Posted by jps, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Apr 2, 2009 at 10:53 pm

Looking at the original recommendations -- Web Link -- two ideas are missing:

1. Contract with PG&E to arrange to purchase 100% wind power electricity over the long term. Wind is a direct mitigation in addition to being a renewable energy source because it extracts energy directly from the atmosphere. It is also the least expensive of the renewable sources, already very competitive with coal. The more communities who set up their PG&E contracts to buy only wind power, the better. Anyone who thinks wind is a bad idea because it's intermittent hasn't read this: Web Link We should stop subsidizing coal, gas, and oil, and let people have less expensive-in-the-long-run electricity instead.

2. Purchase only new plug-in hybrid vehicles. The more communities who adopt these goals, the faster we will return to a sustainable and less flood-prone (i.e., a less expensive) future. As soon as gasoline starts going up again, it will be a lot less expensive.

The same can be said about the "public option" of universal health care coverage: If we don't have it, people end up with the partial coverage which prevents so much preventative care, resulting in expensive emergency room hospitalizations followed by long hospital stays instead of regular visits with early detection of problems. People in Canada live two years longer with their universal coverage, and they pay a lot less than we do for medical expenses.