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National
Mayors' Conference Makes Push for Greener, Walkable Cities
The federal government must do more to fight global warming than it has done in the past seven years, but for now, ''cities must take up the slack,'' even if many are struggling to convince voters about benefits of ''green'' investments and anti-pollution measures, reports New York Times writer Tom Cochran from the U.S. Conference of Mayors' two-day Climate Protection Summit in Seattle, where former President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore via satellite, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and others stressed that sustainable and fiscally-strong cities must be walkable, livable and energy-efficient, offer residents jobs and focus ''on people and public transit, not cars.''
Among cities well on that way is Seattle, whose Mayor Greg Nickels has inspired more then 700 counterparts across the nation to sign commitments to Kyoto Protocol goals and pledge reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Mayor Nickels, the writer reports, told the summit his city had already exceeded that goal, thanks to such initiatives as promoting locally produced foods, distributing 300,000 high-efficiency shower heads, and encouraging replacement of gas-powered mowers with electric or non-motorized models.
Other cities have recently turned around, with Fayetteville, Arkansas Mayor Dan Cody enthusiastic about redrawing dreary roads and bland shopping strips to human scale, making streets once empty at night bustle, and seeing downtown condos sell for a million dollars per unit -- all this redevelopment helping the city become green.
But some cities, the writer notes, have a long way to go.
Meridian, Mississippi Mayor John Robert Smith, who has faced criticism for backing a plan to restore city streetcars, said, ''This is one of those things you do in your last term in office, because they'll be sure you've lost your mind.''
And Trenton, New Jersey Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, the Conference of Mayors president, emphasized the need both to measure city-borne pollution, and to make people fully aware how urgent is its reduction and to relay the urgency in daily-life terms.
He said people respond when they realize that pollution can aggravate their children's asthma, that leaky buildings and foreign-oil dependency can drive up heating bills, or that training the young in ''green collar jobs'' offers them much better prospects than work in fast-food restaurants.
''You just can't say we need to reduce global warming because there will be floods and polar bears will be gone,'' he added. ''They'll run me out of town.''
With capitalism and consumerism also at the ''green'' summit core, the writer observes, political affiliations made no difference in the approach to the greenhouse gas reduction problem.
Former President Clinton told the audience he persuaded private companies to help 1,000 cities buy energy-efficient products at volume discounts, while Mayor Bloomberg, twice elected as a Republican but Independent since last June, announced his support for the idea of a federal tax on carbon pollution.
''As long as greenhouse-gas pollution is free, it will be abundant,'' he pointed out. ''If we want to reduce it, there has to be a cost for producing it.'' -- New York Times 11/3/2007
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