By David Burns
February 11, 2008

On the first day of the 76th Winter Meeting, mayors gathered for a luncheon reporting on the status of the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement and the Climate Protection Summit in Seattle last November and the pending Green Jobs legislation in Congress. Conference President Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer presided over the luncheon along with Advisory Board Chair Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Former Congressman Dave McCurdy addressed the mayors as the President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. McCurdy emphasized the changes in attitude that the Alliance has towards climate issues and how they can be a partner with local officials. McCurdy cited the Alliance’s commitment to higher fuel efficiency standards that were a major part of the Energy Bill that was passed by congress and signed by the President last December. McCurdy also mentioned the importance of the automotive industry to the U.S. economy, especially as a provider of jobs for many cities across the country.

One of those cities happens to be Bowling Green (KY), and the mayor, Elaine N. Walker, addressed the audience of mayors about not just the impact of automobiles, but the carbon footprint of buildings.

“When you look at buildings, they are 48 percent of the source of greenhouse gasses,” Walker mentioned. She stressed the importance of energy conservation over demolishing and building green in the place of old buildings, citing the long time it takes the old building and materials and energy used in construction to decompose.

One of the main focuses of the luncheon was to report the progress of the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement and the Climate Protection Summit in Seattle last November. Nickels discussed both of these issues in his segment.

“Our original goal was to have 141 mayors sign the Climate Protection Agreement; one mayor for every country that had signed the Kyoto agreement,” said Nickels. That goal was eclipsed very early on with 369 mayors during last year’s Winter Meeting and now, 780 mayors have signed as of this year’s Winter Meeting.

Perhaps the greatest achievement with the agreement and the summit was the discussion about green jobs. Green jobs were a way for mayors to get on board with the climate crisis and still preserve the economic strengths of their local economies.

Nickels remarked, “A lot of mayors have told me over the last three years that this is an issue they felt was important, but a lot of their economies are based on the automobile industry and internal combustion engines. It was a remarkable opportunity for us to talk about these jobs, installing solar panels and weatherizing homes; these jobs aren’t going to be outsourced.”

With the growing importance of green jobs as an issue, James Difley of Global Insight illustrated with statistics just how important growth in this area will be to local economies. The analysis showed greater increase of macroeconomic investment into local economies, higher levels of productivity, improve ments in the U.S. balance of trade and an increase in disposable household income, plus a reduction of energy costs. Global Insight plans on releasing updates and revisions to their projections at future meetings of the Conference of Mayors.

Concluding the event was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who applauded the Conference’s work on pushing the Energy Block Grant through congress. Sanders was a key ally in the Senate when it came to moving our Block Grant through the committee process.

Complete video of this luncheon and our plenary sessions are available online at our web site, usmayors.org.