When it comes to climate change, it seems good news is too much of a rarity. The rapid recent growth of installation of renewable energy sources despite the efforts of the Kochs and their ilk to stifle this transition away from fossil fuels is certainly encouraging—even though the total amount of electricity so far being generated by these sources remains relatively small. There’s at least hope that we’re headed in the right direction.
Another bit of encouragement comes from the just released report Climate Action in Megacities 3.0 from the C40 group. That decade-old organization is now a network of more than 80 cities around the world actually making plans and taking action on climate change.
The report assessed current actions underway in 66 of these cities and found that if all their goals are met, carbon dioxide emissions equal to the output of 170 coal-fired power plants will be cut. Samantha Page reports:
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, said the group has been critical in catalyzing local action.
“It really has changed the dialogue,” Bloomberg said on a call with reporters Monday. Through the C40 framework, cities share best practices and experiences, which can sometimes help foster a productive competition, he said. “If [Parisian] Mayor [Anne] Hidalgo knows Rio is doing something great that Paris isn’t doing, she’s going to copy it.”
According to the report, 30 percent of the climate actions cities have taken since 2009, following the COP15 in Copenhagen, have been the result of city-to-city collaboration. Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes echoed Bloomberg’s comments in his introduction to the report. “The report provides compelling evidence for why city governments have demonstrated an ability to get to grips with climate change where others have failed, namely: the ability of mayors to collaborate across geographic, political and economic boundaries,” Paes writes.
Anyone who even occasionally reads the latest climate change news and is not snowed by the likes of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) knows just how much cities—and, of course, whole nations—must do to address this deep global crisis. The situation is not made easier given that the world greets nearly 6 million new urban dwellers every month. These extra people boost the demand for more energy, goods, and services. And without action, all those add to CO2 emissions.
So what are the cities actually doing? From the C40 report:
Not only are C40 cities having a direct and tangible impact on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally, they are also helping to lead the change towards a green economy and developing human capital with skills in this area. [...]
In 2014, 228 global cities, representing 436 million people, had set greenhouse gas reduction goals and targets amounting to a cumulative reduction of 13 [billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent] by 2050, more than three times the annual emissions of the European Union. This emphasizes how ambitious cities can be in leading emissions reductions. There is, however, scope for even more long-term thinking. While a number of ambitious cities target high reductions to 2050, the majority of targets do not stretch beyond 2020. Mayors must continue to show leadership in mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Transforming infrastructure is a major element of what must be done. In October, C40 and the Stockholm Environment Institute published another report—Keeping cities green: Avoiding carbon lock-in due to urban development. The “lock-in” reflects what level of carbon emissions may be added by urban development. Thoughtlessly done, it could mean a big slice from the so-called carbon budget, which is the amount emissions we can allow from the fuel we burn, forests we cut down and concrete we pour before we blow past the 2°C temperature increase that scientists think we can live with.
The Stockholm paper explored two possible scenarios taking us to 2030. The smart one found that an “aggressive ‘urban action’ scenario” employing the most energy-efficient policies in transportation and urban design would mean keeping about 45 billion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere in the next 15 years.
Sticking with the inefficient approaches of the past would mean making changes in the future that would be far more expensive. It’s not just the new stuff needing our attention, however. We also must retrofit existing infrastructure—both urban and other—to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions we are already committed to. Without a reduction in the current global rate of emissions—which was 32.3 billion tons in 2014—we will reach the limits of the carbon budget around 2040. That gives us just a single generation to make the moves that will affect dozens of future generations.