Tackling Climate Change - Only Growth Strategy: Bloomberg

2007-05-15

Tackling climate change is the only sensible pro-growth strategy for the long term, says New York Mayor.

New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, speaking at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit today, said:

We do not need to choose between preventing climate change on the one hand, and promoting growth and development on the other. Because tackling climate change is the sensible - indeed the only - pro-growth strategy for the long term.

Cities consume 75% of the world's energy, and produce 80% of its greenhouse gases. So while global warming clearly requires action at the national and international levels, those of us in city government can and must also take a leading role.

London, Stockholm, and Singapore have taken the lead in experiments with congestion pricing of auto traffic, while cities from Paris to Shanghai to Delhi are moving forward with major, modern mass transit improvements. Chicago is dramatically greening its streets with thousands of new trees, and Berlin is leading the way in greening the roofs of that great city's buildings.

Even though [cities] contribute so heavily to climate change, [they] also tend to be among the most environmentally friendly, sustainable places on earth.

Because our stores often are within walking distance of our homes - because so many of our citizens commute to work and school by mass transit - Because our houses and apartments also tend to be relatively compact and built close together, our carbon footprint is reduced.

New York City climate change policy includes the following:

• Reduce New York City's global warming emissions 30 percent by 2030.
• Reduce City government emissions 30 percent over the next ten years.

Hence:

• Encourage the use of cleaner burning heating fuels. Offer incentives for the use of more efficient heating and cooling systems and appliances.
• Replace old and heavily polluting power plants with newer, more efficient generators.
• Promote the greater use of renewable power.
• Decrease transport related CO2 emissions. Reduce the number of vehicles on our streets and highways. Expand our transit system. Introduce congestion pricing on the streets of Manhattan below 86th Street.
• Encourage and employ emerging technologies, from increased use of solar energy to safe and clean nuclear power, to the wider distributed generation of power by fuel cells. But we can't count on the technology of the future to do what needs to be done, urgently, today.
• Prepare for the consequences of the global warming that has already occurred, including rising sea levels and the possibility of more intense coastal storms.

Bloomberg:

The costs of adapting to and reversing climate change pale in significance compared to the potentially catastrophic financial, social, and environmental price of inaction.

To avoid such immense calamity, what is required now is a new global ethic of responsibility toward one another, and toward the future of God's good earth.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior said in 1961: "The great problem today is that we have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live." Our scientific genius has shrunk time and distance and "made of this world a neighborhood. Now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood."

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Source: Keynote Address. Michael Bloomberg. C40 Large Cities Climate Summit. 2007.5.15

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