Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday, with the full support of the City Council signs the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Yippee, yahoo.
Ironically enough, council member Sandy Carmany summed the situation up pretty well when she mentioned that Greensboro was on track to achieve attainment status for ozone levels. Unfortunately, Carmany added, the EPA is considering lowering the threshold for attainment status.
Yet another example of how there’s never enough for the environmental lobby. On one end, with pollutants, they keep shifting the goal; on other other end, with greenhouse gases, they set unreasonable goals. It can’t be said enough: there is no way Greensboro will reduce greenhouse gases by 7 percent below 1990 levels, even if they’re able to find out what those levels were.
The council’s action took the resolution one step further in that it made a commitment to have specific proposals to meet that unrealistic goal ready by May 2008, just in time for the 2008-2009 budget, noted council member Florence Gatten with a little too much enthusiasm. (What’s it to her, anyway?)
You know what that means. Concrete justification to spend more on public transportation, open space, bicycle paths, smart growth initiatives, LEED-certified buildings, you name it, as if the city isn’t spending enough.
As I said earlier, the resolution passed unanimously, for those of you who will be voting in the upcoming city elections.