Bloomberg on Cities and Climate Change: “Cities are Forging Ahead”

BloombergC40Rio

Mayor Bloomberg, Chair of the C40 Cities Cli­mate Lead­er­ship Group wrote a post today on the C40 Cities blog about the impor­tant actions that New York and other C40 Cities have been tak­ing against cli­mate change. Ref­er­enc­ing PlaNYC, he wrote that “In less than five years, we have planted more than a half-million new trees. We’ve banned the use of the dirt­i­est heat­ing oils. We’ve insti­tuted bus rapid tran­sit lines, and we’re on the verge of launch­ing a major bike-sharing initiative.”

How­ever, although “cities already have the power, the resources, and the exper­tise they need to forge an alter­na­tive path for development…[they] can­not do it alone – they need sup­port at national and inter­na­tional lev­els.” For this rea­son, he points to the impor­tance of the upcom­ing Rio+20 United Nations Con­fer­ence on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment set to take place in June, 2012. Accord­ing to him, the Rio+20 con­fer­ence “presents a real oppor­tu­nity to set the word’s cities on the path of sustainability.”

The mayor’s thoughts con­tinue in this interview:

Rio+20 is 126 days away — hope­fully, Bloomberg’s goals for inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion in cli­mate change decision-making will be realized.

Check out the full post on the C40 Cities blog here

Photo: C40c​i​ties​.org