Facing Our Energy Dependency…

As the country suffers through a sweltering summer and another spate of heat waves and heat-related deaths, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not an aberration but rather a glimpse of things to come. According to the National Academy of Sciences, if global warming continues unchecked, nearly 1,200 people could die in Los Angeles from heat-related causes by the end of the century. To put that number in perspective, such deaths averaged 165 annually during the 1990s.

So when President Bush signed into law a sweeping energy bill from which any focus on greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming was conspicuously absent, the need for cities and states to take matters into their own hands became even more pressing. Congress may have nixed mention of global warming from the energy bill, but not all parties are standing still. One-hundred and seventy five U.S. cities have pledged to meet or beat the targets in the Kyoto Protocol — including San Francisco, Oakland and Irvine. In a novel approach to recycling, Santa Rosa has set up an elaborate system of pipelines that pumps wastewater into the ground for clean and reliable geothermal electricity.

SFGate