Joe Henderson
The pushback from mayors all over the country began almost immediately after President Donald Trump announced the United States will no longer honor its commitment to the Paris Climate Accord.
Medium.com reported Friday morning that 83 mayors from around the country have said they will commit their cities to following the goals that agreement, despite the President’s decree.
They signed a letter promising: “ … we will adopt, honor, and uphold the commitments to the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We will intensify efforts to meet each of our cities’ current climate goals, push for new action to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, and work together to create a 21st-century clean energy economy.”
Five of the mayors represent Florida cities: Van W. Johnson of Apalachicola, Richard J. Kaplan of Lauderhill, Philip Levine of Miami Beach, Buddy Dyer of Orlando, and Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg.
Although he wasn’t included on that list, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn told me via text message he, too, will commit to having his city join that effort.
“Although the Paris Accord is more global in nature, every city has the ability to create policy that is appropriate for their particular jurisdiction,” Buckhorn said.
“Some cities are further along than others in developing comprehensive plans and metrics and there is always room to improve. This action by the POTUS is certainly an incentive to further refine those plans.”
Trump’s decision to pull out of the agreement has been widely panned around the world and at home — even in Pittsburgh, which the president held up as a reason for taking the action. The place once known as the “Steel City” for its reliance on that industry has transformed itself into a diversified center for medicine, banking, and technology.
In an interview on CNN, Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto said of Trump, “What you did was not only bad for the economy of this country but also weakened America in this world.”
The issue of climate change is especially sensitive to Florida cities. Continued rising sea levels threaten coastal cities, and scientists say the risk of more numerous and powerful hurricanes is increasing.
Because of that, Buckhorn said, “ … all of our efforts will be accelerated. We will continue to lead.
“We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. From lowering our carbon footprint, investing in equipment that uses renewable energy and trying to attract and grow clean energy jobs, Mayors can and should lead the way.”
3 comments
Tom S.
June 2, 2017 at 9:34 pm
LOL! That’s not how this works. They can grandstand and pander all they want but it doesn’t mean a thing.
Jayne
June 3, 2017 at 9:33 am
Yes it will! Mike Bloomberg is going to commit money – others will follow
Christopher
June 3, 2017 at 12:35 pm
Some facts on Global Warming. Been researching this recently. The facts don’t seem to back up the hysteria.
When you hear anyone say “The hottest year on record” keep in mind that records have been kept less than 200 years of the earths 4.5 billion year history (.00000004%) It’s easy to have “the hottest year” when only measuring .00000004% of the total number of years.
1. The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example– so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)– long before humans invented industrial pollution and well after the planet cooled enough to sustain life.
2. CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing steadily for the last 18,000 years– long before humans invented smokestacks
Unless you count campfires and intestinal gas, man played no role in the pre-industrial increases.
Incidentally, earth’s temperature and CO2 levels today have reached levels similar to a previous inter-glacial cycle of 120,000 – 140,000 years ago. From beginning to end this cycle lasted about 20,000 years. This is known as the Eemian Inter-glacial Period and the earth returned to a full-fledged ice age immediately afterward.
3. Total human contributions to greenhouse gases account for only about 0.28% of the “greenhouse effect”. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises about 0.117% of this total, and man-made sources of other gases (methane, nitrous oxide (NOX), other misc. gases) contributes another 0.163% .
Approximately 99.72% of the “greenhouse effect” is due to natural causes — mostly water vapor and traces of other gases, which we can do nothing at all about. Eliminating human activity altogether would have little impact on climate change.
4. Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
We can’t stop global warming, it’s a natural cycle of the planet that’s repeated many times throughout our planets history.
ALL of civilization combined contributes only 0.28% to that warming. I’m more concerned about the ice age that ALWAYS follows periods of warming.
I can find studies that show human-kind contributes to global warming but conspicuously absent from the studies I have seen are the extent of which humans contribute to that warming (My research led me to less than 1/2 a percent.).
Does anyone know of a study that mentions the amount of warming “we” contribute vrs. the amount of warming that’s natural? I believe this information is largely absent because it doesn’t back the argument that we need to act on global warming…but I am open to reading more.
Take a look at actual quotes from climate change “experts”, these quotes are NEVER reported but are true. Al gore himself says he must greatly exaggerate the issue to make it a priority in peoples minds.
1. “We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”- Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
2.Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are… – Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management– a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
3.”In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming.” – Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert @ MIT)
4. “Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to find a way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.” – Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland’s glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
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