According to Mayor Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City's award winning environmental programs run the gamut:

From promoting alternative transportation and water conservation to high performance building and greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the goal of the Salt Lake City Green program is to maintain our high quality of life, while ensuring a healthy, sustainable future.

Anderson spoke to a couple hundred Jacksonites last night on the topic of Resource Use and Climate Change: Local Actions, Global Consequences. Before leaving the valley, he'll carry on today at a Sustaining Jackson Hole Resource Use Mini-Summit, where local organizations and individuals will gather to establish strategies and tactics for achieving a 10% reduction in energy use and trash production in Jackson Hole by the year 2010.

In seven years as Mayor, Anderson's track record is impressive. With a simple mantra–use less, and use clean, renewable energy–municipal actions in Salt Lake City have far surpassed goals set. Here are just a few examples:

• Salt Lake City municipal operations have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 31% since 2001 (the original goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 21% by 2012).

• In 2001, Salt Lake City changed all the lighting at the City and County building to compact fluorescent bulbs and higher efficiency grounds lighting. This action not only reduced the demand for energy from coal fired power plants, but saved taxpayers over $33,000 per year.

• Salt Lake City also has a phased program to convert all of the traffic signals to LED lights. When this project is completed savings from the LED conversion will equal over $50,000 per year.

• Implementation of Salt Lake City's "blue bin" curbside recycling program has resulted in an 86% increase in recycling.

Of course, there are a lot more results where these came from. Check out Salt Lake City Green to learn more about initiatives for businesses, citizens and students as well as free parking for green vehicles and the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan; the list of programs and accomplishments is really quite impressive.

Kudos to Mayor Anderson and his green team for showing us all what commitment to an aggressive agenda can accomplish.

More kudos:

Jackson Hole's Spring Earth Festival wouldn't happen without the incredible commitment of time and energy of a lot of folks. At the risk of offending countless friends, I'd like to single out one individual for special recognition: Molly Bagnato, for whom some have renamed this year's Spring Earth Festival "Mollypalooza," has done a remarkable job spearheading The Murie Center's efforts to bring our community together to celebrate the wild character of Jackson Hole. THANKS Molly!

Carbon Neutral Journal's kudos are brought to you by Grand Targhee Resort.

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