CANADA: The United States will end its isolation from international efforts to combat climate change "sooner rather than later", a leading local politician predicted yesterday, writes Frank McDonald in Montreal
Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, in Washington state, said the US would "not only join, but even lead this effort based on its own self-interest in saving the climate".
Mr Nickels has spearheaded a campaign to sign up fellow mayors throughout the US for an environmentally-driven "Cool Cities" programme aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
So far, 192 mayors have joined this burgeoning campaign - far ahead of anyone's expectations. The latest was Ray Nagan of New Orleans, after his city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The mayors, who represent more than 40 million people in 38 states, are pressing federal and state governments to enact policies and programmes to cut emissions by at least 7 per cent.
On the eve of the "high-level segment" of the UN Climate Change Summit, Mayor Nickels said Americans were "far ahead of their politicians" on this issue.
"The reality of global climate change is urgent. The stakes are high, locally and globally. We have already witnessed the destruction of one major US city and that will be a powerful factor in taking action."
Mayors have pledged to meet and even beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their cities by reducing energy use, curtailing urban sprawl and restoring urban forests.
"We reject the idea that we have a choice between saving the economy or the environment," Mayor Nickels said.
"In fact, this is a great economic opportunity to create new green industries".
David Foster, of the United Steel Workers union, said 12,000 of its members lost their jobs or homes as a result of Hurricane Katrina "and that's only a precursor of what global warming will bring".
Ray Anderson, president of Atlanta-based Interface Inc, the world's largest producer of carpet tiles, said its environmental programme had turned out to be "incredibly good for business".
Asked by The Irish Times if it would need "regime change" in Washington DC to reverse US policy on climate change, Mayor Nickels said he believed that such change was now "inevitable".
Michael Goo, senior staffer on the US senate's environment committee, noted that senators had recently voted by 53 to 44 in favour of developing mandatory steps on greenhouse emissions.
Though a non-binding "sense of the senate" resolution, he said it was a significant step forward from the position adopted by senators in 1997 before the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated.
What it showed was that the US position on climate change was "neither monolithic nor permanent", as Mr Goo said. "I believe it's only a matter of time before the US takes on mandatory targets."