As world leaders gathered at the U.N. to talk about global warming, mayors set about actually doing something about climate change
Sep 23, 2014 | |
In the 1980s, the Chinese city of Shenzhen had some 300,000 mostly impoverished inhabitants. Today, that city—the first to experience China's reform and economic opening—has more than 15 million residents and also hosts —a carbon market. Shenzhen's market to reduce global warming pollution covers some 620 manufacturers and other industries that collectively grew by 9 percent in 2013. The buying and selling of permits to emit CO2 pollution resulted in a drop of 500,000 metric tons in the manufacturing sector and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 2 million metric tons for the entire city."If you can know Shenzhen can do this then you can believe Chinese government can do this as well," says Tang Jie, vice mayor of one of the largest megacities in China, who says the overall goal is to . "In 2020, our city will leap over the emission peak. If Shenzhen can make this peak, I think maybe in 10 or 15 years whole of China can peak."As Shenzhen goes—and Beijing, Chongqing and Shanghai, all Chinese cities with new carbon market experiments—so goes China. And as China goes when it comes to spewing carbon dioxide into the sky, so goes the world—China is the and the 1.2 billion Chinese now emit as much per person as the roughly 500 million citizens of the European Union thanks to a growing coal habit.As world leaders gather at the U.N. on September 22 to reiterate or reveal pledges for action to combat climate change, it is in cities that reductions to global warming pollution are actually happening. That could be , China, a program to share electric cars in Paris or rapid-transit buses in Curitiba, Brazil. Or it could be a massive program to here in New York City. At the , 228 cities representing 436 million people committed to avoid more than 2 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas pollution per year going forward under a new global "." And 25 cities pledged to cut methane pollution seeping out of garbage dumps.At the same meeting, the U.S. and China reiterated previous pledges to and reduce carbon intensity by as much as 45 percent, both below 2005 levels by 2020, respectively. "Nations are not delivering," says Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio de Janeiro and chair of the C40 group of cities to combat climate change. "How can there be any argument against prioritizing cities?"Cities around the globe are growing fast—more than half of the world's 7.2 billion people now live in one city or another, a number expected to swell to more than 6 billion people living in cities by 2050, mostly in Africa and Asia. Cities now deliver fully three-quarters of global economic activity—more than $50 trillion. And it is citizens of cities who are responsible for at least half of all greenhouse gas pollution—through demand for heating and cooling, food, lighting and entertainment. As a result, may determine the ultimate outcome of global warming. "The future is in the cities," says Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.In fact, the decisions surrounding how the world urbanizes will determine the future course of global warming—as the World Resources Institute notes: sprawling Atlanta emits as compact Barcelona simply because of transportation needs. If emerging cities follow the Atlanta model the world will be a lot hotter. And at the same time as cities struggle to combat climate change, cities will also have to solve problems like urban poverty and inequality. "If we miss it in the next 15 years, we will create another lost generation," says Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements.The C40 group of cities—69 cities now that have banded together to combat climate change—have released research that shows that from buildings, cars and garbage could cut global warming pollution by nearly 4 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases in the next two decades—and 8 gigatonnes by 2050—in addition to any national policies. More importantly, mayors have more direct control over such policies in their cities. "We have strong constituencies we can't hide from. We don't want to hide from," says Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City. "We are held accountable in a way that national leaders are not."At the same time, cities are competing to be as livable as possible. While Beijing may have a carbon market and mandates to remove coal-burning from city limits, Melbourne in Australia plans to be zero net emissions by the end of the decade. And Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, hopes to be the world's first climate neutral capital by 2025—a goal already achieved by the nearby . As Paris mayor Ann Hidalgo puts it, cities are going through a "transition ecologique," commenting on her city's electric car sharing program: "if cities say we don't want fossil fuel cars then industry will provide." A new Urban Electric Mobility Initiative announced at the U.N. aims to increase electric vehicle sales for use in cities to at least 30 percent by 2030.Most importantly perhaps, it is cities that face the brunt of climate change threats, such as . Cities are on the "frontlines of this war," Paes says. "The victims are city residents." delivered a foreshadowing of climate change to come to New York City in 2012. Downtown was inundated and dark, and even the U.N. building itself flooded for the first time in its 70-year history in the city. "Climate change is the defining issue of our time," says Ban-ki Moon, U.N. Secretary General. "It's not a distant threat."New York City has already cut greenhouse gas emissions by 19 percent since 2005, thanks to efforts initiated by former Mayor Bloomberg—now —and continued under de Blasio. And while national leaders speak in generalities of a global climate deal signed in Paris in 2015 with targets to be negotiated, mayors of cities in almost every country are implementing programs that actually reduce CO2 pollution.New York City, for one, will go further than the U.S., committing to reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 80 percent by 2050, and has released . The centerpiece is to be more energy efficient because old and new constructions are responsible for 75 percent of the city's global warming pollution. "The failure to reach that goal dooms us all," de Blasio says. "If we don't get it right now, at some point it will be too late."
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