Andrew, this is something you might appreciate. I wouldn't want to post it to someone who would start a big fight or anything!
San Francisco, a city of only about 700,000 which has its own foreign policy, has established a city Environment Department, according to an article in yesterday's "San Francisco Chronicle". The stated goal of the city in looking at its future is sustainability. A lengthy report has been issued, detailing plans for parks filled with honey bee hives, fruit trees growing in every yard, and the humane adoption or relocation to wild areas of the feral cats who eat our quail, squirrels and brush rabbits.
Up to ten auto-free zones would be created, and the goal would be to discourage single-occupancy vehicle use by eliminating free parking for workers. City buses would be powered solely by renewable energy--clean-burning compressed natural gas. Disincentives to automobile use would include a sharp increase in the city parking tax, higher gasoline taxes and bridge tolls, and "congestion" pricing, which charges people more for driving at rush hour.
The Redevelopment Agency is adopting "green" building standards, which means that some projects would include low-flush toilets, solar power, tinted windows, and windows that open, even in high-rises.
Another goal of the plan its to get people to eat less salt, sugar and fat by convincing grocers to stock healthier foods. Raising and harvesting fish in the city, and limiting the use of perfume and other scented items, like deodorant, are also proposed.
Some of these are perhaps impractical, but our mayor, Willie Brown, is clear that sustainability will be the underlying principle considered in further development of the city.
The article goes on to say that these environmental goals are more popular in western Europe than America, but that the State of California is also studying ways to limit automobile use.
What a trip all these ideas are!!! I have no problems with environmental legislation--having lived here my whole adult life, I am not shocked like people from more conservative places that a city would set goals like these for the good of all, and while I resent being told what to do, I have no issues with governmental agencies using taxes and penalties to nudge people in a direction that is healthy for the environment.
Have any of you seen that billboard where there is a couple who looks like they are out of 50's movie, and the man is saying "Mind if I smoke?", and the woman is answering "Care if I die?" To me a lot of these struggles between total freedom to pollute and litter and waste the earth's resources, and on the other side, the allegedly ultraliberal environmental campaign, have a little of this theme running through them. Where is it in the constitution that we all have the freedom to drive around alone in a gas-guzzling automobile, anyway? How will we ever achieve some balance between essential individual liberties and the rights we all should have to clean air and clean water?
Anyway, I'm realizing that maybe the reason I seem so politically correct is that I come from such a politically correct place, and so what seems totally normal to me seems shrill and radical to others.
Sorry!!! No intention to offend!!! But this is a really interesting experiment, I think, and I feel happy tonight that I am a San Franciscan, because the public policy debate that these new proposals will create will be fascinating to watch. |
