Redwood City's
Summary: World Café on Climate Protection
April 26, 2007

The April 26 Global Warming Café hosted nearly 100 members of the Redwood City community, coinciding with the City’s signing of the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement.

The lobby of City Hall was turned into a giant café where dinner was served before the World Café. During dinner, people at each table discussed a “table question” as a conversation-starter. The question was, “Why did you accept this invitation?”

Our World Café question for the first round was:

• “What are you seeing that gives you hope about our responses to Global Warming?”

The question in the second round was:

• “What is possible (in our response to Global Warming)?”

After round two we talked as a group and Nancy mapped the ideas people had to share. During a break, everyone was invited to get up and look at the mural/map, and then go to new tables for the third round, with the question focusing on:

• “What do you feel called to do?”

At the end of round three, a number of items were handed out (below): a “project planning sheet,” a carbon calculator page, and some selected pages from The Low Carbon Diet. Participants took a few minutes to absorbe the hand outs and fill in the first steps portion of the project planner sheets.

The final conversation, encompassing the whole group, netted lots of good ideas.

The plans shared included:

• planting more native plants
• encouraging awards to be given by the City for the best “Green Businesses”
• sharing information with neighbors re solar panels
• looking into alternatives to driving to include a high speed ferry, free public transportation for people traveling with a bicycle
• developing a year-round farmer’s market with local foods
• encouraging churches to use real (not Styrofoam, etc) cups and volunteering to wash them
• drafting local regulations to include a ban on Styrofoam

(Back to World Café)