They may not be the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, but they are undoubtedly a leading source of annoyance. Toronto City Council considers banning leaf blowers.

Burlington, Vermont – recently recognized as the greenest city in the U.S. – shows us that smart policies and active citizens can go a long way towards tackling climate change.

“Climate change map sends 12 capitals further south.”

Toronto’s mayor and business leaders announced Tuesday a new social networking Web site that will allow residents to measure their impact on the environment and reduce it. The city is believed to be the first ever to give its residents such a tool, officials said.

Zerofootprint Toronto was announced at an environmental summit hosted by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with mayors and local leaders from more than 30 major world cities in attendance.

Toronto’s mayor on Tuesday launched an initiative to help residents fight global climate change as officials from major cities met in New York City for an environmental summit.

The Zerofootprint Toronto project, launched during the C40 Large Cities conference, combines aspects of social networking websites such as Facebook with an environmental footprint calculator.

NEW YORK, May 15, 2007 – At the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit here this week, Toronto’s mayor, David Miller, announced that his city would take advantage of a new tool to measure and reduce Toronto’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Miller will team up with Zerofootprint, a nonprofit working to help companies, governments and individuals reduce their carbon footprint, to create Zerofootprint Toronto, the first-ever city-scale project to bring a city’s residents to the table to fight climate change.

While personal carbon calculators are turning into a dime-a-dozen offering across the web, the unveiling of Zerofootprint’s carbon counter at the C40 Climate Summit last week ushers in a new era of a large scale web-based data warehousing that can aggregate carbon emission information from city government, companies, universities, neighborhoods, groups or families.