Seven years from the first U.S. Green Building Council LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards and one year after “An Inconvenient Truth,” things are moving fast in San Francisco’s green building sector. The spate of new luxury condominium towers in the city’s South of Market district (SoMa, as the locals call it) represent a flashpoint moment in a building boom unlike any since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

These condo towers, vertically ambitious and packed densely into the industrial SoMa district, symbolize much in a city where everything is a battle for “the soul of the city”: gentrification, urban renewal, San Francisco’s status as a global city, and a hilly city’s citizens’ affections for the skyline as they are accustomed to viewing it. Indeed, two towers at First and Mission streets will, by the end of the decade, be the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi River.

Yet in an age of the looming crisis of climate change, many of the towers’ architects say they hope ecological sustainability is the scale upon which history will judge them. But hope, not self-satisfaction, is the word of the moment. For San Francisco to ride the crest of the green building wave, much will depend on what developers, architects, municipal departments and the public ask of each other — and of themselves.

Green roofs full of plants and native grasses top off the three levels of Arterra, the first high-rise condo to receive LEED certification in San Francisco. A 16-story collection of 269 homes to be inhabited by early 2008 in the condo-boom neighborhood of Mission Bay, the building boasts a lobby floor made of cork, and each condo’s kitchen floor is bamboo, both of which are rapidly renewable materials.

Low-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints, carpeting and cabinetry make for condo interiors designed to keep residents from rubbing their eyes or holding their aching heads. The bathrooms all feature dual-flush toilets, which reduce water consumption by 30 percent.

Eric Corey Freed and his firm, Organic Architect, consulted on the project and are also involved in the design of Arterra’s penthouse. Occupants of the tip-top condo can gauge their high status by the fact their unit will be powered by its very own solar panels: The California Public Utilities Commission won’t allow Freed to cover the roof with solar panels and then divvy up the power among all building tenants.