“San Francisco: Where the Power is Clean and Life is Good”
Hey kids! Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge without a film of mercury!
Bring grandma and stroll through Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf free from the thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as the particulate matter that lead to thousands of heart attacks and asthma attacks!
Go to Alcatraz and stand in solidarity with the Appalachian coalfields, soon to be freed from the prison of mountaintop removal mining!
Only in San Francisco: A Coal-Free City!
Well, almost.
While Los Angeles and Dehli, India have announced their intentions to become coal-free cities, the Bay Area-based Pacific General and Electric company still apparently gets 8 percent of its juice from coal:
According to I Love Mountains, which campaigns against mountaintop removal and monitors the consumption of mountaintop removal coal, part of San Francicso’s lovely skyline is lit up with strip-mined coal. Check out your neighborhood here.
But a coal-free future in San Francisco is looking bright.
Even Air Products, which reportedly burns some of that mountaintop removal coal, recently announced a plan to convert partially from coal to biomass–including peach pits and pistachio and walnuts.
Mayor Gavin Newsom has been in the forefront of urban clean energy initiatives. And SF-based groups like Rainforest Action Network have been national leaders in confronting banks and their lending practices to devastating mountaintop removal coal operators. The Sierra Club has its own vision of a coal-free California. And Greepeace’s Quit Coal campaign has crossed the seas.
All San Francisco lacks now is the announcement.
And the postcards (these visionary and hopeful views come from Ben Evans, Co-Founder of YERT.com)
In the meantime, the Coal Free Future Project will be performing the multimedia theatre show, “Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of Coal,” on mountaintop removal and the stories from the coalfleld frontlines in San Francisco this weekend, March 13-14, at the Cellspace theatre, 2050 Bryant Street. San Francisco. For more information, check out the Rainforest Action Network Coal Campaign site.
And feel free to add your own coal-free slogans for San Francisco:
“Hot New Selling Point for Cities”
“One More Reason to Visit San Francisco”
“How to Beat a Recession One Tourist at a Time”
