[BoulderCouncilHotline] Global Climate Action Summit 2108

[Weaver, Sam]

Fellow Council Members and HOTLINE followers,

I spent September 12 -14 representing the City of Boulder at various climate-change related events, and I am reporting that experience and learnings in this email. The main event was the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), convened in San Francisco on Sep 13 and 14, but there were many associated side gatherings as well. Kendra Tupper, Boulder's Chief Sustainability and Resilience Officer, was also in attendance and went to other events than I did, so she may have much to add to this account.

On the morning of Sep 12, I went to the gathering of the Under 2 Coalition (https://www.under2coalition.org/ ). I attended a similar meeting in Bonn as a side event of the COP23 meeting which I reported on in November 2017. The Sep 2018 meeting was impressively well-attended, with 80 leaders of cities, states, and provinces seated at the main table, and perhaps twice as many people seated in observation.  CA Governor Jerry Brown addressed the meeting, as did WA Governor Jay Inslee who is a leader of the Under 2 Coalition.  The attendance at the 2018 meeting was about twice as large as the 2017 meeting, and this is a great sign of solidarity on climate policy among sub-national  governments.  There were many commitments and policies shared at the meeting, including me speaking about the measures that Boulder is taking to reduce carbon emissions.  Gov Inslee also spoke passionately about why he is hopeful about making progress on these issues, with three big ideas.  1) We all love our children, grandchildren, and other young people. 2) After the US pulled out of the Paris climate accords, not one sub-national leader pulled out of the Under 2 Coalition meeting. 3) Technology for clean energy is advancing rapidly, and most governments recognize the job-creation that is going on in the renewables sector.

For the afternoon of Sep 12, I attended the We Are Still In forum (https://www.wearestillin.com/ ).  There, I met with Heidi VanGenderen and David Kang at the University of Colorado poster they hosted about sustainability initiatives at CU. After that I attended the forum, at which there were many discussions about how local governments can make progress on GHG reduction, as well as how to influence Federal policy. The session ended with about 20 high school children singing and rapping about their climate concerns and how they hoped that the adults in the room would implement positive steps on climate.

On Sep 13, I attended the Global Climate Action Summit main event, and witnessed a range of speakers, from indigenous peoples exhorting all governments to act to protect them from the worst effects of climate change, to actors and activists speaking about positive actions that are being taken to mitigate carbon emissions.  It was incredibly moving to see those on the front line of climate change impacts speak about their experiences, and to link their lived reality with the call for a just transition off of fossil fuels. The thoughts and experiences of islanders and indigenous people were given equal time and standing with those from more typical speakers, and that was a refreshing perspective at this event. There were also art and music exhibits that added to the holistic framing of this gathering.

The evening of Sep 13, I attended a reception hosted by the San Francisco Department of the Environment. I exchanged a lot of ideas with the staff and attendees there, and learned about how their interaction with the Community Choice Aggregation policy (energy choice and empowerment) were proceeding.  There is a lot to learn from how California is de-carbonizing, both good and bad.

On Sep 14, I attended a GCAS breakout session about high-leverage greenhouse gas emissions. Three subjects were addressed: carbon soot, refrigerant emissions, and methane (natural gas) emissions.  First session: carbon soot is a major forcing function for climate change, as the deposits of soot on snow and ice lead to more rapid melting of glaciers and ice caps.  The solutions include much more stringent regulation of diesel engines. Second session:  refrigerant chemicals used in air conditioning and food cooling often have high global warming impacts, so leaks from these systems are very environmentally damaging. Shifting to less damaging refrigerant chemicals could have the same positive impacts that shifting away from ozone-depleting chemicals did in the 1980s and 1990s. Third session: in a brilliant talk, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute led off the methane portion of the gathering by making an analogy. He described a person who has chronic heart disease, and also a major cut in a limb causing an arterial bleed. Which problem would a person address first? Obviously the arterial bleed with direct pressure and bandaging.  The arterial bleed is the high-impact gas emissions, especially methane (natural gas) leaks from well to point of use.  The chronic heart disease is CO2 emissions.  Since methane is out of the atmosphere in roughly 5 years, compared to a mean of 80 years for CO2, reducing methane leaks and other high-leverage chemical emissions can have a short-term impact on reducing climate change.  This is a powerful insight, and I was glad to learn about this perspective from all of the panelists.

In the afternoon of Sep 14, I was invited to be part of a We Are Still In presentation on the main stage of the GCAS.  I readily accepted, and was pleased to stand with Mayor Jim Brainard, the Republican leader of Carmel, Indiana, and about a dozen other state and city leaders while Jim delivered an address to the summit. The point of the address was that that Republicans were the original conservationists, and they needed to return to their roots, and needed to lead along with all political affiliations at reversing human-caused climate change. He added that climate change is not a partisan issue, but one based on human actions changing the chemistry and physical behavior of our biosphere. It was a powerful address, and I was pleased to represent Boulder in support.

The former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg spoke regarding the We Are Still In movement, and one powerful point that he made is that if we add up all of the cities and states in the US that are still committed to the Paris Accord climate goals, those account for 2/3 of the US economic production. The US is still taking bold action on climate change, regardless of Federal inaction.

I closed my trip with the inaugural meeting of the Carbon Zero Cities Alliance, in which mayors and other leaders of cities from around the world shared their policies and practices for carbon emissions reduction. My main take-away was from the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen.  When speaking about how they had moved biking to be such a major factor in their transportation infrastructure, he said the most important step in getting people onto bikes was 'Make it safe'. Wise words indeed!

The GCAS gathering was a very worthwhile summit of global stakeholders working to mitigate climate change impacts, and I was honored to be able to represent Boulder there.  I have attached a few photos of the events.  All feedback is welcome to weavers at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:weavers at bouldercolorado.gov>.

All the best,

Sam Weaver
Member of Boulder City Council
weavers at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:weavers at bouldercolorado.gov>
Phone: 303-416-6130

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20180929/b216455e/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_5485.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1254684 bytes
Desc: IMG_5485.JPG
Url : http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20180929/b216455e/attachment.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_5507.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3130168 bytes
Desc: IMG_5507.JPG
Url : http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20180929/b216455e/attachment-0001.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_8369.JPEG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1313834 bytes
Desc: IMG_8369.JPEG
Url : http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20180929/b216455e/attachment-0002.jpe