The pressure is on to determine the coolest California city. Davisites, unite!  Between now and July 31, we are asking as many Davis households as possible to go online and sign up for the Cool California Challenge (www.cooldavis.org/challenge).

Sign up your household, answer a few questions, and earn points for Davis. Record your home energy bills from your PG&E bills in April and May (your March and April usage) and your vehicle use (year/model/make/license plate number and current odometer reading) to earn even more points.

“Signing up is a breeze,” reports Kristin Heinemeier. “It only took me 10 minutes since I knew to have my PG&E bills and odometer reading handy. Right off, I earned 181 points with my PG&E data, and I can’t wait to earn more points in the coming months.”

Remember the holiday lights competition in January? Citizens rallied to vote online every day for nine days to keep Davis in the lead. In this simple and fun competition, Cool Davis has a chance of winning $10,000 in this first phase. Then we go on to compete for the title of California’s Coolest City and an even larger prize. More importantly it will allow us to assess how Davis is doing in attempts to reduce our community carbon footprint.

May is Bike Month. The weather is finally perfect for leaving the car in the driveway and biking on errands and pleasure trips. Add a picture of yourself riding a bike to your Cool California profile and earn an extra 100 points for Davis.

In Davis, our transportation footprint is the real culprit, making up more than 50 percent of our carbon emissions. While we bike 22 percent of our trips, at this time of year there’s no reason not to double the number of bike trips.

In addition to earning points by lowering your vehicle miles driven in the Cool California Challenge, you can log on to www.mayisbikemonth.org and get credit for your biking miles plus chances to win prizes. It’s not too late to go back to May 1 and record miles biked so far this month. It’s healthy for you, it’s good for the air quality, it lowers our greenhouse gas emissions and it’s fun.

Meanwhile, join Cool Davis members at the Farmers Market on Wednesday evenings near the oak tree stage and Saturdays near the Farmers Market office for conversation about climate change and actions to take.