Posted on 01/20/2009 7:44:43 AM PST by SmithL
Some cities urge residents to go on citywide exercise kicks. Others promote municipal book clubs. Berkeley wants its citizens to go on a collective low-carbon diet.
To meet its ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Berkeley is encouraging all 100,000 residents to join support groups to help individuals fight global warming.
Like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers, the groups are part social, part confessional and partly about accountability.
"It does sound like AA," said Timothy Burroughs, Berkeley's climate action coordinator, who is helping to start the program. "But it's in the context of a policy goal of the city's. In order for us to achieve our goal, individuals have to change their behavior. This is a way for them to do that."
The city kicks off the program with a workshop Jan. 28. Residents will learn simple things they can do at home, work and school to reduce emissions, and be encouraged to start groups with neighbors, friends and co-workers.
The idea originated with a 2006 book by Portland, Ore., writer David Gershon, "Low Carbon Diet: a 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds." Berkeley bought 50 of the books, at $10 each, for the first residents who enroll.
The program encourages participants to meet four times over a month to calculate their carbon footprints, create individual goals and help each other meet those goals. The goals can range from giving up driving to insulating one's hot water heater to eating more vegetarian meals.
Some residents have already started low-carbon groups. Linda Currie, a graphic artist and mother of two, joined a group in 2007 and was so moved by the experience she's helped start 10 more.
"I was searching for a way I could make a difference without being a policymaker or a scientist," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If the Church is leaving a void, the pagans will fill it, every time.
“I was searching for a way I could make a difference without being a policymaker or a scientist,”
Or without having any common sense, apparently.
Is this how tyranny begins?
there goes the rice- one of the world’s most high carb emitting crops
Mass hysteria.
> ... part social, part confessional and ...
... and 100% commie.
Stop buying cr@p from China!!!
In China a dirty coal power plant is started every month, spewing more carbon that the entire city of Berkley.
Spare me the pious rhetoric.... please.
(grumble, spits, grumble, grumble)
And what's with this? "It does sound like AA," said Timothy Burroughs, Berkeley's climate action coordinator . . .
"Climate action coordinator"? Boy, there's a career path - or more realistically, a worthless do-nothing political touchy-feely job that pays over 100K a year.
I did NOT think that on the very day of Obama’s inauguration the unemployment problem would be solved. Tens of thousands of communities, large and small, will hire ‘CARBON COORDINATORS’, Fuel usage organizers, energy consumption adjusters and all their assistants. Millions of jobs for uneducated college graduates. Offices to be rented, automobiles to be purchased or leased, janitors, groundskeepers...the list boggles the mind. Oh joy to the world. Group meetings will, of course, be mandatory for all citizens.
“...and partly about accountability.”
Ah.. the part where they “encourage” youngsters to rat on their parents and neighbors to rat on each other.
They could all kill themselves ritually on the Alter of Al!
Nah, misguided or even nutz, they are still folks.
They've already done that.
They could stop using deoderant (if any), shaving under their armpits, foregoing bikini waxes, washing their clothes, paring their toenails....
Wow, the ideas just roll from my fertile brain.
Why does berzerkly want to harm plant life by restricting CO2? Damn them!
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