America’s first carbon neutral city

Davis, California starts race to become America’s first carbon neutral city

David Gershon and Mitch Sears are available for interviews.

DAVIS, CA - The city with the nation’s first bike lanes and climate specific energy efficiency ordinance is teaming up with former Olympic Torch Relay director and Earth Run organizer David Gershon to achieve the impossible. By unanimous vote of its city council, Davis, California is going all the way on global warming–total carbon neutrality by mid-century.

Davis, home to the University of California Davis, is located near Sacramento and has a population of over 65,000. Gershon, author of Social Change 2.0, has enlisted 300 American cities to go on the Low Carbon Diet set forth in his best-selling book by the same name.

Using the State of California’s 20 percent reduction goal as its starting point, the city has set an equally ambitious short-term target to cut the community’s carbon emissions by up to 50 percent by 2013. To get there, the city hopes that its Cool Davis campaign will eventually engage 75 percent of households to go on David Gershon’s Low Carbon Diet: A 30-day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, and stay on it. The program encourages households to tailor a carbon diet following simple to implement actions and a peer-support group called EcoTeams.

Its hopes are founded on the remarkable results of the Davis pilot program, which proved that a reduction of 5,500 pounds per household is possible. Households using Gershon’s do-it-yourself carbon diet in similar Cool Community campaigns across the country have cut their emissions by up to 35 percent in a matter of months. One of the benefits of the program is that any type of household–large or small, owner or renter–can participate and customize a plan.

“We have proof of concept and the means to scale it up,” says David Gershon, author of the Low Carbon Diet and Social Change 2.0. “When it comes to cutting carbon, the action is at the local level, and the city of Davis is leading the way. Since half of America’s carbon footprint is at the residential level, Cool Community campaigns are a powerful and doable way for America get on a low carbon path.”

“As a city where 75 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions are coming from residential sources, it was a no brainer,” said Mitch Sears sustainability director of the City of Davis. “When you pair the carbon reduction results Gershon is getting with the innovative Cool Community strategy and tools he offers to scale them up, Low Carbon Diet is by far the most cost-effective option for our city budget.”

Bold, large-scale social change initiatives are not new to David Gershon. He literally ran onto the world stage when he organized the First Earth Run. The 86-day global torch relay for peace at the height of the cold war engaged the participation of tens of millions of people in 62 countries, including heads of state, and was witnessed by over a billion more worldwide.

Dubbed the best bicycle town in America, Davis boasts the country’s top rated year-round farmers market, is home to the US Bicycling Hall of Fame, and was the first city in America to adopt an ordinance requiring energy efficiency tailored to the local climate, a local law that would later influence California’s famous Title 24, the first state law of its kind in America.

Early results from other Cool Community campaigns pilot programs are also achieving reductions once thought impossible without new technology.

Cool Portland, the campaign’s first pilot program, more than doubled its goal of cutting carbon emissions by 10 percent per household, realizing an average reduction of 22 percent, or 6,700 pounds.

Citizen-led EcoTeams, peer-support groups of 5 to 8 households, in Vermont similarly reduced their carbon footprint by 23 percent.

Rochester, New York launched a Low Carbon Diet Challenge that achieved an average reduction of 10,828 pounds for every participating household. As a result, community organizers and city officials are scaling up a Cool Rochester campaign to engage 40,000 households and reduce their community’s carbon footprint by one billion pounds.

Cool Mass, the first statewide Cool Community campaign, launched last fall. The first communities to sign on are Boston, Braintree, Brookline, Dedham, Hingham, Hull, Milton, Newton, and Winchester, which represent almost a million of the state’s residents.

For more information on the city of Davis’ Low Carbon Diet Challenge, go to CityofDavis.org and search “low carbon diet.”

ENDS