Comments on Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement: Cities (Still) Falling Behind

According to several accounts that have come out over the past year, many cities are not meeting the goals they agreed to; some mayors, in fact, appear not to even remember signing the agreement.

OK ... how to remind them, then? Do we need some agency to release a report card, so as to publicly shame or pressure the undeperforming cities into cleaning up their act?

Like all the other cities, Seattle made the commitment based on little awareness of how difficult it would be. In the past couple years the City has busted ass to figure out what is necessary (giant props to the Green Ribbon Commission), and is now starting to make the difficult changes. In two years the City went from defending the tunnel as the environmental solution to advocating for congestion pricing, making transit / walking / biking more convenient than driving, saying we have to reduce VMT, and figuring out how to measure emissions effects of transportation investments. That's a big change.

So acknowledgment / commitment comes first, figuring out how comes second, holy shit comes third, and making it so comes eventually. We are punching way above our weight on this issue -- many of the other signer cities are looking for solutions and counting on Seattle to show the way. We're going to have to export both the policy and technical solutions as we find them (via the US Conference of Mayors, Western Climate Initiative, etc), but also the local activism and critical media attention that provides the pressure and political cover to follow thru on the hard choices.

You know, the reality is many countries are having the same problems.

Doesn't mean they're not trying to progress, just that it can be difficult.

If the EPA would just get out of the way and let we sane states, with our 60 percent of the US economy, regulate green house gas emissions for vehicles, we would have a lot easier time of it, due to market incentives and the invisible hand of capitalism being on our side.

Seriously.

Give me a freaking break. Mayor Jowly talks a good game, but he can't implement his way out of a paper bag. Example: mega cruise liners get to plug into into the grid so they don't belch diesel fumes into the air, but cyclists don't even have night lights on Seattle's bike trails. I urge others to post your own examples. Seattle's population is increasing, the number of cars is increasing, congestion is increasing, the air smells like a petrochemical factory. When it comes right down to it, I can't think of a single damn thing that's green about Seattle, except maybe Mayor Fatty's hot air.

A petro factory? Um, no.

Let's not hype things ok?