› amanda@sfbg.com

Patrick Moore's presentation isn't as slick as Al Gore's. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don't compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Read more »

› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY I spent my undergraduate years at a microscopic liberal arts college set in the shadow of a national park on an island in Maine — a remote idyll where people abhor locking their doors and you can almost smell the Atlantic whale migration when a southeastern wind blows.

The college is overtly environmental and so small it's possible to practice what's preached: food is grown on the school's farm, students cycle around on communal bikes, ceremonies strive to be zero-waste. Read more »

› amanda@sfbg.com

Public power advocates are looking for new ways to lay the groundwork for city-owned electricity — by just opening up the ground.

The plan could be a significant step forward for the public power movement and may open a new front in the long campaign to replace Pacific Gas and Electric Co. with a city-run agency.

Sup. Chris Daly has asked the city attorney to draft legislation that would require anyone who digs up a city street, for any reason, to install city-owned power and fiber-optic cables in the hole. Read more »

› amanda@sfbg.com

Public records are coming in pretty handy these days. Congress is using them to investigate the relationship between the Republican National Committee and the firing of eight attorneys general, and as with many investigations that use documents to uncover malfeasance, some key documents are missing — in this case Karl Rove e-mails.

It seems Mayor Gavin Newsom's office also has a penchant for the delete key, according to findings of the city's Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. Read more »

>amanda@sfbg.com

Pablo Fajardo, Humberto Piaguaje, and Guillermo Grefa - three natives of Ecuador - recently made a visit to the Bay Area, but not as mere tourists.

"I've come here to inform you, San Francisco, so that you here might know what Chevron does outside the borders of the United States," Fajardo said at a press conference outside City Hall. "They are contributing to the destruction of humanity on a global level."

Fajardo is one of the lead litigators in a 14-year-old civil action lawsuit against Texaco (which was purchased by the Chevron Corp. Read more »