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Monday, May 12, 2008
Conference Helps Cities Take Steps To Protect Environment
By Heather Clark
Associated Press
Scores of city officials and environmental policy leaders from across the country gather here this week to discuss the latest technologies and policies for dealing with climate change at the local level.
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability is holding its summit to discuss topics including green-collar jobs, the nuts and bolts of how cities get started reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the challenge of creating a green office.
It chose Albuquerque because of the strides the city has made on climate issues relatively quickly, said Annie Strickler, a spokeswoman for the group.
The move to tackle global warming is growing across the country, say those who are working with local governments on the issue. More than 800 mayors have pledged to reduce the emissions by 7 percent between 1990 and 2012 by signing the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, a so-called a Kyoto Treaty for cities.
"It's growing like wildfire and that's a good thing,'' said Evan Evans, senior vice president and director of the consulting division of Econergy International Corp.
The Boulder, Colo., company consults with countries that are trying to meet the demands of the Kyoto Treaty, but increasingly U.S. cities are asking the firm for help, Evans said.
Drought the last few years in the West set off the alarm to cities about climate change and with last year's dry conditions in the Southeast that concern is spreading, Evans said.
Cities have struggled with producing initial greenhouse gas emissions inventories. Albuquerque, for example, made a major mistake last year in calculating emissions, an error that prompted the firing of the city's chief environmental health official and forced it to shut down a web site that touted success in reducing greenhouse gases that turned out to be way off the mark.
"It's extremely complicated and there's no roadmap,'' said Jill Simmons, climate protection program manager for Seattle, which has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent between 1990 and 2005. "You have to make a lot of tough calls. Is this in? Is this out? How do you measure vehicle miles traveled? It's not nearly as straightforward as you might hope.''
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, the California Climate Action Registry, the California Air Resources Board and The Climate Registry are partnering to produce a protocol that will take some of the guesswork out of the greenhouse gas emissions inventories and standardize how data is reported, said Rachel Tornek, senior policy manager with California Climate Action Registry.
"Local governments are asking for this guidance. I think they all want to know how they should be doing these things,'' she said.
Once the protocol is released, cities will have a better idea how to start the process of reducing greenhouse gases and eventually local governments will be able to compare how they are doing and ensure that data is reported accurately across regions, Tornek said.
Despite the snafu last year, Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez often touts his city's environmental accomplishments.
They include reducing water usage by a third, while new water accounts grew 33 percent; capturing methane gas at city landfills that has dramatically reduced the city government's greenhouse gas emissions; and, purchasing alternative fuel vehicles; and others, he said.
"No city has ramped up faster from where we were to where we are today than Albuquerque,'' he said.
Public credibility remains an issue for Chavez's city, though. John Soladay, the acting director of the Environmental Health Department who was appointed after last year's mistakes were revealed, acknowledged errors in the inventory of emissions. This time around, Soladay said, the city will have scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico review the inventory. Meanwhile, Albuquerque's sustainability Web site, which is being rebuilt, will contain sources and explanations for all calculations, identify who was responsible for each figure and provide a brief analysis of the findings.
"We have to overcome that lapse in credibility and we have to build the trust again that when we say we've done X, we've actually done X,'' Soladay said.
Copyright ©2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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