Oakland Energy & Climate Action Plan

Public Workshop ~ December 11, 2008

The City of Oakland Public Works Agency (PWA) had its first public workshop to identify, evaluate, and prioritize actions it can take to becoming a model sustainable city. The city intends to do this by reducing and optimizing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The PWA, under direction of a sustainability coordinator, is drafting an Energy and Climate Action Plan (ECAP) that will be submitted to the Oakland City Council to clarify its policy and recommend priority actions.

The stages of the process include initial public input, early research and analysis, setting targets and objectives, plan development, plan presentation, and a comment period. The second public workshop will be in Spring 2009, with a goal of presenting the ECAP to the City Council in Fall 2009.

During the first meeting, the attendees were asked for input in four areas:

1. What do you see as the main purposes and benefits for Oakland by addressing climate change locally?
2. What should the City consider in deciding which greenhouse gas reduction actions to implement?
3. What actions should the City take to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions?
4. What other suggestions do you have that might help the City develop its ECAP?

Comments, questions, ideas, and suggestions can be forwarded to the city's Sustainability Coordinator, Garrett Fitzgerald:
City of Oakland, Public Works Agency
250 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 5301
Oakland, California 94612
climateaction@oaklandnet.com

For more information, please visit http://www.sustainableoakland.com/

Easy Eco Questions

...and some not so easy answers.

You might find this article in New Scientist magazine interesting.
Although it has a slight UK-focus, it provides answers to some common but not so easy questions that you may have been afraid to ask.

(Note: I have not done a QC check on their answers!)

Take Steps to Reduce Junk Mail

Did you know that...?

• More than 100,000,000,000 pieces of junk mail are delivered each year, more than 800 pieces per household
  
• US junk mail accounts for one-third of all the mail delivered in the world
• 44% of junk mail goes to the landfill unopened
• It takes the equivalent of >100 million trees to produce the junk mail that arrives in US mailboxes each year

Efforts are underway to create a national Do Not Mail Registry, similar to the Do Not Call Registry that was officially enacted in 2003. It's not there yet, but Forest Ethics has some great tools for helping you get off mass mailing databases. It's easy.

Read more here: http://donotmail.org/index.php