"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.
"Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other like-minded 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, Texas, represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to 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 Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition, the latest Republican mayor to join... Nickels said he decided to act when the Kyoto Protocol took effect in February without the support of the United States.
"Nickels said that to achieve the 7 percent drop, Seattle was requiring cruise ships that dock in its 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 United States with no net emissions of greenhouse gases, the mayor's office said."
See also:
GE commits to go green,
other corporations watch closely
Post a Comment