Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules

Could you post the article so that people don't have to reg with a site?

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By the way, Brandon - the site has to obey copyright laws - which is one reason why people do urls - joining the NYT is free. I will be deleting half of this in a few hours - for those reasons.

Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules
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By ELI SANDERS
Published: May 14, 2005

SEATTLE, May 13 - 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.
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Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle formed a bipartisan coalition of mayors to adopt the Kyoto Protocol on global warming on the local level.

Who Needs Kyoto?
Forum: The Environment

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."

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Thank you dlowan.

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Climate Signals

Published: May 19, 2005

Quote:

Hardly a week goes by without somebody telling President Bush that his passive approach to global warming is hopelessly behind the times, that asking industry for voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions won't work and that what's needed is a regulatory regime that asks sacrifices of everyone. He's heard this from his political allies here and abroad - from Tony Blair, George Pataki and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name three - and now he is hearing it from the heaviest hitters in the business world, including, most recently, Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric.
Mr. Immelt runs the biggest company in America, and for that reason some environmental groups hailed his speech last week on climate change as a tipping point in the global warming debate. Mr. Immelt chose his words carefully and did not directly criticize Mr. Bush. But he left no doubt that he believes mandatory controls on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, are necessary and inevitable. And he said he would double investments by G.E. in energy and environmental technologies to prepare it for what he sees as a huge global market for products that help other companies - and countries like China and India - reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Mr. Immelt's speech is not the only sign of impatience among Mr. Bush's business allies. In New York, two dozen leading institutional investors managing more than $3 trillion in assets recently urged American companies to address the risks of climate change and to invest more heavily in strategies to reduce those risks. They met under the auspices of the United Nations Foundation and Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental interests.

Perversely, the administration insists that all this voluntary activity will eliminate the need for a national strategy. Yet these gestures represent only a small slice of the economy; industry as a whole will not spend money to reduce emissions as long as the rules (or, more precisely, the absence of rules) confer a competitive advantage on the businesses that do nothing. Indeed, it is precisely to achieve a level playing field that more and more big utilities - the very companies Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney thought they were letting off the hook - are now calling on Congress to consider mandatory controls.

Absent a response from the administration, which still maintains, incredibly, that there is insufficient scientific understanding to justify mandatory limits, the country's best hope for meaningful action at the national level rests with the Senate, which will shortly take up an energy bill.

The bill by itself would not impose limits on emissions, although there is some talk that Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman may offer a bill imposing industrywide caps as an amendment on the Senate floor. But a properly drawn energy bill has the potential to do much good, especially if it avoids rewarding the old polluting industries, as the House version does, and focuses instead on putting serious money behind cleaner fuels, cleaner power plants and cleaner cars. That these measures would also ease the country's dependency on overseas oil is, of course, a persuasive side benefit.

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How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

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woiyo wrote:

How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

Wouldn't it be - statistically - more interesting to know the number of population they represent, if you really want to nitpick?

(In total, 134 cities in 35 states have joined, representing 29.3 million Americans.)

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

woiyo wrote:
How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

Wouldn't it be - statistically - more interesting to know the number of population they represent, if you really want to nitpick?

(In total, 134 cities in 35 states have joined, representing 29.3 million Americans.)

Ok. Well that still represents a minority of the total population.

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Along those same lines:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/health/11681044.htm

Quote:

Calling the Bush administration's approach "inadequate and illegal," Gov. Rendell's environmental regulators said yesterday Pennsylvania would issue its own restrictions on mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants - the first big coal state to do so.

Along with New Jersey and nine other states, Pennsylvania also sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency yesterday as promised, saying the federal mercury rule - announced in March - does not do enough to protect the public health.

"The rule falls far short of what is required to protect vulnerable young lives," Kathleen A. McGinty, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement.

EPA officials countered that the federal rule was the first effort by any nation to address the problem, and vowed to defend the rule "vigorously" in court.

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woiyo wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:
woiyo wrote:
How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

Wouldn't it be - statistically - more interesting to know the number of population they represent, if you really want to nitpick?

(In total, 134 cities in 35 states have joined, representing 29.3 million Americans.)

Ok. Well that still represents a minority of the total population.

Well, let's just dismiss it then.

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What irks me most in this debate is the fact that they still so eagerly cling to the "Global Warming" terminology.
Global warming is and has been a contentious issue for economists and environmentalists since it's inception. Each side regards the other's works as junk science whislt maintaining their position is a reflection of the true state of environmental affairs.

What we should really be talking about is simply cleaning up the sh!t that we dump all around us that is getting into our water, air and food chains--and discuss sustainability rather than closing our eyes and ears and attempting to write it off as a non-issue.

Calling it global warming ignores the core issue: a clean and habitable environment. Seems calling it global warming was a scare tactic intended to pressure individuals to "clean up or else...", like an approaching environmental doomsday. That is simply a case to be made in the future depending on how we treat the environment from here on out.

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candidone1 wrote:

woiyo wrote:
Walter Hinteler wrote:
woiyo wrote:
How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

Wouldn't it be - statistically - more interesting to know the number of population they represent, if you really want to nitpick?

(In total, 134 cities in 35 states have joined, representing 29.3 million Americans.)

Ok. Well that still represents a minority of the total population.

Well, let's just dismiss it then.

I've dismissed Kyoto from the beginning. With so called "emerging nations" like China and India doing absolutley NOTHING in this regard, why is the US held ot different standards? Because the UN says so?? Screw the UN.

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Or maybe because we already "emerged" and have the means to do more?

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I guess woiyo is comfortable with seeing the US on the same level as India or China - when it suits his needs....

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old europe wrote:

I guess woiyo is comfortable with seeing the US on the same level as India or China - when it suits his needs....

Or maybe YOU are just not bright enough to understand the issue Rolling Eyes

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woiyo, you havin' a bad day today? You seem a tad prickly of late. Hope everything is ok.

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woiyo wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:
woiyo wrote:
How many Mayors are there in the us?

131 is what percentage of the total?

Wouldn't it be - statistically - more interesting to know the number of population they represent, if you really want to nitpick?

(In total, 134 cities in 35 states have joined, representing 29.3 million Americans.)

Ok. Well that still represents a minority of the total population.

The minority with balls.

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woiyo wrote:

old europe wrote:
I guess woiyo is comfortable with seeing the US on the same level as India or China - when it suits his needs....

Or maybe YOU are just not bright enough to understand the issue

maybe...... why don't you just explain, oh wise one?

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old europe wrote:

woiyo wrote:
old europe wrote:
I guess woiyo is comfortable with seeing the US on the same level as India or China - when it suits his needs....

Or maybe YOU are just not bright enough to understand the issue

maybe...... why don't you just explain, oh wise one?

Why? You demonstrate total disdain for anything American and demonstrate little ability to do anything but post silly comments as you have done before.

Was my comment regarding emerging nations being held to different standards inaccurate? If so, say so and prove it.

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woiyo wrote:

old europe wrote:
woiyo wrote:
old europe wrote:
I guess woiyo is comfortable with seeing the US on the same level as India or China - when it suits his needs....

Or maybe YOU are just not bright enough to understand the issue

maybe...... why don't you just explain, oh wise one?

Why? You demonstrate total disdain for anything American and demonstrate little ability to do anything but post silly comments as you have done before.

Was my comment regarding emerging nations being held to different standards inaccurate? If so, say so and prove it.

Oh? How do I demonstrate total disdain for anything American? I'm quite sure you must be mistaken....

And re standards: do you hold the US to the same standards as China and India?

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Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules

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