Early Monday morning, a diverse group of business executives and government officials presented arguments for how San Francisco could leverage the incredible business ingenuity of this region to meet the climate challenge. In addition, Mayor Gavin Newsome presented his plans to make San Francisco a model for the rest of the world on how best to mitigate climate change through responsible business practices. Bank of America, Chevron, PG&E, Safeway and many others touted best practices such as alternative energy use, energy conservation, and employee education in an effort to reduce their carbon emissions.

While it was thrilling to see many large corporations openly expressing their efforts towards reducing environmental impacts, it quickly became apparent that real change happens not only from business solutions, but also government policy.

Lt Governor John Garamendi gave an incredible example of how Germany, of all places, currently leads the world in number of solar panel installations. In fact, Germany is slated to surpass their goal of obtaining 20 percent of total power from solar by 10 percent because Germany has subsidies in place to provide the economic incentives necessary to produce results. We don’t. But why wait?

In the end, the overall message from the City Summit became loud and clear - leverage local business ingenuity to lead the charge on climate change, ahead of state and federal policies, by capitalizing on the environmental spirit of San Francisco.

[more in the city summit site]

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