The program is in its infancy. It has set no targets, and its survival is questionable: After spending $1 million on start-up and an initial media campaign, the department saw its advertising budget slashed as California worked its way out of a budget hole.
"Our mandate is somewhat limited," Oldfield acknowledged. "We can't impact a lot of things directly."
"But we're hoping that by targeting recycling and other things, we can impact indirectly some bigger things."
And this is where an international agreement could truly help, said Morgan, WRI's climate director.
"Local initiatives working very specifically and practically on engaging unions and companies and policy makers in making those shifts are absolutely essential," she said during a telephone interview from the Bonn climate talks earlier this summer.
"You also need to have a national policy. It makes the local job easier - 'If you go for renewables, then you get these tax incentives.' "
"And on the international level, you get a level of ambition that the country is going to work on this with the rest of the world," she added.
"It's really about making people see the interdependencies that exist."
Plenty of work
Local leaders certainly don't mean global efforts should be underestimated.
Back in Boulder, city leaders already are looking for goals beyond 2012, when Kyoto expires. Its ability to establish a post-Kyoto target, said Jonathan Koehn, the city's environmental affairs manager, will depend "most certainly" on the city's ability to decarbonize the energy supply.
And that will require an international push.
"We can meet our current target with energy efficiency (measures) and Boulder residents making differences in their everyday lives," he said. "But to move beyond that we have to have move on a different playing field.
"It doesn't mean we stop the local efforts," Koehn added. But no agreement in Copenhagen would prolong the onset of "meaningful and widespread" changes in the near future.
Of course, that near future holds plenty of work - and change - for local governments - with or without a framework.
"The best we can expect from Copenhagen is targets," Pomerance said. "It doesn't solve problems. It just forces you to start figuring out how to deal with them."
"The high-level targets need to be connected to plans on the ground," he added.
"What's going to happen is Congress puts in cap-and-trade, and they're going to crank (carbon limits) down by 2050 - or hopefully sooner - and issue zero permits to coal plants. And the utilities will say, 'Well, what's step two?' "
"That's where the issue is going to show up. What it's going to eventually come down is plan," Pomerance said. "And what it's ultimately going to come down to is what are cities going to do, what are counties going to do, what are states going to do."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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5 Comments
Add CommentSeeing the forest and big picture !!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. To date, out of the earmarked $787bn in stimulus package , roughly $155bn dollars, not sufficient to reverse the trend of jobless rate, have been doled out. But, away from job saving and creation, GDP growth etc, the added value on the stock market alone might stay at roughly $1trillion, which could help us see the forest in light of conclusion of the historic health care and sustainable energy act.
As always, focusing exclusively on up-front cost and subtracting its added value from equation, we will more likely be trapped in a small cage.
2. The world-wide stimulus package to prop up the crumbling economy is an interim measure. For that, a long-standing and fundamental energy framework is urgently needed.
3. The poor countries can't afford high fossil fuel costs, which will strain global economy.
4. In recent years, the high oil price has taxed jobs word-wide, therefore work creation via developing sustainable resources is considered to be imperative, which might be a final focus of this great recession.
If the sustainable energy policy works against employment, EU should be suffering from the highest jobless rate by now, but the reality is the other way round.
5. Thankfully and interestingly enough, 100s of Companies (with $13 Trillion) Are Demanding Strong Climate Deal in Copenhagen just like environmental activists, and a coalition of more than 500 Global Businesses is also demanding ambitious new climate deal.
6. Those who are concerned about growing deficit are obliged to get engaged in energy fix actively.
7. In the face of drastic dent in fossil fuels and soaring price of them, the hands-off policy reflects economic crash world-wide.
Probably it doesn't matter whether someone is on the upper deck of Titanic ship or not as the global economy is interconnected just like Internet.
The research company EPRIDA have developed pyrolysis technology which can be applied at any scale to eliminate excessive greenhouse gas by making biofuels and biochar from biomass, such as sewage sludge. So any local initiative can be perfectly adapted to its biomass potential economically. From big cities to groups of farmers at home or overseas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContact www.eprida.com for full details.
How about converting local government to three day work weeks and telecommuting and use fees and fines to "encourage" local business's to do the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMake sure there is a natural gas fueling station available in town and encourage conversions.
Local PUD'd should be looking a small nukes like Hyperion, NuScale and Toshiba for town power and heat.
Man made Al Gore cap and trade global warming is an absolute fraud. How dumb do people have to be in America to accept that CO2 is a bad thing when it is an essential element to life? lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Copenhagen treaty is just more enslavement in an attempt to usher in world governance under the ruse of 'saving the planet'. Has no one seen the "Climategate" email correspondence yet, proving man made CO2 global warming is a fraud?
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