All eyes and ears are tuned for the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Copenhagen (December 7-18). Many small and large organizations are undertaking actions to encourage, support, and persuade their countries' representatives to make important decision and right commitments. The type and number of side events is impressive!
The FUTURE CITY Exhibition is one such event. New York is one of 10 cities to have been selected to participate in this interactive event which aims to highlight local sustainability initiatives. And New York has plenty to show for this. Mayor Bloomberg's administration's ambitious PLANYC 2030 aims to reduce the City's emissions by over 30%. The City set out to achieve this target by undertaking a whole range of initiatives such as reducing the number of cars and building more efficient power plants to reduce the inefficiencies of the main sourse of emissions in the NYC, the buildings. The mayor, known for his dedication to sustainability, will present the city's plans, challenges, and results at this exhibition in Copenhagen.
Besides New York and Copenhagen, the other cities to present their sustainability solutions are Barcelona, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Sao Paolo, and Toronto.
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2 comments:
I never thought that Copenhagen would do jack. I don’t think that the governments are nearly as powerful an agent for world change around global warming as the corporations. It’s just a matter of efficiency and motivation. It’s why FedEx works better than the Post Office and why investing on one’s own reaps greater returns than social security. Government is too large and too differently motivated to evolve quickly enough to make a difference, something I think we’re seeing proof of at COP15. I see a lot of work happening in the private sector towards curbing emissions. I like what WWF is doing with their Climate Savers program: http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/climatesavers2.html where companies volunteer to curb their emissions and set their own goals. Probably the most impressive of the Climate Savers’ efforts is JohnsonDiversey, who originally promised an 8% GHG reduction over 10 years (2003-2013), and just recently announced they are tripling that to a 25% reduction. I watched some of the Copenhagen talks by their CEO (http://bit.ly/jdaction) and they’ve taken it even farther in honor of COP15 – announcing they’ll assess a carbon footprint for all of their products and make that info public. I think if every business on the planet put forth the same effort it would create more change than government could ever dream of producing.
thanks for your comment, synce; I agree with you that companies can be more powerful and effective in achieving certain goals than governments - that's why I write this blog :) at the same time, companies WANT and NEED governments to create frameworks that would stimulate competition and innovation among as MANY companies as realistically possible. That's the role of the governments and I wish they had the political resources to do this.