like C Corp or LLC that redefines a corporation’s modus operandi to include non-financial interests and relieves it of its obligation to maximize shareholder profits. They really embody the same spirit of creating a material positive impact on society and the environment, but Benefit Corp status legally relieves a company of its obligation to maximize shareholder profits. I wrote about Benefit Corp legislation in The Start of a Revolution and California’s New Triple Bottom Line.

There were a lot of great people and companies, from Ed Rainey of Back to the Roots urban mushroom farm and Carolyn McMaster of Thinkshift Communications (one of California’s first Benefit Corporations) to representatives from the nation’s fastest growing residential solar company, Sungevity.

The highlight was keynote speaker Gary Barker, founder of Ditto Sustainable Brand Solutions. Gary is the guy who came up with the brilliant cardboard hanger idea and has changed an entire industry in the process, from hangers as disposable commodities that clog up landfills to beautiful recyclable or compostable marketing tools.

Aside from being just an all around fun, smart and awesome dude, Gary has a gift of communicating why it is so important for manufacturers and businesses to think in whole systems and consider the entire life cycle of their product from beginning to end.

And before even getting to any product, Gary asked a question that could solve so many of the world’s problems if it were seriously explored by a majority of businesses and consumers…

Gary talked about how a growing world population and rising consumption are putting such stress on resources that we’ll soon be running out of many materials like precious metals, mining landfills because we’re so wasteful. With that knowledge, it was clear to him as a product designer that he had to think about end-of-life issues before ever picking up a pen, and that includes a trip to the landfill for all his employees. Bringing the question of what happens to a product after its use to the forefront completely reverses the design sequence.

As he was trying to convince big garment manufacturers like Nike, Disney, Adidas, and The Gap to change from their tried and true practice of using toxic and non-recyclable plastic hangers, Gary realized that he was reinventing the very meaning of “product.” Ditto Hangers weren’t just a commodity defying gravity, but powerful messengers speaking for the multi-faceted value inherent in their very design. It’s when he realized that he’d moved out of the hanger business to be a value company.

We’re not making things, we’re building values.

- Gary Barker.

That in a nutshell is who B Corps are and what they do: thinking outside your own little profit box to bring to light a whole range of other values that are eminently more meaningful to our existence and enjoyment as human beings on planet Earth.

Speaking of “existence” and “planet Earth,” this brings me to the third and final leg of the day…

Third Frame: Survival

Climate Ride Fun-Raiser

Join us as we raise a glass and spin some vinyl to raise some funds for our ‘B the Change‘ cycling team who will be riding their bikes from the top of California down to San Francisco to support organizations fighting climate change.

It was only fitting that my day would culminate at an event directly addressing the threat of climate change, a “fun-raiser” for a 5-day Climate Ride down the California coast to raise funds for bike advocacy and organizations working toward a sustainable future. To me, climate change is a bit like the wholesale term embodying everything that is out of whack in our human thinking and manifest in our actions, including but not limited to the first two frames of the day.

In turn, I also think that there isn’t one big holy grail of a fix for climate change, but a whole host of solutions to be found in the social, economic, political, and conscious mosaic of our human interactions and aspirations. Put in the context of the first two frames on the triptych, if we can evolve our mental and physical relationship with the natural and material world, we’ll also be cooling the planet. If we can expand our very rigid and limited idea of economic success, we will need fewer fossil fuels to function and thrive.

Everything is connected, and the more people become conscious of this expansive web of cause and effect we find ourselves in, the quicker we’ll be able to build the kinds of systems that enable us to operate sustainably within its tapestry.

It struck me as quite symbolic then just how connected my evening was to my afternoon. It was, after all, Team B Lab, the non-profit that certifies B Corps, who was getting ready to pedal for a cooler planet and asking me to party down at Luscious Garage, a women-owned and operated auto care center for hybrids, and a Certified B Corp. After we got home from Mills College, I hopped on my bike and pedaled over to their SOMA location.

Of course, you’re now dying to see what a party at an auto shop that is also an art gallery, a classroom, and a community meeting space looks like…

Can’t go without some deep DJ beats and an interactive light show testing out for Burning Man 2013!

Steven Norman Long, whose beautiful voice I usually hear at the 24th St BART station, played an acoustic set…

Slide show in the corner between the VW vanagon and the old sports car…

As my B Lab connections Dermot Hikisch and Andy Fyfe described it perfectly in their invitation: “No speeches, heck no business cards, just good brew, cocktails, and music, with Bay Area B Corps and friends to gather for a good cause in a spectacular venue!”

Reprise

As daunting as the issue of climate change is, one may be tempted to question the seriousness of this kind of event. Like…

Shouldn’t there be gloomy speeches about how screwed we are?

The fact that you’re probably getting a good chuckle out of that line shows that deep down I think we all know we have to summon the courage to be full of joy, hope and compassion, no matter how difficult things might get. Not to build a wall of denial or to create a false sense of positivity, but because our very survival depends on whether we can find ways to work together more closely, to listen to one another, to be more connected to our surroundings, to help each other out, and to spread that sense of community and togetherness as widely as possible.

For just as the stored energy from million year-old fossils has afforded us unprecedented independence, it seems that the smartest strategy to thrive in a world of shrinking fossil fuels is the fearless and conscious practice of interdependence. And the only way you can build that kind of trust in each other is to dance, sing, and laugh together.

With that, here are my triptych conclusions:

• Fighting climate change is as much about learning to love and trust each other as it is about cutting carbon.
• B Corp certification is as much about shifting our collective values of what’s important as it is about scoring 80 points on the Impact Assessment.
• Composting gifts us more than good nutrients and less waste — it presents us with the opportunity to shake the hands that feed us.

That last one is exactly how I ended my night — with a slider and a chat at the Fuki food truck parked in front of the Luscious Garage.

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~
all photos by sven eberlein
As so often, much impetus and companionship provided by my partner-in-muse, Debra Baida.
crossposted at daily kos