I have a varied and exciting professional life, but still, it’s not every day that I get to be inspired by the likes of Harrison Ford and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s been my unique opportunity this week: to attend the Governors’ Global Climate Summit – the second annual – in Los Angeles.
A little history is in order here. Back in 1997 the nations of the world gathered in Kyoto to negotiate an agreement to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that are believed to contribute to climate change. The so-called Kyoto Protocol set reduction targets for countries that agreed to sign on. The United States declined to participate, saying the agreement wasn’t fair unless it assigned some responsibility to developing nations. The parties to the Kyoto agreement, along with many other nations, have continued to meet annually under the auspices of the United Nations, and the next meeting is coming up this December in Copenhagen.
The Governors’ climate summit here in Los Angeles – that annoying apostrophe after “Governors” means the event is organized and hosted by several governors, including those of Oregon, Washington, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin in addition to our own – is part of the lead-in to Copenhagen, where our Governor says he will be in attendance. The Copenhagen meeting is regarded as critical to making global progress to slow human-induced climate change, because Kyoto Protocol provisions are set to expire soon and without action, nothing will be ready to replace them.
The conference kicked off Wednesday with speeches by Harrison Ford, a spokesman for the nonprofit Conservation International, and by our Governor, among others. Mr. Ford observed that deforestation is the world’s largest source of CO2 emissions – larger than all the transportation fleets of the world combined. (This made me glad I focused on planting trees while part of the Leadership Long Beach Class of 2008!)
The big concept of the day was “subnational action” – not a term that shows up in my vocabulary very often. But the loud-and-clear message was that real change, the kind that really reduces greenhouse gas emissions, happens mainly at the local level. States, regions, and especially cities are the true leaders in climate protection, not the national government. Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa observed that while changing the behavior of nations resembles steering a large ship with a small rudder, “cities are more like speedboats.” Governor Schwarzenegger trumpeted that “We are where the action is.” A U.N. speaker observed that the actions and participation of local governments could make the difference between success and failure in Copenhagen.
Some of the examples given by other cities’ mayors at the conference gave great cause for hope. The Mayor of Toronto spoke of a major project retrofitting concrete-slab apartment buildings with weatherproofing. At one stroke this effort reduced low-income residents’ heating and cooling bills, rejuvenated neighborhood architecture, and created local jobs that could not be moved offshore. In Vancouver, the city rezoned “a big chunk” of its downtown commercial area to residential, despite many objections. As a result, over sixty percent of trips are now made on foot! (In Southern California, only about three to five percent of trips are made by walking and transit combined.) In Copenhagen, 97% of its residents are now served by 90%-efficient district heating (remember conventional central power plants are only about 30% efficient), and the city hopes to be carbon-neutral by 2025.
In sum, it felt great to get some external – even international – validation for Long Beach’s leadership in proposing a Sustainable City Action Plan. In our society, price signals – low water rates, cheap electricity, low gas prices, low landfill fees, cheap consumer goods, free roads – tend to make environmentally damaging choices the most attractive economically. (I know not everyone will agree these items are cheap, but their prices do not, by and large, reflect “external” environmental costs.) In this situation, it takes a special kind of vision and courage to look at behaving differently. It’s my hope that over time, these and other price signals will change, so that being “green” becomes the cheapest and most attractive option. In the meantime, we may need to rely on those who believe it’s simply “the right thing to do” – and support them with both international inspiration and “subnational” leadership.