The New York Times “Energy for Tomor­row” con­fer­ence opened with a keynote speech by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stressed the need for cities to act now to build a more sus­tain­able future. To the audi­ence at the tick­eted event and over live stream, he described an urban future where, by 2050, 75 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will be liv­ing in cities. His­tor­i­cally, cities have encour­aged free­dom and the for­ma­tion of knowl­edge, and Bloomberg linked this to the progress on sus­tain­abil­ity that cities, as opposed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, are mak­ing. He touted his own per­sonal involve­ment with the Sierra Club’s cam­paign to retire one-third of the nation’s 500 coal fired power plants by 2020; so far 144 have been closed. Bloomberg chalked up some of this suc­cess to the expan­sion of nat­ural gas and said he is “in favor of frack­ing, but not in our water­shed… we all have to make decisions–there’s no free lunch.”

Mayor Bloomberg speak­ing at the Energy for Tomor­row con­fer­ence (http://​img​.deusm​.com/​u​b​m​f​u​t​u​r​e​c​i​t​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​3​/​0​4​/​5​2​4​8​6​9​/​1​2​5​1​3​8​_​7​6​8​9​4​7​.​jpg)

Mayor Bloomberg laid out his guide­lines for how New York City has moved its sus­tain­abil­ity goals for­ward and how other major cities can achieve their aims:

1. Develop a plan with ambi­tious, achiev­able, mea­sur­able goals such as PlaNYC 2030. He espe­cially empha­sized the need for met­rics to cal­cu­late the impact of sus­tain­abil­ity. Sci­en­tists and pol­icy mak­ers can argue about the impact of cli­mate change but as long as your met­rics are sound no one can argue with your con­clu­sions, he stated.
2. City gov­ern­ments need inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­ity, sup­port, and strength to push poli­cies through because they are not always pop­u­lar at first. In other words, it is impor­tant to use pri­vate sec­tor skills and resources to achieve your goals, too. Bloomberg offered an exam­ple of New York’s lat­est public-private part­ner­ship: the Food Waste Chal­lenge, where over 100 restau­rants will be divert­ing their food waste to com­post. “The pro­gram will help meet the City’s PlaNYC goals to divert 75 per­cent of all solid waste from land­fills by 2030 and reduce green­house gas emis­sions. Food waste com­prises one-third of the city’s more than 20,000 tons of daily refuse and restau­rants account for 70 per­cent of com­mer­cial food waste. Par­tic­i­pat­ing restau­rants have pledged to reduce 50 per­cent of the food waste they send to land­fills through com­post­ing and other waste pre­ven­tion strate­gies” accord­ing to the press release from the Mayor’s office. Bloomberg also described a new public-private part­ner­ship to expand the com­mu­nity gar­den net­work by allow­ing gar­den­ing orga­ni­za­tions to use nine acres of under-utilized city land.
3. “Be a thief.” In other words, steal the best ideas from around the world, such as bike share, and use them to improve your own city.

In regards to Hur­ri­cane Sandy, the Mayor urged imme­di­ate action and said “cli­mate change may or may not have caused Hur­ri­cane Sandy” but there is no ques­tion it was inten­si­fied by warm­ing waters and higher seas. He stated the neces­sity of New York City re-engineering its energy infra­struc­ture, and expand­ing its green infra­struc­ture. More pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions related to Hur­ri­cane Sandy will be announced in the forth­com­ing Mayor’s Report, due at the end of May.

Mayor Bloomberg con­cluded his remarks by urg­ing cities to be at the fore­front of envi­ron­men­tal change, and cau­tion­ing city lead­ers not to walk away from an exten­sive envi­ron­men­tal agenda. Sus­tain­able envi­ron­men­tal choices are good for the econ­omy, he said, and that is how they should be sold to con­cerned con­stituents. He advised lead­ers to focus on the short-term, and not to worry about the world fifty years from now because we have plenty of rea­sons to act now to improve the world.

May­ors’ Panel: How do we Rein­vent our Cities for the Third Indus­trial Revolution?

The city of 2025 could be crisis-ridden if the world doesn’t cre­ate more sus­tain­able mod­els of urban devel­op­ment. Research says that our cities will con­tinue to expand and increase in pop­u­la­tion, while their pop­u­la­tions will bring ris­ing con­sump­tion and emis­sions. Along­side these huge chal­lenges, there are also oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­nesses: elec­tric vehi­cles, new low-carbon means of cool­ing, and energy effi­cient build­ings. We ask a group of may­ors to out­line an urban plan­ning strat­egy for 2025.

Mod­er­a­tor Bill Keller opened the panel dis­cus­sion by ask­ing each mayor or for­mer mayor to give a gen­eral overview of sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives they had pur­sued in their cities.

Jaime Lerner, the for­mer mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, spoke about devel­op­ing their Bus Rapid Tran­sit (BRT) sys­tem, and called cars “the cig­a­rette of the future.” Stephanie Miner, the mayor of Syra­cuse, New York, described the need to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­ity into every deci­sion made by the city agen­cies and the impor­tance of keep­ing a “big pic­ture” view.

Enrique Peñalosa, the for­mer mayor of Bogota, Colom­bia, described Bogota’s BRT sys­tem, and their famous bicy­cle high­ways: a 60 kilo­me­ter long, 15 meter wide net­work that runs through­out the city exclu­sively for cyclists. Peñalosa empha­sized the equity com­po­nent of sus­tain­abil­ity when it comes to deci­sions about dis­trib­ut­ing road space between cars, bikes, pedes­tri­ans, and mass transit.

Finally, Greg Stan­ton, the mayor of Phoenix, Ari­zona, spoke about ini­tia­tives to address the large amount of vacant land in Phoenix; a whop­ping 43 per­cent of the land within the city is vacant. One of the largest vacant parcels is being turned into an urban gar­den with help from the Inter­na­tional Refugee Com­mit­tee. Stanton’s goals for this and other sus­tain­abil­ity projects are to be “pos­i­tive and replic­a­ble” and he empha­sized the need to “inte­grate sus­tain­able think­ing in our entire culture.”

How do you sus­tain pro­grams in the face of chang­ing pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, migra­tion, and other urban problems?

Lerner cau­tioned lead­ers to “not project tragedy” and to invest one’s energy in chang­ing the cur­rent par­a­digm. He advo­cated a sys­tem of mobil­ity that com­bines all modes of trans­port, using smaller cars, and using incen­tives to encour­age bus use.

Miner encour­aged start­ing with small bench­marks to prove that sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives can work, and then mov­ing on to a larger, com­pre­hen­sive plan because other peo­ple get too over­whelmed with the changes.

In con­trast, Peñalosa advo­cated for a more com­pre­hen­sive approach because “in the end peo­ple like it even if they don’t at first.” He again empha­sized equity con­cerns and the impor­tance of involv­ing all parts of the city in deci­sion mak­ing for each neigh­bor­hood. He believed that buses should have pri­or­ity road space and what­ever is left should be divided up for cars, pedes­tri­ans, and bicy­cles. He cited an exam­ple of one day a year when Bogota is a car-free city, and every­one still gets to work using pub­lic tran­sit. He called pub­lic tran­sit rid­ers “heroes.” Finally, he dis­cussed bike lanes and said they “need to be more than a cute archi­tec­tural fea­ture and should be a right like a sidewalk.”

Greg Stan­ton ques­tioned the “sus­tain­abil­ity of sus­tain­abil­ity” on the fed­eral stage, and men­tioned its impor­tance on the city level, espe­cially to young peo­ple. He said that young peo­ple want to move to cities where long-term sus­tain­abil­ity is part of the com­pre­hen­sive plan, and there­fore pur­su­ing sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives on the local level is good for the economy.

What are the major obsta­cles to imple­ment­ing sus­tain­abil­ity policies?

“Every­one in the city has to under­stand the idea or sce­nario that you are propos­ing” said Lerner. He equated small projects to “urban acupunc­ture,” which are small projects that pro­vide a jolt of energy for the whole process of plan­ning. He also said it is the city’s respon­si­bil­ity to be more effec­tive since that is where most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion resides. He cited three basic things that every­one can do: use less cars, sep­a­rate our garbage, and live closer to work or bring work closer to us.

Miner said that the biggest obsta­cle is that all pol­icy deci­sions are made in a bureau­cracy that has designed cities for cars and not for green infra­struc­ture. She described the chal­lenges as “con­stantly going uphill to fight the bat­tle” to bring sus­tain­abil­ity into the gov­ern­men­tal thought process. Miner also said she would wel­come the state and fed­eral gov­ern­ment to part­ner with Syra­cuse, but that they can­not wait for them to do so.

Stan­ton echoed Miner’s atti­tude towards the fed­eral gov­ern­ment when he said “we wrote off the fed­eral gov­ern­ment a long time ago.” He believes that cities are on their own and are going to have to lead with­out state or fed­eral back­ing. As the mayor of a city in a very con­ser­v­a­tive state it is even more impor­tant to be a leader on sus­tain­abil­ity issues since it is not a pri­or­ity on the state level, Stan­ton said.

How do you pro­pose fund­ing these sus­tain­abil­ity ideas?

The two Amer­i­can may­ors, Miner and Stan­ton, advo­cated using tax breaks as lever­age and public-private part­ner­ships to fund sus­tain­abil­ity projects. In Syra­cuse, tax breaks are only given to devel­op­ers that use LEED stan­dards. Stan­ton touted the public-private part­ner­ship exam­ple of Solar Phoenix 2, the most suc­cess­ful home solar com­pany in the U.S. He also empha­sized pur­su­ing projects that ulti­mately save cities money, such as recy­cling and bike share programs.

Peñalosa talked about the prob­lems asso­ci­ated with ris­ing land costs that force peo­ple into slums or far from the city, which forces them to be depen­dent on cars for trans­porta­tion. He advo­cated for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion to buy land because “cities must grow in the right places.” Lerner suc­cinctly stated his fund­ing strat­egy: “cut one zero off and you have cre­ativ­ity, cut two off and you have sustainability.”

Jeremy Irons dis­cusses his film “Trashed” with New York Times colum­nist Andrew Revkin

The doc­u­men­tary fea­ture film “Trashed” high­lights solu­tions to the press­ing envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems fac­ing us all. Acad­emy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons has teamed up with British film­maker Can­dida Brady to record the dev­as­tat­ing effect that pol­lu­tion has had on some of the world’s most beau­ti­ful destinations.

Jeremy Irons pas­sion­ately dis­cussed want­ing to use the medium of film to edu­cate and raise aware­ness about a “cur­able sub­ject.” He offered sev­eral pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions: stop incin­er­at­ing trash, com­post food wastes, and reduce pack­ag­ing. He encour­aged New York­ers to aim for zero waste—San Fran­cisco recy­cles 80 per­cent of their wastes, while New York is around a measly 15 per­cent. Irons instructed con­sumers to never use plas­tic bags (which take around 500 years to decom­pose), and to remove exces­sive pack­ag­ing from items they pur­chase in the store to send a mes­sage to man­u­fac­tur­ers to reduce packaging.

Jeremy Irons dis­cussing trash and “Trashed” (http://​jere​myiron​sno1​fan​.files​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​3​/​0​4​/​e​n​e​r​g​y​1​2​.​j​p​g​?​w​=​4​6​0​&​a​m​p​;​h​=​345)

Irons also talked about envi­ron­men­tal and jus­tice issues related to elec­tronic waste, such as old com­put­ers that end up burned in Africa. His solu­tion is for the bur­den to be on man­u­fac­tur­ers to take back old elec­tron­ics and demol­ish or reuse them safely. He repeated that indus­tries should have to prove that their prod­ucts are 100 per­cent safe rather than con­sumers demand­ing this of manufacturers.

He cited envi­ron­men­tal and social con­cerns like beached orca whales whose bod­ies are com­pletely toxic, chil­dren with increased rates of Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der (ADD) and aller­gies, and chem­i­cals being emit­ted from incin­er­a­tors of which we don’t know the effects. He con­nected the dots of exces­sive con­sump­tion and waste to over­ar­ch­ing prob­lems with our “throw-away” cul­ture today. Irons decried the “unholy sin” of buy­ing some­thing and then toss­ing it away, and cau­tioned that we need to value every­thing for its quality—from rela­tion­ships to mate­r­ial objects—and to rethink the atti­tude towards the way we live.