SF Chronicle - In Petaluma neighborhoods, the ‘extravagant life’ is over as climate activism grows

San Francisco Chronicle, Julie Johnson, April 27, 2022

One Petaluma couple uses just two Ziploc bags per year. Another decided to have just one child. And their neighbor was relieved to stop worrying about emissions from idling after getting an electric car.

All are neighbors on a well-to-do block in this small, bucolic city, and they are on a mission. Some spent thousands of dollars on solar panels. Others ripped out lawns, installed gray water systems to collect rain and bike around town to shop in local stores. One man digs a hole and buries his bacon grease in the yard. Sitting around a patio on a sunny Sunday, they confessed to lingering wasteful habits and celebrated small improvements that reduce the pollution that is roiling the world’s climate.

Sean Upton, who is trying to find a responsible way to recycle an old mattress, said she was recently taken aback by her young adult daughter’s anxiety over how global warming will influence her future.

“I didn’t realize the impact — what we’ve handed them,” Upton said. Our generation “has lived an extravagant life. We can’t do that anymore.”

Upton and others are part of a movement in Petaluma fueled by a $1 million grant to galvanize neighborhoods to battle climate change. Called the Cool City Challenge, the programs are run by groups of residents who agreed to collectively use less water, drive fewer miles, turn the thermostat down and take other actions, like helping neighbors prepare for disasters like wildfires. They will track their progress in a database across several months and calculate how much they have cut their carbon footprints.

Gershon said the goal going forward is to amp up the pressure on governments and companies, so changes can be large-scale as well as small.

“As an individual by yourself, you don’t move the dial. As a city by itself or a state by itself, it doesn’t move the dial. Creating a new technology itself doesn’t move the dial,” Gershon said. “The big ideal is the synergy — these things together move the dial.”

Renowned climate activist Bill McKibben, who most recently founded an environmental movement for people over 60 called Third Act, said in an interview that privileged Americans, specifically those near or at retirement age, must muster their wealth and influence to push governments and corporations to divest in fossil fuels.

“It’s very exciting, especially, to see older Americans step up to the plate,” McKibben said. “So much of the climate movement is coming from young people. But it’s not OK to assign saving the planet to 17-year-olds between algebra homework and field hockey practice.”

Petaluma City Council Member D’Lynda Fischer spearheaded the grant application with fellow members of the city’s climate action commission. The first half-million dollars of the grant will seed the nonprofit called Cool Petaluma and also support about 50 different groups organized by neighborhood blocks. The other half is to be used to develop a longer-term projects.

Today Cool Petaluma has roughly 300 members organized in block-sized groups. These Petalumans have tapped into a special vein of activism in this historically agricultural town with a hip downtown.

Lisamarie Eldredge said she felt she was the only person riding her bike on city streets when she moved to Petaluma in the 1970s. She and her husband were the first in the neighborhood to replace their lawn with native plants. She led a campaign to get the city to put trees back into neighborhoods — and people actually “shut their doors in our faces,” she said.

But she and others were persistent, and her south Petaluma street has transformed from “a hot, dry desert” into a leafy green neighborhood. Eldredge said she runs most of her errands on bike — and the streets feel far friendlier now. She was again knocking on doors earlier this year asking Petalumans to join the “cool block” challenge.

“People are so ready to do this,” Eldredge said. “It was so easy.”

Julie Johnson (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @juliejohnson.

Julie Johnson covers the changing climate, sea level rise and strategies to stem California's wildfire crisis. Before joining The Chronicle, she spent 11 years as a staff writer at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where she had a leading role on the breaking news team awarded the 2018 Pulitzer for coverage of the 2017 Wine Country fires. Julie has covered murderous pot deals, police corruption and marijuana's rocky path from a black-market trade to a legitimate industry.