Arlington Virginia, that's my vote for the best place to live regarding a local government and their action on climate change! They have many outreach programs to businesses and residents to help mitigate climate change!

Arlington VA - It rocks!

I would love to have a checklist of criteria that make sense for green government living. Is there one?

I'd be thrilled to take that list and run about the town taking notes in reference to those guidlines and post them here in treehugger.

-Angel of Portland

My city, Raleigh North Carolina, passed a water-restriction ordinance last night in response to an ongoing drought. No outdoor irrigation will be allowed, which will put many of our local nurseries out of business. It will greatly limit the ability of people to grow their own vegetables, even though allowing the occasional use of soaker hoses in vegetable gardens would make it possible to get a garden through dry spots. Yes, some of us will be able to get by with rain barrels, but that's a problem for people who rent or who are on a very limited budget. (Try taking a rain barrel on a bus or convincing your slumlord to put in gutters.)

Meanwhile, Pepsi is bottling our municipal water and selling it as Aquafina, reports The Independent Weekly. And if we run out of water, the state doesn't plan to do anything until all the bottled water is sold. This is a gross abuse of the public commons. The Indy says the bottled water will be a lot more expensive that our tap water:

Maybe more like 3,000 times more expensive, the estimated markup of the cost of Raleigh tap water—the same tap water used in Aquafina, produced by one of Raleigh's biggest municipal water users, Pepsi Bottling Ventures. Nothing like reverse osmosis to multiply the price. Pepsi, No. 1 in the bottled-water market, generated $2.17 billion nationwide in sales of Aquafina in 2006.

That's just one instance of a big business taking our water. Homeowners are being asked to make most of the cutbacks, but WRAL reports:

The city has refused to release just how much water commercial and industrial customers use, citing privacy. Collectively though, industrial customers, like Pepsi Bottling Ventures, use an average of 243 times what the average house uses per day.

This is our second major drought in a decade and we still don't even have a plan for what to do if we don't get more rain soon.

I just joined Austin Energy's GreenChoice program; slightly more money (less than 20$/month) for wind power!

Hooray! Portland, Oregon and Multnomah County are going to adopt a joint climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels. The previous plan adopted in 1991 has shown great success! I love it here!

- Over 63% of residential/commercial/industrial waste is recycled.
- Greenhouse gas emissions are down 14% from 1990 levels - overall (not just per capita). The rest of the US is up about 25% on average from 1990 levels.
- Vehicle miles traveled per person are down 7% per capita from 1990 levels
- Multnomah County registers more hybrid vehicles per capita than any other city in the US. Almost twice more than the nearest next city.
- City/County financed districts or projects must be LEED certified.
- Overall bicycle use has grown by double-digit percentages for each of the last four years.
- 90% increase in public transit use since 1990.
- The City and County government buildings generate over a million dollars from selling their composted food wastes and swept leaves as fertilizer.
- Most roadway storm-water is handled on site through Green Streets.

I would've said clueless, but one of our councillors had his eyes opened at a local govt conference on climate change, and he's now taking the bull by the horns and is initiating some (hopefully) really progressive things, like reducing emmisions from council assetts by 80%, making massive improvements to the (already pretty good) recycling program, and setting up a council/community CC discussion group/committee. I'm in Portland Victoria Australiaby the way.

I live in and love Multnomah County, however the streets and schools are in shambles. The local university is crumbling as seen by years of deferred maintenance. We'll know Portland is really green when the streets are paved (or depaved), we have an adequate basic educational system, and when more products are produced locally.