Federal environmental protections are being rolled back. War, violence, and humanitarian crises are leaving many people with grief they do not know where to place. And across the climate and sustainability field, many are asking a quieter question: how do we keep going when the ground feels this unsteady?
This Earth Month arrives in a harder moment.
Federal environmental protections are being rolled back. War, violence, and humanitarian crises are leaving many people with grief they do not know where to place. And across the climate and sustainability field, many are asking a quieter question: how do we keep going when the ground feels this unsteady?
For me, the answer begins here:
We lead anyway.
We lead not because the moment is easy.
We lead because it isn’t.
And we lead because cities are where climate action becomes real. This is where values become programs, where plans become projects, and where public trust is either earned or lost. It is where climate action becomes something people can actually feel: in the air they breathe, in the safety of their homes, in their bills, on their blocks, and in whether government feels steady enough to make a difference.
That has been the work of SF Environment for 30 years.
In 1995, San Franciscans chose to create this department so environmental work would no longer be scattered across government or dependent on the urgency of any one moment. They chose coordination. They chose accountability. They chose to build something that could last.
That choice still matters.
Because climate leadership was never only about having the boldest goal on paper. It was about building the civic capacity to act. It was about helping government move more as one. And it was about proving that environmental progress is not separate from daily life.
It is daily life.
It is the family trying to lower its energy bill.
It is the older adult trying to stay safe in a heat wave.
It is the child who deserves clean air and healthy food.
It is the neighborhood that has carried too much pollution for too long.
At its best, climate action is a form of care: practical, visible, and shared.
That is what I hope we hold onto this Earth Month. Not just that San Francisco has led, but how it has led: with partnership, with persistence, and with people who kept going even when conditions were not ideal, because they understood the work still mattered.
For me, that is deeply personal.
This city raised me. Public service shaped me. And over the years, I have come to believe that loving San Francisco means more than celebrating it when it shines. It means staying in relationship with it when the work is hard. It means choosing care over indifference, common purpose over fragmentation, and action over despair.
So as we mark 30 years of SF Environment, I hope we do celebrate. I hope we honor the residents, workers, advocates, public servants, and partners who built this foundation.
But I also hope we recommit: to city leadership that does not wait for permission, to climate action that improves daily life, and to public service that earns trust through follow-through.
And maybe, in a moment like this, recommitment begins more simply than we think.
Begin with one action of care.
Check on a neighbor. Repair something instead of replacing it. Waste a little less. Take transit. Plant something. Help someone compost for the first time.
No one act will solve the climate crisis. But small acts of care matter. They make values visible. They remind us that climate action is not only about policy. It is also about practice — about how we live, what we protect, and what kind of city we choose to be for one another.
That is the work ahead.
And if the last 30 years have taught us anything, it is this:
San Francisco does not lead because the conditions are perfect.
San Francisco leads when we choose, together, to keep going.
That is what this anniversary asks of us.
And that is why, even now, we lead anyway.
