Learn More About CommunityPulse

We use indicators all of the time – the weather page, sports page, traffic reports, the Dow Jones Industrial Average – yet we lack compelling and understandable environmental indicators to provide us with necessary information. We need to make information about the environment as pervasive and "worthwhile" as other information that we use everyday to make our lives better.

It's been proven that people are much more likely to lose weight if they use a scale. If we want to knock off a few pounds it's important to know where we're starting from and whether or not we're getting closer to our goal. This is just one basic example of the power of feedback.

How about driving? When we drive we have to process at least a dozen information flows every minute. We check our speedometers, our fuel gauges, the cars around us, the bends in the road, exit signs and the distance to our destination – this is what keeps us from getting tickets, from breaking down, and from crashing into one another. This feedback saves lives and averts disaster.

Community Pulse does the same thing. It places environmental information in a shared context so that we can align our actions for positive change. Our mission is to use environmental feedback to encourage individual action and stimulate a dialogue that transforms community awareness about the state of our environment. As with driving, if we all stay alert and make necessary adjustments we can move safely together toward our desired destination.

Delivering meaningful information on-time

It might seem basic – telling people how much energy and water they're using, waste they're generating, CO2 they're emitting...these numbers must already be widely available, right? Unfortunately, they're not – not on a per capita basis, not city-by-city, and aside from GHG emissions, not even county-by-county. If you do enough research you might be able to find some statewide reports with annual numbers for 2005. We're changing all that by providing per capita information on each of these issues for every month of the year.

This isn't your everyday green campaign decked out in a snazzy outfit. It is not our goal to create yet another feel good public education campaign that speaks to the "eco-choir" and yields few measurable results. What makes this innovative is that we're partnering with regional utilities and governmental agencies to deliver information in a meaningful context that isn't currently available anywhere else. As far as we can tell we're the only group in the U.S. providing an individualized, integrated perspective on these issues on a regular basis.

After the first year we plan to expand publication to other Bay Area counties so that communities can compare their actions, share successful practices and stir-up a little friendly competition. By working together we can leverage the power of the people to voluntarily change a situation that requires direct action now.

Inspiration

In the late 1980s a Dutch graduate student by the name of Jan Hanhart came up with a novel idea. The government was planning to devote significant resources to reducing nationwide natural gas consumption by 15%. Hanhart proposed that they simply tell people what amount they were currently using, what amount they wanted them to use, and provide them with some suggestions of how they might go about reaching this national goal. The officials scoffed at the simplicity of his proposal, but Hanhart persisted. He put an advertisement on the front page of a local weekly newspaper telling the community how much natural gas they were using and how much they should try to conserve, along with some potential ideas and suggestions for reducing their use. Soon he noted that the community was engaged in an ongoing dialogue. Everywhere he went people were discussing the actions they were taking. Within just six months natural gas use had decreased by 18% - surpassing the goal.

Hanhart's "Eco-Feedback" concept was the primary inspiration for Community Pulse. We can use public information, which up until now has rarely been accessed or leveraged, to provide feedback to the people with the most power to bring about widespread change – the residents, businesses, community groups and public agencies.

About Our Team

So who are we? What makes us qualified to implement this project? Well, we're a small group of dedicated individuals based in the small town of Graton. Few people would guess that big things are happening here, but they are.

The Climate Protection Campaign is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that advances practical, science-based solutions for significant greenhouse gas reductions. Their motto is "Big Vision, Bold Action." The Campaign, in collaboration with citizens and public officials, has organized all nine Sonoma cities and the County to adopt the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target in the U.S. – 25% below 1990 levels by 2015 – greatly exceeding the modest international targets set through the Kyoto Protocol. This May they received a Climate Protection Award from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency for their leadership.

The developers of Community Pulse, John Garn and Anna Brittain, work as independent environmental consultants and will be managing the program under a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Campaign. In 1994 John created the Sonoma Green Business Program, which expanded into the Bay Area Green Business Program, and has since been adopted by the EPA as a nationwide green business model. In 1999 it won a national sustainability award from the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities. This program has been implemented in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey, Marin, and Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Diego.

We've worked with the Wine Institute and the California Association of Winegrape Growers to design the Sustainable Winegrowing Practices program, which began in 2001. We continue to work with them to coordinate and lead winery and vineyard self-assessment workshops. Since 2002, more than 1,000 wineries and vineyards have completed their assessments and received customized reports evaluating the current state of their operations. We also helped design, organize and facilitate 8 energy efficiency workshops last year. They were so popular that we're doing 9 more this year.

As Community Pulse gains leverage we'll grow, but for now we have four hands and a strong local network of support. Pacific Gas & Electric, Sonoma County Water Agency, Sonoma County Waste Management Agency, and the Climate Protection Campaign are helping us to collect and track the data. Everything is in place. Watch what happens.