The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
San Francisco ranks first and San Jose ninth among 10 cities nationwide for their efforts to combat climate change and mitigate impacts on the environment, according to Boyd Cohen in a feature for Triple Pundit.
Cohen, CEO of Vancover-based company CO2 IMPACT, analyzed the policies and practices of U.S. cities that are “positioning themselves to be leaders in climate capitalism,” he writes, to come up with his Top Ten list.
His rankings take into consideration such factors as the political commitments of city mayors to environmental activism by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Carbon War Room Cities Challenge, Clinton 40 Cities and Local Governments for Sustainability; LEED certified green buildings; clean tech investment, and green house gas emissions.
Boyd calls San Jose a “surprising” member of the Top 10 and attributes the city’s status to the Green Vision plan adopted four years ago by the City Council.
San Francisco, Boyd says, was one of just three cities he surveyed that are members of the key national climate change groups and notes its “proactive university community.” He crowns it as the “‘coolest’ Climate-Ready City in the U.S. for 2011.”
If you’re curious about the other winners, they are Seattle (2), Portland, Ore. (3), Washington, D.C. (4), Denver (5), San Diego (6), New York and Philadelphia (tied at 7), and Chicago (10).
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
