[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Panel on climate impacts

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt


Colleagues – A quick note to let everyone know that I was asked to speak at a mayors panel on climate impacts that is part of an invitation-only meeting taking place in DC this Wednesday and Thursday, sponsored by the Climate Impacts Collaborative
 – coordinated by the World Resources Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists.  I met one of the sponsors at a recent event, and I think our invitation stems from the recent flooding and my being the chair of NLC’s Energy and Environment Committee,
 which focused on this very issue during the past year.  The other two mayors on the panel, in fact, are from Pinecrest, FL (a good friend who is also on my NLC committee), and Salt Lake City (another friend, who will be NLC’s president in 2015) and who was
 recently appointed to the White House Task Force on Climate Preparedness.
 
While the meeting is private, this mayors panel will be public with press invited.  We’ve been asked to speak about the extreme impacts we’re facing – in Boulder that’s obviously flood, wildfire, and drought – any adaptation/mitigation
 plans, and what the federal government might do to help.  The goal is to make clear how urgent this issue is, and also to bring attention to the leadership being provided at the local level.
 
Conveniently, our council meeting on Dec. 3 will be focused on flood issues, so I can bring a better understanding to the panel discussion.  Not so conveniently, I’ll be here for that council meeting and then fly overnight in order to make
 my late morning panel; hopefully nobody will notice if I’m comatose.
 
As always, it is an honor for Boulder to get invited to such events and to be recognized as a leader in a wide variety of climate change issues, policies, and preparation.  This was quite a last-minute arrangement, but by getting the sponsors
 to chip in a small stipend and by not staying over a night in DC it will be a very small cost to Boulder – and continue to keep us a participant in these sorts of important national (and, often international) meetings.
 
In that vein, we also got a very, very last-minute invitation to another meeting, this one from the US State Department to join a panel discussion on sustainability at a conference of a number of mayors from Organization of American States
 countries, taking place on Monday/Tuesday in Miami.  Boulder was chosen to provide some specific examples of programs and policies that a city can implement in order to become more sustainable in the long term.  Given the impossible lead time I did not pursue
 this.  But I did discuss our great interest in meeting with international cities with the State Dept. representative, and I think it is very likely we’ll get more such invitations.  At the recent Ecocity conference I attended I also spoke at some length with
 another State representative about similar potential invitations, and I intend to follow up with both of them so that Boulder continues to be recognized as a leading US city in sustainability matters and thus an excellent representative for the US internationally.
 
--Matt