Saying good-bye to Jonathan Rowe

By Victoria Schlesinger

04/01/2011

Environmentalist, widely-published writer, and West Marin resident Jonathan Rowe unexpectedly passed away last Sunday leaving his local community and colleagues nationwide stunned and deeply saddened. Rowe thought and wrote extensively about reinventing the market place in order to care for our commonly shared goods, such as air, water, and scientific knowledge. To read one of his recent essays on the commons, see Boston Review. For more about Rowe’s life, visit the blog Sparsely Sage and Timely. [Read more - Boston Review, Sparsely Sage and Timely]

Silicon Valley venture capitalist’s green companies unfairly favored by Obama

By Victoria Schlesinger

04/01/2011

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Westly is among Obama’s top fundraisers, a member of a government advisory board on energy policy, and benefiting financially from those connections, according to an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and ABC. Four of the companies backed by Westly’s venture capital firm have received more than half a billion dollars in loans, grants or stimulus money. [Read more - The Center for Public Integrity]

PG&E executives cut bonuses and raise salaries

By Victoria Schlesinger

04/01/2011

The top executives at PG&E took a cut in their 2010 bonuses citing the “challenges” the company faced and then received raises in their base salaries. Chairman and chief executive officer, Peter Darby’s total compensation dropped by $2.2 million, but included a 4 percent base salary raise. Utility watchdog groups are not impressed. [Read more - San Francisco Chronicle]

California climate bill talks collapse between state and environmental justice group

By Victoria Schlesinger

04/01/2011

A meeting on Wednesday to discuss the future of California’s climate change law AB32 between the Association of Irritated Residents, the environmental justice group that brought suit, and the California Air Resources Board, apparently did not go well. The group blamed regulators in a statement titled “Climate Law Implementation to Halt.” [Read more - Reuters]

So big, Facebook’s move requires an environmental impact report

By Victoria Schlesinger

04/01/2011

The ever-growing social networking site Facebook has plans to move its head quarters to the old Sun Microsystems offices in Menlo Park and has asked the city to lift its cap on how many people can work on the campus. Some 1,400 of the company’s employees currently work in Palo Alto, and Facebook wants permission to accommodate 3,600. Menlo Park officials say a full environmental impact report will be required. [Read more - Palo Alto Daily News]

Could the U.S. really have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent?

By Victoria Schlesinger

03/31/2011

The environmental online magazine, Grist, reports there is good-and-overlooked climate change news in our midst. Last month the EPA reported a 15 percent drop in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade. That’s equal to, “More than the direct annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuels consumed in homes, businesses, and industries in the entire U.S.” Grist does not appear to have called the EPA or anyone else to better understand the causes of the big drop, but on the surface it looks like good news. [Read more - Grist]

Yellow Pages debate gets interesting

By Victoria Schlesinger

03/31/2011

In a surprising twist to San Francisco’s proposed ban on the unsolicited distribution of phone books, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, a champion of the bill, has opted to delay voting on the measure. Politicians fear the ban could lead to job loss. Although if the City dropped the ban, it would continue to spend more than a million annually disposing of the unused books, effectively subsidizing the phone book production industry for the sake of jobs. [Read more - San Francisco Chronicle]

America’s Cup wrestling with traffic and super seaweed

By Victoria Schlesinger

03/31/2011

This morning City officials will unveil their transportation plan for handling the throngs of visitors expected to hit San Francisco to watch the 34th America’s Cup. Highlights of the draft plan include shutting down lanes of the Embarcadero and Van Ness to regular traffic. Transportation is only the first hurdle among many in the Cup’s environmental impact review, which is slated for completion this summer. Coming up soon will be discussion of an invasive species of seaweed that environmentalists fear will be transported in record quantities by visiting vessels. [Read more - San Francisco Examiner, The Bay Citizen]

From soggy to sunny, Bay Area temps are breaking records

By Victoria Schlesinger

03/31/2011

From an unusually wet winter, the Bay Area has catapulted into a Spring of record-breaking temperatures. Yesterday, San Francisco reached a new high of 82 degrees, beating the previous March 30 record set almost 25 years ago. Similarly, Oakland, San Rafael, Mountain View, Napa, and Santa Rosa set new records for the day. And that’s just the beginning; there’ll be more of the same today. [Read more - San Francisco Chronicle]

Governor lifts California’s drought emergency

By Victoria Schlesinger

03/31/2011

After months of wet weather, it may not be surprising to hear that Governor Brown announced the end of California’s drought emergency, declared by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2008. But it’s been a La Nina year, which typically brings a warm, dry winter, and not record-setting snow-pack. Official say this is the most snow they have seen in late March for 16 years. [Read more - San Jose Mercury News]

PETA proposes changing name of Tenderloin in San Francisco

03/29/2011

By Alison Hawkes

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, has long been known as a center point of city vice. But PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has petitioned Mayor Ed Lee to change the name to reflect the city’s effort to transform the neighborhood into a more benign (read: economically profitable) state. So replace Tenderloin with Tempeh? Or perhaps Granola Flats? Or Seitan’s Lair? Ehem, not so sure about that. [ San Francisco Examiner]