San Francisco Climate Tax Raises Questions About Tech’s Carbon Footprint

Every San Francisco homeowner might soon have to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to being green—and citizens are wondering whether Silicon Valley's tech giants are paying their fair share to save the local environment.

In just a couple of weeks, residents will vote on a property tax that that would generate $500 million over 20 years to fund habitat restoration and cleanup projects along the region's shorelines. In addition, the money raised would also go toward important climate adaptation initiatives, such as flood protection in vulnerable marshes and tidal lowlands, that could one day safeguard communities from rising sea levels associated with climate change.

Many environmentalists and California officials have applauded the measure, and consider it a forward-thinking investment in San Francisco's well-being.

However, because Measure AA would institute a flat $12 per year tax on property owners of all income levels, some groups are arguing that larger, wealthier property owners—specifically, neighborhood tech inhabitants like Facebook and Apple—aren't paying enough to mitigate their large carbon footprints.

At its surface, Silicon Valley exemplifies the benefits of renewable energy and sustainable living. Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are now commonplace on tech's largest campuses. But just a few decades ago, early computer chip manufacturers IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor were leaking toxic solvents such as such as trichloroethane and Freon into local water supplies, all the while touting themselves as environmentally friendly. And in 2006, carbon dioxide emissions in Silicon Valley were found to be 5.6 percent above 1990 levels, despite monumental efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As tech workers continue to pour into the area, citizens are left wondering whether increased pollution associated with the ever-growing urban sprawl will leave an equally damaging environmental legacy.

"Whether it is a struggling farmworker family in a very modest bungalow in Gilroy or the Apple campus there in Silicon Valley," Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, told KQED. "So obviously there are equity issues with respect to this particular proposal."

The special tax would hit all of Silicon Valley. Google, Zynga, Twitter, Zenefits, Airbnb, Tesla, and other massive tech organizations would each be required to pay $1 per month under the measure. For a company like Uber, whose valuation just hit $62.5 billion, the fiscal burden of contributing to local climate change initiatives would be negligible.

But how responsible should residents expect these companies to be when it comes to the environment?

Isolating the local carbon footprint of each tech headquarters is difficult when few companies have ever provided that kind of data. Yet, by analyzing the collective influx of new tech workers into Silicon Valley, it's easier to get a sense of the resource debt the industry has incurred. According to a recent census from the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, Silicon Valley's tech economy added 350,000 jobs and gained 220,000 residents between 2011 and 2015. As a result, approximately 59,900 housing units were added from 2007 through 2015 in the region.

In San Francisco, 172 million square feet of office space (that's 36 percent of the total available square footage) is occupied by tech firms. Last year, Google, LinkedIn, and other private developers proposed to add 5.7 million square feet of office space to the Mountain View neighborhood alone.

Assuming that employee and real estate growth also includes increases in energy use, water consumption, and fossil fuel emissions, the tech industry's imprint on the Bay Area has been significant.

Google and Apple, however, are among a cohort of companies taking meaningful steps to become more sustainable by investing in renewable energy, green office spaces, and community habitat projects. And while these initiatives aren't always centralized in Silicon Valley neighborhoods, they do indicate tech's efforts to offset its carbon impacts.

"I think in the San Francisco Bay, this strategy turned out to be the most feasible…what you're going to see in other regions and other areas is that they will look to San Francisco and realize that they too can think creatively on ways to finance climate adaptation," Garrison Frost, a spokesperson for Audubon California, told ThinkProgress. "What people are going to draw from the San Francisco example is that there's no reason to wait around."

Measure AA requires two-thirds voter support to pass, and residents will cast their ballots on June 7.

In the meantime, Facebook's sprawling, 57-acre Menlo Park campus sits precariously on the edge of San Francisco Bay, waiting for the imminent rise of sea water to wash over levees and into reality.