Last week GoKid was invited to attend the Palo Alto Sustainability and Climate Action Summit. Pat Burt, the mayor of Palo Alto, welcomed the 80+ attendees emphasizing that this was the most important environmental gathering in the city’s history and would help determine what type of city we will pass on to future generations.
Gil Friend, the chief sustainability officer for the City of Palo Alto, headed the summit. He presented the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan for Palo Alto, mainly focusing on the areas of transportation, energy, and water, the largest impact areas. The aggressive goal for Palo Alto is to reduce GHG (Green House Gas) emissions by 80% by 2030, which would be 20 years earlier than California’s world-leading climate goals of 80% reduction in GHG emission by 2050.
Gil pointed out that transportation was causing the main impact on Palo Alto’s carbon footprint, contributing more than 60% of the total emissions. While everyone agreed that there is no single solution to climate change there are by now many different ways to reduce the impact of transportation. For example:
- accelerating the shift to electric vehicles
- ending incentives for private car use
- creating walkable communities
- developing more shared mobility solutions
Other initiatives include municipal operations defaulting to green, engaging the community by knowing “what you buy,” neighborhood partnerships using information technology to extend “open data” initiatives and deploy performance dashboards, and assessing climate risk in all projects ahead.
Being in Palo Alto, in the middle of Silicon Valley, there were discussions around future apps and services, for example, a “Fitbit for sustainability” which measures your personal impact on the city’s sustainability goals. The term MaaS, “Mobility as a Service,” was discussed as was the fact that our grandchildren might never even own a vehicle.
We at GoKid, the carpooling solution for busy parents, are excited to start exploring collaborations with the city of Palo Alto soon. While walking and biking to school remains the most sustainable solution for children’s transportation, we encourage carpooling when distances are too far. By partnering with progressive communities like Palo Alto, CA and Arlington, VA GoKid will be able to share best practices and learnings in other communities.
We are supporting Gil Friend’s goal to, “develop a world-class sustainability strategy for the city, and manage the activities that will lead Palo Alto to being the greenest city in America.” Go, Palo Alto!
