Forget Congress, Check Out the Cities

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Photo: Daniel Stein / Istock

By Jim DiPeso

Jim DiPeso It's spring (except in Seattle, where the temperature as I write this is stuck in the mid 50s). In spring, it's important to look for silver linings (especially around the clouds that keep dumping cold rain around here). Congress, as usual, is fishtailing, skidding, and wholly incapable and unwilling to address sticky, non-ideological, and technically complex issues such as energy and climate change. Rick Perry's idea of making Congress part-time is looking better every day. Why pay squabbling, high-maintenance employees 8 hours of wages for turning in 2 hours worth of work? At the local level, however, citizens are getting more of their money's worth on the general sustainability front. Cities, such as the municipalities organized in the <a title="C40" href="http://live.c40cities.org/" target="_blank">C40</a>, are making positive things happen in reducing emissions linked to climate change and planning for the climate impacts that will be unavoidable. Part of the reason for that difference is that city executives have to be practical. They have to deliver basic services. Urban residents expect potholes to be filled, trash picked up, and clean water to come out of their faucets. Mayors don't have time for ideological kabuki that might enthrall DC pundits but doesn't keep the drains clear or the streets swept. U.S. mayors have been paying more attention to sustainability issues over the past 10 years, according to a National League of Cities analysis, out of a realization that sustainability offers a new approach to solving old urban problems. The C40 is a network of cities around the world (including five member and five affiliate U.S. cities) that trade ideas about reducing heat-trapping emissions and using energy more efficiently. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg chairs the group. Together, the C40 participating cities have taken more than 4,700 individual actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It matters what big cities do. The urban share of total greenhouse gas emissions is as high as 80 percent, when taking into account urban consumption of food, energy, and other energy-intensive goods. Last year, the C40 cities alone reported emitting 610 million metric tons of greenhouse gases (measured as CO2-equivalent). That's more than all of the United Kingdom's emissions as of 2009. Cities have a stake in making sure climate change doesn't spin into the red zone. Hotter temperatures would exacerbate urban heat islands. Rising sea levels would flood low-lying cities, regardless of any decrees that might be forthcoming from North Carolina state legislators. More intense droughts would endanger water supplies for cities in drought-prone areas. Find out more by looking at a cool new <a title="C40 Graphic" href="http://c40.org/ending-climate-change-begins-in-the-city" target="_blank">C40 graphic</a>. Meanwhile, if the rest of the U.S. could send some surplus warmth Seattle's way, it would be much appreciated. No

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