In an unposted* piece in yesterday’s N&R, UNCG geography professor Jay Lennartson makes the City of Greensboro’s plan to sign the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement sound so cool. Hey, we could be like Seattle:
Seattle mayor Greg Nickels fathered the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in early 2005 in response to the U.S. government’s failure to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. The treaty, which took effect in 141 countries on Feb.16, 2005, suggested that the United States reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by a modest 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Mayors who sign the climate protection agreement pledge for their cities to meet that redcution. They can do so by establishing anti-sprawl land-use policies, undertaking urban reforestation projects and supporting energy efficiency measures, among other things.
This is a total joke. Lennartson acknowledges that the city doesn’t even know how much carbon it’s emitting today, much less in 1990. Furthermore, there’s no such thing as a “modest 7 percent below 1990 levels.” The restriction of energy use to reach that goal, even if we knew what it was, would put us on the level of third-world countries. That’s certainly not good on a day like today when temperatures will reach into the mid-90s.
If the city wants to take steps toward energy efficiency that would benefit the taxpayer, fine. But if it’s going to take steps that would harm the taxpayer in the form of increased expenditures and land-use policies that will drive up the cost of housing, then forget it. Stand up, Mayor Holliday and call this what it is: environmental alarmism that has no basis whatsoever in reality.
*The N&R had the link to Lennartson’s piece this morning, but pulled it before I could copy it. Is that what really happened, or is it my computer?
