For Immediate Release
June 30, 2020
Contact: helena@sfclimateemergency.org 

SAN FRANCISCO— Climate and public health advocates led by the San Francisco Climate Emergency Coalition seek to amend and strengthen the all-electric new buildings ordinance introduced today by San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.

Months of advocacy by the Coalition and allies yielded a draft ordinance which applies across building types in new San Francisco building projects applying for permit on or after January 1, 2021, but there are two caveats. A blanket exception for new commercial restaurants until 2022 benefits developers of new facilities while leaving workers, owners, and occupants with the downsides of harmful emissions, excessive heat, and imminent retrofit costs. Beyond that, the granting of exemptions is in the hands of the Department of Building Inspection.

Climate activists don’t want developers to be able to petition DBI behind closed doors, especially to get exemptions from the first real Climate Emergency legislation to come out of the Board of Supervisors. “We have less than ten years to cut emissions in half” notes Coalition member Helena Birecki, “and especially with lung problems being brought to the fore with Covid, it’s criminal for developers to argue they can’t afford to build clean!”

A transparent and accessible exceptions process based on the public interest is key to an all-electric ordinance that aligns with San Francisco’s public health, safety, and climate goals. Nearly 40% of San Francisco’s carbon emissions arise from natural gas use in buildings, and pollution from gas appliances and infrastructure is a significant public health and safety hazard. Let’s stop adding fuel to the fire.

COVID-19 has provided a stark reminder of the intersection between social, economic, and racial injustice. Air pollution and climate impacts disproportionately burden our most vulnerable communities. Every exception to the ordinance endangers lives.
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​The Coalition appreciates the Supervisor’s leadership and persistence and looks forward to working with the full Board to produce an ordinance that protects all San Franciscans, effective January 1, 2021. When San Francisco becomes the largest city in the country, and the first California county, to ban natural gas in new buildings, it should be without loopholes. Then San Francisco would truly lead on building electrification, and on addressing the global climate emergency.

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The San Francisco Climate Emergency Coalition is composed of concerned citizens from all Supervisorial Districts of San Francisco who promote the realization of the goals of San Francisco’s Climate Emergency Declaration.

This post is excerpted from our campaign site, SF Gas Ban. Click here to read the full article.

Communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis are increasingly coming to terms with the reality that current federal and state governments have no tangible plan to deliver us from climate evil.
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Though presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders proffer exceptional justice-oriented climate policies, even under the best of circumstances we are at least three years out from achieving a national political environment conducive to a habitable planet. At the same time, we are already two years into the twelve-year window for climate action, without having achieved much. 

While there is some virtue in tending one’s own garden, cities that have declared climate emergency are acting now knowing full well that they alone cannot turn the tide; a city with zero emissions makes a negligible dent on the global crisis. 

Instead, advocates believe that a single city’s legislative resolve against fossil fuel and environmental injustice might cause dominos to fall in other cities, bolstering a larger movement to drag, shame and compel higher legislative bodies with more authority and resources to do what must be done in the precious interim. 
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In this way, the climate emergency is, in theory, the opposite of the fossil fuel industry’s calling card: denial.

In addition, just as the United States is responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions and is ethically bound to lead in reducing emissions as compared to less profligate and wealthy countries, it stands to reason that cities of vast wealth and consumption, such as San Francisco, ought to respond accordingly. 

Continue reading at our campaign site, SF Gas Ban