San Francisco Group

Join the San Francisco Climate Challenge

The contest to save energy - and our climate!

So you're concerned about climate change and ready to help? Well, we've put together a contest to challenge ourselves and our friends - the San Francisco Climate Challenge. This first-of-its-kind energy-saving contest encourages San Francisco residents to compete for prizes and lower their home gas and electricity consumption at the same time.

The fun begins at the end of October.

Our Chapter's San Francisco Group has partnered with One Atmosphere, San Francisco's Department of Environment, and some talented web, media, and design professionals in launching this pilot effort.

How does the contest work?

Simple. You save energy at home for one month and compete with others to win great prizes.

You start by reaching out to your friends, families, school, church, or workplace to put together a team of five or more households, and then sign up. You spend your November billing period doing everything you can to reduce your energy use at home. The more energy your team saves, the better your chances of winning. And for all us who are already climate-conscious kilowatt-pinchers, the way to really increase your chances is by recruiting real energy hogs, friends who may not yet be living the greenest "environmental" lifestyle.

At the end we compare your bills from the contest period and the same time last year. We'll dish out serious cash and cool prizes to the teams with the biggest reductions and the most creative, sustainable solutions. Even you're not a winning team, you'll still have saved some money on your power bill, learned a new trick or two, and helped fight global warming. So - everyone wins.

Just changing our personal energy habits at home is not enough to curb and adapt to climate change, but home is certainly a good place to start.

Cutting your power bill by 20% and hundreds of dollars each year is easy and cheap to do. In our competition, going past that is where the real fun comes in. Creativity, friendly competition - and the basics of energy conservation - are what this is all about.

Averting climate change is the great challenge of our time. We have the moral responsibility to act - and now a fun way to help shift our personal habits. So put a team together, cut your energy bill, and have some fun doing it.

The contest doesn't start till the end of October, but the race to cut your home energy bill has already begun. To get going in forming your team, visit www.SFClimateChallenge.org

For questions or to help the San Francisco Group in rolling this out, contact conservation manager or call (510) 848-0800, ext. 307

Hands-on habitat restoration in San Francisco

First Saturday of each month, 9 am to noon; meet at the bus turnaround at the intersection of Myra, Dalewood, and Sherwood on the south side of the hill.

Join an "urban wilderness" adventure helping to restore San Francisco habitat with the San Francisco Group and the Natural Areas Program (NAP) of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. Come learn about botany and ecology, exercise your green thumb, enjoy entertaining camaraderie, and examine public-lands management issues in some of the most spectacular parts of San Francisco you didn't know still existed!

On the eastern flank of Mount Davidson, the highest hill in San Francisco, we'll be removing exotic weeds and protecting rare plants in a remarkable grassland and wildflower community. On the western portion of Mount Davidson, planted with trees by Adolph Sutro a century ago, we're removing monocultures of blackberry and ivy and restoring a complex mix of grasses and forbs.

To participate, contact Stan Kaufman at sekfmn -at- pacbell.net or (415) 681-4954. Stan is chair of the Friends of Mount Davidson; he needs a head-count so that NAP staff can plan.

Other days and places

Join Gay and Lesbian Sierrans at its monthly NAP work party at Corona Heights, on the last Saturday of every month from 10 am to noon. For more details and to sign up, contact Jim Houillion at (415) 552-3542.

NAP sponsors 30 additional projects all around the city. These are not Sierra Club-sponsored, but they occur at great sites and provide exciting work with grand views of the city - and they may be right in your neighborhood. For information and to participate, contact Suzanna Buehl in the NAP volunteer office at: Suzanna.Buehl -at- sfgov.org or (415) 753-7268.