The other point is that cities are centers of a great deal of consumption and the important thing is that we somehow develop urban centers that do not consume as much. We consume huge amounts of paper that come from both old growth forests and rainforests. We have a great responsibility for reducing that. Our city boardwalks and the majority of our park benches are made from rainforest wood. I was instrumental with Rainforest Relief and the Sierra Club in getting City councilman Gifford Miller to introduce a bill to prohibit the City from purchasing tropical rainforest hardwood unless it was sustainably harvested and managed.
Coffee is another problem.
Coffee is grown on former rainforest land and one thing we'd like to see is more organic coffee promoted in coffee bars. Organic coffee is grown in the shade in rainforest countries and still maintains a fair amount of biological diversity because it doesn't require full sunlight. Equal Exchange is one of the organic coffee producers and I've been talking with people about starting a campaign to get coffee shops to buy more organic coffee. If we could do the same thing for compact fluorescent lighting and have programs to provide assistance for buying energy efficient lighting, that would both save money and the environment. What we would like to see is the City be a strong vital core with a strong culture and arts and quality of life, and, around the City, farms so that we don't have to import foods from California or South America that require all this transportation and processing and packaging and all the increased pollution.