P-I REPORTER
Fluorescent bulbs were climate change activism on training wheels. For the next generation, it's time for a green revolution, for overthrowing the old order and ushering in the new, environmental and local elected leaders say.
They talk about a campaign as passionate as the civil rights movement, as nationally unifying as World War II patriotism. They're talking put-a-man-on-the-moon-sized investments in the development of clean energy. They want strict standards for vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions. They're begging the public to pressure national politicians to champion ambitious efforts to curb global warming.
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This week Seattle is the epicenter for city-led crusades to slow global warming as it hosts the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Summit. Seattle and Mayor Greg Nickels are acknowledged leaders in the effort to tame climate change. Officials Monday announced that the city's emissions beat Kyoto Protocol goals -- an achievement few have matched.
So just as residents were starting to feel good about the new weatherstripping around their drafty windows and the occasional bus commute, the new message is more is needed -- much more. But it's no reason to succumb to green fatigue, activists say.
"It's really important not to demean the 'screwing in the light bulb,' " said K.C. Golden, policy director of Seattle-based Climate Solutions. "It's not that it's not effective, it's that it's not effective and hopeful in isolation."
Much of the emphasis in tackling global warming has been on individuals doing their part, but a new strategy is emerging. Working locally isn't enough. Taking the climate change message national will be one of the goals of this week's Climate Protection Summit. The mayors are eager to push for a plan that goes beyond what they and their constituents are doing individually at home and work. And they salivate over the possibility of a White House more aggressive on global warming issues.
On Thursday, Golden will announce a new effort called 1Sky to unite local actions into something on a scale large enough to tackle the climate change challenge. The need for 1Sky comes out of "knowing that one city can't do it, one individual can't do it without that broader sense of a national mobilization," he said.
Supporters of 1Sky include scientists, tribal members, elected leaders and activists. Its initial focus is on setting tough near-term goals for greenhouse gas reductions -- 30 percent reductions by 2020, creating millions of jobs in the clean energy sector and stopping the construction of new American coal plants.
On Friday, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., will host a field hearing of a House committee on global warming to get input on what needs to happen nationally from the mayors -- who emphasize the importance of their ongoing role in addressing climate change.
"We believe that the mayors are the first responders as related to this issue," said Mayor Doug Palmer of Trenton, N.J., and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
While some still debate how much action is appropriate, the transition toward bigger, bolder, further-reaching initiatives is infecting the environmental community.
"We use outreach tools like the light bulb giveaways to have a conversation with the public," said Kathleen Ridihalgh, regional representative for the Sierra Club. "What we really want to do is get the policies in place to make the systemic changes happen."
"This is a huge transformative challenge for Americans and humanity," said Ted Nordhaus, an author who has called for the "death of environmentalism" to make way for new approaches for battling climate change.
"The idea that we were ever going to solve it by putting a modest price on carbon (emissions) and driving our cars a little less is kind of crazy," he said.
Locals seem ready to act. A recent survey of nearly 1,000 King County residents found that 79 percent believed that significant steps need to be taken to address global warming.
It still includes action taken at the city level. After all, Seattle is committed to reaching the Kyoto Protocol goals of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. And while that goal already has been met, the success is likely to be short lived as population and traffic levels continue to rise.
The cities and states deserve credit for getting the movement started while federal leaders were silent on the matter, environmentalists said, but it's time to do more.
"The one thing that we can't afford is to become fatigued about all this," said Bill McKibben, organizer of Step It Up national climate change events. "We've got to be thinking about global warming not as another item on a list of problems, but as the lens through which we look at this world."
