ity itself has reduced its energy load by nearly 4 percent since 1999. Combined savings from reduced gas and electricity consumption saves more than 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to an April 17 report to the council.
Meanwhile, another city initiative, the Zero Waste program, could also significantly reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the city. Its task force is currently developing an operational plan to divert up to 90 percent of the city's waste from landfills. Seattle credits its aggressive recycling program with being one of the biggest factors in its dramatic greenhouse-gas reductions, since landfill decomposition creates gases.
Transportation remains the biggest culprit in greenhouse-gas emissions, accounting for an estimated 6 million pounds of carbon dioxide from Palo Alto City facilities and an estimated 500 million pounds citywide, according to Knapp's calculations. Statewide, transportation accounts for 41.2 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the California Energy Commission.
Getting people out of their cars is one solution, and closely related to that would be creating a blueprint for making home and work spaces easily accessible without driving.
Drekmeier believes new models for housing and land-use planning, such as the town-square model in many European cities, would encourage people to drive less. Europeans use one-quarter to one-half as much gas as Americans. Their cities are designed to function so that people can get around by using highly efficient public transportation, or shop in close proximity to their homes, he said.
Higher-density housing, such as the 800 High St. development, can build more energy efficiency into housing, according to Knapp. Drekmeier agrees.
"A lot of people say the best thing we can do through land use is to grow up versus out," he said. One working model is at Stanford University, where priority in housing is given to people who work there. At Stanford West, people who work at the hospital can bike to work.
High housing prices are a continuing obstacle to reducing transportation-related greenhouse emissions, Drekmeier said.
"Proximity is more important than the efficiency of a vehicle. Our biggest impact on climate change is driving. The challenge is to make housing affordable. It can be controversial. People don't want (lower income and high-density housing) in their area, but we can put it in downtown," he said.
Klein said reducing the effects of transportation raises its own sets of problems.
"We don't have a good handle on what emissions are now. How do you know if you've reduced things, if you don't have a way to measure them?"
The Mayor's Green Ribbon Task Force is looking at ways to quantify those numbers, such as doing an inventory of the number of gallons sold at gas stations.
Getting residents and businesses to buy in to making changes in their lives is an obstacle Kleinberg hopes the task force will help solve, as they examine ways to educate residents and businesses. The task force includes Stanford University officials and private sector groups, including the Palo Alto Parent-Teacher Association, faith groups, environmental organizations, businesses, architects and builders.
To get people to buy in, solutions will have to be practical, and achievable, she said.
"Everybody has their particular focus and obsessions: finances, home. Getting people's attention to something that is so incremental is difficult, but the changes are now unavoidable. To make behavior changes will be a challenge. People abhor change — it's human nature. When people see something changing, (they perceive) it will make things better or make them afraid. It's human nature to want stability, and stability means no change," she said.
At its June 8 meeting, the fledgling group considered the feasibility of following the Kyoto Protocol.
Given there are only six years left to meet the Kyoto challenge, the group voted to recommend adopting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Climate Action Report rather than the Kyoto Protocol. The governor's plan calls for reducin