After widespread protests, Google donates $US6.8 million to fund free rides for San Francisco youth

 

 Students protest for public transport in San Francisco

By Casey Newton, www.theverge.com on February 27, 2014
Amid widespread protests over tech companies' use of public transit infrastructure, Google said today it would fund two years of free transit rides for San Francisco youth. The $6.8 million grant, which is said to be one of the largest private donations in the city's history, will fund the year-old Free Muni for Low Income Youth program. The cost of the program was previously paid by the city. More than 31,000 low-income youth, ages 5 to 17, have taken advantage of the program since it began a year ago.

Google's donation comes a month after it and other tech companies agreed to pay for their use of public bus stops to transport workers to and from their campuses in private shuttles. The shuttles have become a powerful symbol for rising inequality in the Bay Area, where evictions of lower-income residents have skyrocketed as landlords seek to profit from the influx of affluent tech workers. Protests have continued even after the agreement, in part because the deal does not generate any new revenue for the city. "With this unprecedented gift from Google, we can keep this successful pilot program running for at least two more years at no cost to taxpayers or Muni riders and free up critical funds for other vital Muni maintenance and services," Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement.

For months, activists have been calling on tech companies to make a larger contribution to the communities that help them attract and retain top workers. Google's move today signals that pressure from the community has gotten the company's attention. "San Francisco residents are rightly frustrated that we don't pay more to use city bus stops," Google said in a statement to The Verge. "So we'll continue to work with the city on these fees, and in the meantime will fund MUNI passes for low income students for the next two years."

Climate thugs are costing the Earth

By Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party, 26 February, 2014

The IPCC are due to release their next big report on climate change, and leaks so far tell us the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are going much further in their warnings than ever before. They warn that “starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease [are] likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change.”

Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party leader said “This country is being run by climate thugs. The devastating floods have shown us that when extreme weather events descend, the UK has no way of dealing with them, let alone preventing them. Across the world we see record heat waves, record low temperatures and record storms. You just have to join the dots. Nature is sending us the clearest possible warning signals.”

The International Energy Agency informed us as far back as 2009 that “The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.” Economists have estimated that climate-related damages are already costing us more than 1 trillion dollars worldwide. Those costs will only rise if we do nothing about this problem.

The Wales Leader added, “It should be clear by now to anyone with a brain that climate change has to be stopped in its tracks. This government is not going to do it because they are more keen to keep the dirty fossil fuel industry going with £16 billion or more in subsidies, than working to reduce CO2 pollution. The UK Governments are clearly part of the problem, and we can no longer afford them.”

The upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 parts per million (ppm). Atmospheric CO2 levels have stayed higher than 350 ppm since early 1988. Today they are 397.80ppm.