Pulse of the Peninsula: Cities must lead climate-change fight

Karen Rubin

Did not see that coming.

With mind-bending speed, this past week the lame duck President Obama turned into a lion, taking bold, courageous steps to make the U.S. a world leader in climate action: securing a pledge from China to get the second largest polluter in the world (after the US) to cap carbon emissions; pledging $3 billion toward a Green Climate Fund and getting Japan to add $1.5 billion more (when GOP howls, they should be reminded that Bush Jr. gave $2 billion), and vowing to double the pace of reductions in carbon emissions by the U.S.

“As the world’s two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change,” President Obama said in China. 

“Today, I can also announce that the United States has set a new goal of reducing our net greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025. This is an ambitious goal, but it is an achievable goal.  It will double the pace at which we’re reducing carbon pollution in the United States.  It puts us on a path to achieving the deep emissions reductions by advanced economies that the scientific community says is necessary to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change.  It will help improve public health.  It will grow our economy.  It will create jobs.  It will strengthen our energy security, and it will put both of our nations on the path to a low-carbon economy.

“This is a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship, and it shows what’s possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.  In addition, by making this announcement today, together, we hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious — all countries, developing and developed — to work across some of the old divides so we can conclude a strong global climate agreement next year.”

The GOP predictably howled, pledged to impeach, deny funding and even shut down the government, and in equally fast order passed its approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline (which, if anything is the “red cape in front of the bull, Keystone is to environmentalists).

The incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch {“Coal Country”) McConnell pooh-poohed the China agreement, saying “It’s distressing.”

Speaker of the House John (“I’m No Scientist”) Boehner claims that reducing carbon emissions is “job crushing” – except that Obama has already significantly reined in carbon emissions and instead of the “jobs crushing” of Bush (8 million jobs lost), Obama has created 10.2 million jobs. The economy is thriving – well, except for paychecks for working stiffs.

When President Obama took office in 2009, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were projected to continue increasing indefinitely, at a rate of about 1.2 percent each year. Obama set an ambitious target to cut emissions “in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels” by 2020. 

This target is being met by a series of Obama initiatives: appliance efficiency standards that will save American consumers more than $450 billion on their utility bills through 2030; standards that will increase fuel economy to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks, nearly doubling fuel efficiency and saving consumers $1.7 trillion at the pump; released the first-ever proposal for carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants; increased electricity generation from solar more than ten-fold, and tripled electricity production from wind power; invested more than $80 billion in clean energy technologies.

The new emission reduction target that the President announced in China will roughly double the pace of our carbon pollution reduction – from 1.2 percent per year from 2005 to 2020, to 2.3-2.8 percent from 2020 to 2025.

“This target keeps us on track to reduce our carbon pollution on the order of 80 percent by 2050, and means the U.S. is doing our part to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius,” said John Podesta, Counselor to the President.

The President’s actions are all the more critical in light of recent reports: “Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change” and “U.N. Panel Warns of Dire Effects From Lack of Action Over Global Warming” (nothing new, they have been sounding the alarm for years, but the alarms are getting more frantic).

Oklahoma Sen. James (“Climate Change is a Hoax”) Inhofe, slated to become chairman of the Environmental Committee, stated, “The idea that our advanced industrialized economy would ever have zero carbon emissions is beyond extreme and further proof that the IPCC is nothing more than a front for the environmental left.” He also said that it is not for man to challenge God’s will, “My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” 

Climate action is all but dead in the Republican-controlled Congress. Even more threatening is that this Congress will actively roll back whatever progress has been made, pushing forward fossil fuels and killing investment incentives in renewables (just as their donor, the Koch Brothers, wanted).

Republican Tom Cotton, who ousted Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, has vowed exactly that, declaring he would “unleash” the fossil fuel industries and continue to oppose policies like cap and trade and the EPA power rule. 

And just when the US is taking the crucial lead in the world on climate change, you have a Senate that is all but sure to refuse to ratify a climate change treaty that might come out of Paris, in December 2015, just as, under Bush, they refused to ratify Kyoto.

Action Shifts to Cities

What this means is that any sort of climate action must be in the states and even more importantly, the cities, which are, by and large,  democratic and progressive (which is why Republicans work so hard to disenfranchise urban voters).

As Drew Hudson of Environmental Action noted after the midterm “shellacking”, “It wasn’t all bad news: Several cities passed bans on fracking – including Denton, in the heart of Texas oil country.” 

Half of the world’s 7 billion people now live in cities and cities account for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and it is in the cities where the most effective actions to stop the progress of Climate change and mitigate impacts, can be implemented. 

There is good reason for this: people in cities are more predisposed to taking collective action, and also suffering the impacts of climate change on public health and services – and are more inclined to support government action. 

Gail Collins of the New York Times called this the difference between crowded places and empty places: “It’s natural. People who live in crowded places tend to appreciate government. It’s the thing that sets boundaries on public behavior, protects them from burglars and cleans the streets….The people who live in empty places don’t see the point. If a burglar decides to break in, that’s what they’ve got guns for….Who needs government? It just makes trouble and costs money.” (Which is why Republicans adopt tactics designed to suppress or gerrymander urban voters).

This was apparent at the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative in September: mayors of Houston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles  – members of President Obama’s Climate Task Force and the C40 Steering Committee – showed what can be done – is being done – even in red, fossil-fuel fired states like Texas, and are proving cities can be the more effective engines to battle Climate Change.

“The reality is the work will be done in cities, mostly by mayors, and we will drive our nations’ agenda around these,” said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. “We believe mayors are showing climate issues can be addressed – notwithstanding the gridlock we see in Congress and the frustration of many of Obama’s initiatives. We believe working through governments, regional governments, can make change in this area. And I said that to the President: his boots on the ground are the mayors across America, and can take the model across the world.”

Nutter also dismissed the effect at the city level of partisanship which has caused gridlock (and worse) on the federal level. “Partisanship is at the national level and sometimes in states, but if we don’t pick up the trash or fix a pothole….. That’s what we do, the nature of our business. What we really do is run a high-quality service corporation.”

“We’re at pivotal moment,” Nutter said. “Climate change negotiations are coming up next year in Paris. You will see outpouring of support to get more US mayors involved” where the  C-40 steering committee (a global organization of cities dedicated to addressing climate change)  hopes to have a “parallel” gathering to pressure national leaders.

“You feel it on the streets in  New York,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, at a press conference the day after the Peoples Climate March which brought nearly 400,000 to the city. “Whether drought in California, Hurricane Sandy, rising sea levels… Cities can move the world forward, make lasting and deep change…. We don’t wait for action from Washington, we take action now.”

“Things are not happening at the national level. But [mayors are like] CEOs of local corporations and we make decisions every day; we don’t wait for national action,” Houston Mayor Annise Parker declared. “70% of greenhouse gas come from cities and 50% of world’s population live in a relative handful in megacities. The population in cities will only grow. We [mayors] can tip the balance in the right direction.”

Parker boasted that Houston reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent since 2007 and pledged additional 10 percent reduction by the end of 2015 for a total 42 percent reduction. 

“I know that as a city we can do more, we can do better,” Parker said. “If cities do this, we send a message to the private sector that they need to step up as well. The best part is that many of these decisions benefit not just environment, future but our cities.”

She noted that Houston retrofitted 165,000 street lights, replacing incandescent with LED, and calculated that change will save the city $23 million a year in electricity costs alone. The city is now looking into replacing traffic lights with LED, and since the LED lights last 7 times longer, she suggested calculating the additional savings in labor costs.

But where cities differ from businesses, she says, is in their willingness to share best practices. “We take our best ideas and share with our competitors [other mayors] freely, in hopes they will be adopted, adapted, improved and then shared back again.

“Houston is the world headquarters for oil and gas, yet Houston is the largest purchaser of renewables. We get 50% of our energy needs from renewables… At the local level, we tend to be pragmatists.”

What about the upfront money that cities need to make the capital improvements? What about the push back from those who oppose any increase in property taxes? I ask.

The mayors seemed to minimize this problem.

“Many of the things require initial upfront investment,” Parker responded. “Sometimes we get assistance from the federal level – federal initiatives. Often we make decisions with our own funds, doing cost-benefit analysis. For the switch to LED lights, we made arrangement with electric utility provider, paying out of current rates against future savings. 

It wasn’t an upfront cost.” The LED lights use less energy and last seven times as long, saving that much more money on labor to change them. “The return on investment was almost immediate – our  upfront investment recouped. As CEOs, we can make the decision.”

 “These decisions are about leadership,” Mayor Nutter added. “Everybody wants service, they don’t want to pay. We’re executives. We switched out traffic signals, saving $1 million on electricity – that’s real money that we were paying out and now we’re not. And we get benefits from the federal government – grants, capital dollars, general fund dollars. But these are about short-term and long term decisions. Increasingly, you will find mayors making the longer term decision on behalf of constituents. Our cities aren’t going anywhere, we will be here a long time, we have to think long term.”

No one mentioned the reality of Philadelphia public schools being starved for funds, or a major city like Detroit being allowed to go bankrupt.

The mayors offered financial mechanisms to fund climate change initiatives:

 “Public-private partnerships,” Nutter added. “These are more critical, in the post-recession environment – people realizing government can’t do everything. But we can benefit from the private sector, entrepreneurial spirit, and find different ways to do things. We are not our grandparents’ government. this is a  new environment.”

“Commoditize. If we participate in cap and trade, we can get up front money to do the things we want to do, by making investments we are already making,” said Parker. 

But, it seems, the federal government does come into play – setting policy and regulations that guide investment, laying out predictable tax policies, providing grant money to kick start projects, incentives and other supports, so apparently, the cities aren’t such “islands unto themselves” as these mayors seemed to suggest. 

“It’s important to recognize localities need support,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy interjected during the press conference. “It’s great to save money on LED and hire some teachers with savings, but they also need the federal government to support that effort as best we can – share information, new technologies, grant money – and federal policies allow this innovation to continue and actually support that. We see in the United States a groundswell – [the People’s Climate March] was an indication of that.  

“President Obama has gone out in front and is challenging US to move and take action. We need to support localities and states, because if they can figure out how to make it work economically, then we should support that, and get out of the way. It takes leadership at all levels. It is too big a burden to ask every mayor to assume the burden of climate change. Everybody has to participate…

“The EPA did a lot of soul searching to come out with a plan. Instead of dictating to states how to get the carbon reductions we need, we learned we need to set goals and allow the ingenuity to happen – the leaders at local and state level show us how they can make it work for their economies, their energy system – as long as we allowed the flexibility.”

McCarthy added, perhaps over optimistically (this was pre-midterms, after all), “If these mayors can do it, no reason we can’t do it at federal level,” she said.

That is less likely now with Republicans in control and pledging to use their control of the purse strings to thwart Obama on everything from immigration reform to health care to climate change; the likelihood they will refuse to ratify any international treaty, and even move forward with their pledge to neuter or shut down the EPA.

Activists are beginning to put climate change impacts in economic and public health terms:

“Economy-climate synergy also applies to water and land pollution, specifically that arising from cities’ wastewater disposal and solid waste management,” according to the World Resources Institute.

For suburban communities like ours, the “economy-climate synergy” means more cultivation of downtowns with mixed residential and commercial use, more mass/public transportation, building codes, LED lighting, more cultivation of safe bicycle lanes, capturing waste oil for biodiesel, energy-efficient wastewater and water treatment systems, adoption of solar panels and green roofs on government buildings and incentives for commercial structures, using electric and hybrid cars in fleets and scores of other sustainable programs, wider adoption of renewables like solar, offshore wind, hydro and geothermal.

Meanwhile, you have no less a capitalist Republican than George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry (“Bank Bailout”) Paulson warning that climate change also represents a threat to the economy and to business interests.

Climate Change “is the single biggest risk to global economy today –and  not just to quality of life for future generations but economic risk,” Paulson said at the Clinton Global Initiative. “Climate Change is a unique challenge – the risks posed to the world, to global society are as much economic,”

Paulson is a big advocate of putting a price on carbon as necessary to reshape the economics surrounding climate change as well as “fundamental changes in US policy.”

Climate advocates are adapting “cap-and-trade” into a more populist “Carbon Fee & Dividend” proposal.

As George Povall, of the newly formed Queens & Nassau branch of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, explains, in this plan, there is no “cap” since the market sets the price for carbon (Republicans should like that), and the revenues raised are distributed among the people, much like Alaska does now with distributing royalties from North Slope oil (see: citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend).

Undeterred by the midterms, this week Citizens’ Climate Lobby are holding Congressional briefings to explain how the proposal cuts carbon emissions and boosts the economy (see: citizensclimatelobby.org/remi-report). For information, visit citizensclimatelobby.org or email queens@citizensclimatelobby.org.

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