Campaign Action
Donald Trump pulled the United States back from climate leadership in the world by pulling out of the Paris accord … and as it turned out, he pulled the federal government back from leadership in the United States. A host of mayors, governors, and corporations are saying that they will take action to ensure that the U.S. meets its greenhouse gas emission targets, Trump notwithstanding. According to the New York Times:
The unnamed group — which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.
“We’re going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed,” Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is coordinating the effort, said in an interview.
But their numbers are growing—by 11 PM PT on Thursday, 92 mayors representing around 40 million people had signed on to a letter saying that:
We will continue to lead. We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. We will buy and create more demand for electric cars and trucks. We will increase our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create a clean energy economy, and stand for environmental justice. And if the President wants to break the promises made to our allies enshrined in the historic Paris Agreement, we’ll build and strengthen relationships around the world to protect the planet from devastating climate risks.
While the list of mayors includes the famous big blue cities—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and so on—it also includes plenty of red-state cities—Salt Lake City; Fayetteville and Little Rock, Arkansas; Phoenix, Arizona; Columbia, South Carolina. And of course the mayor of Pittsburgh, the city Trump couldn’t stop talking about. While many red-state cities are themselves blue, a Republican mayor who didn’t sign the letter:
… told HuffPost by phone Thursday that Trump likes to talk about greatness, but great countries take a leadership role. They recognize problems and address them, he said. They work to leave behind a clean environment for future generations. And they don’t, Brainard said, align themselves with countries like Syria and Nicaragua — the only other countries outside the Paris accord.
“I think [Trump’s] appealing to a very small percentage of the American electorate when he does this,” he said. “Not only is it a policy mistake that’s bad for the country, I think it’s a political mistake as well.”
The governors of California, New York, and Washington have also committed to a state climate coalition, while many corporations have said they’ll continue to work toward the goals of the Paris accord as well, from car companies that will have to build energy-efficient cars if they want to sell them anywhere beyond the U.S. to Mars, which sees the effects of climate change on its cocoa crops, to Facebook, which promised that “every new data center we build will be powered by 100% renewable energy.”