Fresh on the heels of releasing PlaNYC and an inventory of the city's greenhouse gas emissions, New York is hosting this week's Large Cities Climate Summit, a conference of leaders from more than 30 cities around the globe. A successor to a 2005 gathering in London, the summit's purpose is to create long-term international collaborations between large cities to drive down carbon emissions, and to encourage cities to work with the private sector as well as national governments to accelerate action on climate change.

The conference is sponsored by some large financial corporations, including JP Morgan Chase, as well as some companies -- like Shell and ConEdison -- whose operations intrinsically involve creating greenhouse gas emissions. Mayors from cities as far-flung as Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Seoul are meeting their counterparts from Austin, Indianapolis and Trenton, and listening to presentations on energy, waste management, transportation, and the business side of curbing climate change. And, former president and current philanthropist Bill Clinton with be the keynote speaker.

The idea of gathering city leaders makes sense because, as the summit's website notes, city governments in both rich and poor countries can have major influence over their city’s greenhouse gas emissions, mainly because they:

• Own buildings and facilities that directly consume large quantities of energy.
• Manage landfills and waste treatment plants, both of which are sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Have significant purchasing power, and can influence markets for vehicles and equipment.
• Set local land use policies, determining where development is located and the mix of uses allowed.
• Operate public transit and transportation infrastructure.
• Apply building codes, determining the energy efficiency of local building stock.
• Regulate automobile parking, traffic flow and roadways.
• Own or control their local energy utility.

The most interesting part of the summit, for those of us who are not city leaders, may be the page on the website presenting a number of case studies that detail municipal success stories from around the world in the areas of energy, waste, buildings, transportation, lighting and water. One can imagine the mayors of Jakarta and Bogota discussing their respective mass transit systems, or the mayors of Melbourne and San Francisco trading tips on their solar energy systems.

Mayor Bloomberg and the other conference participants, as well as the sponsors, deserve credit for organizing this meeting. The potential for cross-pollination and education here is huge, and all major cities in the world are in the climate change boat together. Hopefully this not a lot of hot air, but rather the beginning of the eco-movement nostrum "think globally, act locally" coming true.

NYC may be talking green, but they oppose the state's
light pollution control bill which passes by a wide margin each time it comes up for a vote in the state legislature. Being green isn't just about buildings.
The whole planet is a building, and we have no place
else to go. Turn off the lights that aren't truly
needed and tone down those that are overlit, and we will all sleep better without having our levels of melatonin depressed.

Posted by: Steve Davis on May 29, 2007 2:34 PM

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