Local Environments, Global Impacts

The issue of protecting the global environment clearly demonstrates the interconnectedness of our world. From space, the Earth appears as a mosaic of brilliant blue, green, and white, and a collage of water, forests, mountains and clouds. National boundaries are irrelevant. Rivers flow, air currents circulate, and animals migrate without any regard to borders. At night, a few points of light appear on the map – cities representing the most technologically advanced human outposts on earth. In this view, it is clear: to survive on this fragile planet we must all work together to manage our world.

Today, we face this challenge both as individuals in our local communities and together as a planet. Stepping up to this task is an unlikely group of leaders: mayors. In 2005 – the first year in which cities comprise over half of the world’s population – mayors are creating their own treaty systems to promote environmental cooperation. In mid-June, U.S. mayors approved the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Chicago. Earlier that month a group of more than 50 mayors around the world launched the Urban Environmental Accords on World Environment Day in San Francisco. The two agreements have different strategies, but both will achieve the same goal: coordinated local level action to make a difference on a global scale. As President Bush and Congress fail to act on important environmental issues, these mayoral initiatives come not a moment too soon.

The U.S. Federal Government: Abdicating Responsibility
The United States has long been at the forefront of environmental policy. However, when President Bush took office in 2001 he abandoned this tradition of leadership. He repealed and weakened many of the rules that for decades maintained a delicate ecological balance in the United States. He also refused to participate in, or contribute to, the most important international environmental agreements of our time. The world got its best glimpse of U.S. global environmental policy under President Bush at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. During the meeting in Johannesburg, the U.S. opposed any collective action to slow the disappearance of species, combat climate change, use materials less harmful to human health and stop the spread of deserts where rich forests once stood. The Administration’s opposition to confronting climate change, and in particular to the Kyoto Protocol, has been a thorn in the side of most U.S. allies and a stark contrast to America’s tradition of exemplary environmental stewardship.

Climate Change: How It Works and Why We Care
Climate change is a challenge too important to be denied and too urgent to be ignored. With concerted action, it is a challenge that can be overcome.

The problem of global climate change is conceptually quite simple. Over the past 200 years, the concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere has increased drastically due to industrialization (the concentration of carbon dioxide, for example, is at least one-third greater than it was just two centuries ago). These so-called “greenhouse gases” stop heat from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere. The consequences of this phenomenon are much more complex than the concept of “global warming.” Scientists believe that the additional heat will cause polar ice caps to melt and oceans to expand and rise, presenting tremendous challenges to coastal areas. They also suggest that rainfall patterns will change, causing droughts and famines, and extreme weather events to become more severe. While no scientist is certain what the precise effects of climate change will be, we can be sure that it will pose substantial challenges for communities everywhere if nations do not work together with a sense of urgency.

The Kyoto Protocol is the world’s first step in this direction. Under Kyoto, all industrialized countries agree to reduce their carbon dioxide levels below 1990 concentrations. Except for the United States and Australia, all industrialized countries are participating in the Kyoto Protocol and have promised to meet their reduction targets by 2012. Despite calls from allies for the U.S. to participate in the next round of climate negotiations, the U.S. has instead begun talks with a smaller group – including Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan – on an alternative agreement that would not require any action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Congress rejected even less ambitious plans to curb greenhouse gas pollution in its energy legislation this year.

A Local Affair
In the absence of action by the federal government, mayors are filling a large leader-ship vacuum by confronting climate change and other environmental challenges. Thus far, more than 50 mayors worldwide have signed the Urban Environmental Accords, and more than 175 U.S. mayors – representing more than 40 million Americans – have signed the Climate Protection Agreement. The list includes Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and both rosters are growing. The urban environmental movement could not come at a more crucial time. For the first time in human history the majority of the world’s people live in urban communities. It seems our increasingly inter-connected world is an increasingly urban world, as well. Fortunately, city-dwellers have come to understand that survival and prosperity – both within their own cities and as a world community – require tremendous cooperation. Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and Greg Nickels of Seattle are leading the charge to institute global citizen-ship as a distinctly urban value.

Citizens for Urban Solutions?
Today, we face a daunting challenge as a global society. We depend on materials, products and people everywhere, and, as such, we need to work together to manage our world. When American and British scientists noticed a hole in the ozone layer in 1985 and determined that it was causing skin cancer, national governments sprang into action. Together they negotiated the Montreal Protocol, an agreement to eliminate and replace the chemicals responsible for the decaying ozone. Twenty years later, the Montreal Protocol stands as a shining example of international cooperation for the common good. To persevere as a species on this fragile planet of ours, the Montreal Protocol must be the beginning – not the end – of the global environmental partnership.
 

Updated October 6, 2005