132 U.S. Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules...Bush Administration Back-Peddling

[kerrygoddess]

132 U.S. Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules, G.E. Heads the Call, Bush Administration Back-Peddling
14 May 2005



The Bush administration may have rejected the Kyoto Protocol, but 132 bi-partisan Mayors across the country have decided to move forward with the fight to stave off global warming on the local level.

SEATTLE, May 13 - 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.

Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded 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, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor 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.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition as well when he “signed five important new laws to reduce air pollution in the city, including a measure to sharply reduce smoky diesel exhaust from school buses, tour buses and sanitation trucks.”

In related news, not all big U.S. corporations are following Bush’s lead on rejecting the Kyoto Protocol either.

MORE & LINKS - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=892

[tritsofme]

1. I don't think they're back-peddling

They just don't give a fuck.

[kerrygoddess]

2. Back-peddling

and don't give a fuck!

[sandnsea]

3. Oh, it's just GE

What do they know about science.

[kerrygoddess]

4. Not much... ha ha

It seems that they are truly forerunners in the corporate world on this ....

The goals announced by GE include:

Investing $1.5 billion annually in cleaner technologies research by 2010, up from $700 million in 2004.

Doubling by 2010 revenues from products and services that provide "significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers." Those revenues were $10 billion in 2004 and GE promised "more aggressive targets" after 2010. GE said it had identified 17 products that meet its criteria, ranging from renewable energy to water purification and cleaner transportation.

Reducing GE's own emissions tied to global warming by one percent by 2012. GE said that given its projected growth, those emissions would have risen by 40 percent without such action.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7791657/

[sandnsea]

5. That's good news

I wonder how much faster this would happen if it were a great national undertaking. Wouldn't it be great for the country if our kids could look at projects like this, look to future technologies, ask what if, the way we were able to.