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I’m very glad to see this, and think it demonstrates that people are
moving to do what they can with or without 100% scientific agreement. KwC Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules SEATTLE - Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this
normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do
something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on
global warming. Mr. Nickels, a
Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition
to fight global warming on
the local level,
in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy. The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as
conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent
nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities
meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush
administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping
gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012. On
Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition,
the latest Republican mayor to join. Mr. Nickels said that to achieve the 7 percent reduction,
Seattle was requiring
cruise ships that dock in its bustling port to turn off their diesel engines
while resupplying and to rely only on electric power provided by the city, a
requirement that has forced some ships to retrofit. And by the end of this year
the city's power utility, Seattle City Light, will be the only utility in the
country with no net emissions of greenhouse gases, the mayor's office said. Salt Lake City has become Utah's largest buyer of wind power
in order to meet its reduction target. In New York, the Bloomberg
administration is trying to reduce emissions from the municipal fleet by buying
hybrid electric-gasoline-powered vehicles. Nathan Mantua, assistant director of the Center for Science in the Earth System at the University of Washington, which
estimates the impact of global warming on the Northwest, said the coalition's
efforts were laudable, but probably of limited global impact. "It is clearly a politically
significant step in the right direction," Dr. Mantua said. "It may be
an environmentally significant step for air quality in the cities that are
going to do this, but for the global warming problem it is a baby step." Mr. Nickels said he decided to act when the Kyoto Protocol
took effect in February without the support of the United States, the world's
largest producer of heat-trapping gases. On that day, he announced he would try
to carry out the agreement himself, at least as far as Seattle was concerned,
and called on other mayors to join him. The coalition is not the first effort by local leaders to
take up the initiative on climate change. California, under Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is moving to limit carbon dioxide emissions, and
Gov. George A. Pataki of New York, also a Republican, has led efforts to reduce
power plant emissions in the Northeast. But the coalition is unusual in its
open embrace of an international agreement that the Bush administration has
spurned, Mayor Nickels's office said, and is significant because cities are
huge contributors to the nation's emission of heat-trapping gases. Michele St. Martin, communications director for the White
House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Kyoto Protocol would have
resulted in a loss of five million jobs in the United States and could raise
energy prices. Ms. St.
Martin said President Bush "favors an aggressive approach" on climate
change, "one that fosters economic growth that will lead to new technology
and innovation." But many
of the mayors said they were acting precisely out of concern for the economic
vitality of their cities.
Mr. Nickels, for example, pointed out that the dry winters and the steep
decline projected in the glaciers of the Cascade range could affect Seattle's
supply of drinking water and hydroelectric power. The mayor of low-lying New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, a
Democrat, said he joined the coalition because a projected rise in sea levels
"threatens the very existence of New Orleans." In Hawaii, the mayor of Maui County,
Alan Arakawa, a Republican, said he joined because he was frustrated by the
administration's slowness to recognize the scientific consensus that climate
change was happening because of human interference. "I'm hoping it sends a message they really need to
start looking at what's really happening in the real world," Mayor Arakawa
said. Mayor Nickels
said it was no accident that most cities that had joined were in coastal states. The mayor of Alexandria, Va., is
worried about increased flooding; mayors in Florida are worried about
hurricanes. But Mr. Nickels has
also found supporters in the country's interior. Jerry Ryan, the Republican
mayor of Bellevue, Neb., said he had signed on because of concerns about the
effects of droughts on his farming community. Mr. Ryan described himself as a
strong Bush supporter, but said he felt that the president's approach to global
warming should be more like his approach to terrorism. "You've got to ask, 'Is it remotely possible that there
is a threat?' " he said. "If the answer is yes, you've got to act
now." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/national/14kyoto.html |
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