Around 100 mayors attended a two-day Climate Protection Summit at the United States Conference of Mayors on November 2, all showing a lot of support for a new idea...cities going green. Meaning, cities would be centered on public transit, and built to a higher standard of energy efficiency that will save money and create a greener way of living.
A downside, it is hard to convince voters that going green is good, and that the mayors themselves aren't crazy.
"This is one of those things you do in your last term in office," John Robert Smith, the mayor of Meridian, Miss. said, "because they'll be sure you've lost your mind."
“You just can’t say we need to reduce global warming because there will be floods and polar bears will be gone,” said Mayor Douglas H. Palmer of Trenton, president of the Conference of Mayors. “They’ll run me out of town.” And instead of saying things like that, he has taken a more human approach by relating it to the voters, like their children’s asthma and new things like "green collar jobs" in which they will install solar panels and things of that nature.
New ideas are being thrown all over the place for a green way of living but one thing is for sure though, this conference made it clear that cities have to take up the slack in which the Bush administration has left when it comes to fighting global warming, even if it is a tough notion.
More than 700 mayors have signed a petition of reduce their cities' emissions of carbon dioxide and other dangerous gases, but it was never ratified.
Working towards more environmentally sound ways of living is going to be expensive and a seriously extensive process, but these mayors showed that they are willing to at least talk about it, which is a step further than the president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/us/03mayors.html?ref=opinion
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