The plan would enable both private building owners and cities to qualify for the funding needed to retrofit their buildings with the latest energy-efficient technologies. The hope is to reduce energy costs by as much as half.
It’s not just skyscrapers that qualify for the upgrade. City halls, some of the least energy efficient buildings in cities, will be retrofitted. And the mayors have promised to extend incentives for private building owners to invest in the energy saving technologies.
Expect further initiatives along these lines as big city mayors move into new ground: environmental protection. For generations, cities have been obsessed with growth and managing the population surge as it comes. This thinking no longer is viable for long term planning in major urban population areas. Simply put, many cities are located on the front lines of climate change. Situated near coasts, cities such as New York, London and Miami would be swamped by rising oceans – one of the more worrying aspects of global warming – should those predictions prove true.
Of course, getting cities – the world’s largest polluters – to clean up their act is sensible for the survival of the global population. Currently, around 50 per cent of the world’s population live in cities (set to reach 60 per cent by 2030), according to the C40. Yet cities consume some 75 per cent of the world’s energy and are responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Thus, as the world’s mayors are beginning to conclude, cities bear a disproportionate responsibility for causing climate change. As mayor Livingston says, it’s become the cities’ responsibility – not the G8 – to act now.
Bernhard Warner is a technology reporter based in Rome. He is the former European Internet Correspondent for Reuters and, prior to that was a senior editor at The Industry Standard. His work has appeared in Wired, The Times Online, Time and The Guardian, to name a few. He also works as a Web 2.0 consultant for Custom Communication
Published on 31 May 2007
