City of Richmond, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, Great job City of Richmond for constructing a purchasing catalog for residents and businesses to buy environmentally preferable products! CCC Mayors consider providing this helpful tool for your community members! Access the catalog HERE 

City of Concord, Glyphosate Moratorium,  The City of Concord instituted a one year moratorium on Glyphosate products (Round-Up) in ALL city parks starting today. They also will not be using it anywhere in the city during the Winter months to prevent run-off. What pesticide policies does your city have in place to protect public health and natural resources as well as to limit liability from exposure to these products? Learn more from Parents for a Safer Environment

Other City News 

City of Portland Passes Measure for Clean Energy Fund, When Portland residents went to the polls to vote in the 2018 midterm elections, they were in favor of a ballot initiative that imposes a one percent tax for large corporations. The revenue generated for the tax will go toward supporting the city’s climate change minimization strategies! CCC Mayors consider similar ballot initiatives to propel sustainability goals in your cities! Read HERE

City of Vermont, Mayor, announces the formation of a new coalition of Northeast Mayors including the mayors of Middletown, Connecticut, Ithaca, New York, Montpelier, Winooski, Vermont, Somerville, and Salem. The goal is to achieve a carbon pollution fee on fossil fuels. Can CCC mayors get behind this initiative? Read more HERE

City of Parkes, Australia, Mayor Awarded at the National Climate Summit! Their city features a solar farm, with two other solar farms proposed! Parkes has installed solar energy at its new $100 million water and sewerage treatment plants to help fuel the cost of pumping water, which can be over $1 million. CCC Mayors, investing in renewable energy can propel solar farms and energy projects in our county! Read more HERE

The EU Votes to Ban All Single Use Plastic by 2021, including straws, plates, and cups that take centuries to degrade and are being consumed by marine life. The use of plastics in food packaging must be reduced 25% by 2021 along with cigarette butts being reduced by 50%. Read more HERE 

Resources

New Whitehouse Report on Climate Change
In addition to the latest IPCC report and the California 4th Assessment, the release of a long-awaited report from the federal government comes with an unmistakable message: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening, posing a severe threat to Americans' health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. Read more HERE Read the report HERE

Sustainable Infrastructure Initiatives
Contra Costa County which sustainable infrastructure initiatives could benefit our cities? Consider Singapore, making two thirds of its city’s surfaces able to capture rainwater and depositing the resources into 18 reservoirs! Or Stockholm which has developed a new eco district! See what Virginia Beach, Portland, Boston and Vancouver are doing as well! Read more HERE

Smart Transit Ideas for Cities
These nine cities are creating smart ways to address the need for more sustainable, equitable, street-level transit solutions. Contra Costa County can benefit from these local initiatives case studies! Read about these initiatives HERE

Cities Can Benefit From Addressing Climate Change, a new report from C40 Cities confirms. Transport, buildings, and industry are priorities for climate action policies. Addressing these could provide billions of dollars in benefits for cities and prevent hundreds of thousands premature deaths caused by climate change. Read more HERE

Our 4CL workshop on Environmental Purchasing Policies was a great success! speakers from the State of California DGS, Center for Environmental Health, USEPA, and others provided some great resources for purchasing policies, tips and resources! Be sure to share with your purchasing team. All materials can be found at: http://www.cccclimateleaders.org/workshops/epp.html

The Let’s Talk Climate! workshop hosted by the county and facilitated by Meighen Speiser of ecoAmerica last month was well attended! if you missed  it, here are some climate communication resources  It is important to  know your audience, check out the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s Climate Opinion Maps (see Contra Costa County here) For example, 61% of people in Contra Costa believe that local officials should be doing more to address Climate Change. (4% above the US average)