Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of global CO2 emissions but they can save the planet by greening one community at a time said Vancouver’s David Cadman at the close of the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments in Seoul, South Korea.

“We can do it. We must do it,” Cadman, the retiring president of Local Governments for Sustainability, told some 1,500 delegates from nearly 1,000 cities and local governments in 96 countries on April 11.

The majority of climate actions and most plans to reduce CO2 emissions are happening at the city level, Cadman told DeSmog Canada in Seoul.

Vancouver and 50 other cities have committed to 100 per cent renewable energy and 500 more are part of ICLEI’s Cities Climate Registry that documents verifiable CO2 emission reduction actions and commitments that amounted to 2.8 billion tons a year in 2014.

Cadman, a former City of Vancouver councillor, has been president of ICLEI since 2006. It’s an international organization headquartered in Bonn, Germany, with 280 staff and 23 other offices scattered around the globe. ICLEI, which stands for International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, started 25 years ago in Toronto to help cities become more sustainable. It now goes by the more manageable name of "Local Governments for Sustainability," but still uses the original acronym.

Canada’s federal and provincial governments were very strong supporters in the early days but the past decade has been very different.

“We seem to be chained to the fossil energy industry in Canada and it’s pulling us down. Cities and organizations can hardly dare to speak out about this now,” he said.

Germany was only too happy to bring ICLEI to Bonn eight years ago and has been generous with its support, along with the European Union. Now the organization is experiencing what is being called an “Asian pivot,” with the mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon, as the new president.

Park has helped Seoul to become one of the world’s leaders on sustainable development. With 11 million people and growing fast, Seoul will reduce its energy use and increase renewable generation including rolling out 40,000 solar panels to households by 2018 and 15,000 electric vehicles. By 2030, CO2 emissions will be cut 40 per cent.

“Action on climate will be by local governments no matter what national governments decide,” Park Won Soon told DeSmog Canada.

“We need to act quickly, we need to act energetically,” the mayor said.

China’s megacities are also joining ICLEI. At the congress, Hailong Li, deputy secretary general of the China Eco-city Council said the country will have 100 low-carbon eco-cities by 2017. That will drive down the costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy, Li said.

China also intends to become an expert on eco-construction and to market its expertise to the rest of the developing world.

By 2030 another 3.5 billion people will be living in cities so it is absolutely critical that the infrastructure be sustainable said Cadman who will continue to be active as special representative to the new ICLEI President.

“I’m 70 now and need to reduce my workload. My wife says she’d like me to be around a bit longer.”

Canadian cities could also do more and sooner if they had the support of provincial and federal governments, he said. That may be changing at the provincial level with growing support for various forms of carbon taxes that will help generate funds and financial incentives to reduce emissions.

“The provinces are doing the heavy-lifting on climate while the Harper government sits on the sidelines.”

Fossil fuels are in decline — divestment is taking off and investments are shifting to renewable energy. There’ll be no pipelines to the West Coast and no new investments in the oilsands, Cadman said.

Even in B.C., the hoped-for markets for LNG may not exist with China building gas pipelines to tap reserves in Iran and Russia, he said.

“Canada needs to move away from selling raw resources, but is any political party ready to go there?”

Image Credit: David Cadman and Park Won Soon at the World Congress 2015. By Stephen Leahy.

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Canada and every other rich country need to crash their CO2 emissions 10% per year starting in 2014 to have any hopes of ensuring a not-super-dangerous climate for our grandchildren, said Kevin Anderson of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester.

"We can still do 2C but not the way we're going," Anderson said on the sidelines of the UN climate talks, in Warsaw, Poland.

Anderson wasn't just referring to the lengthy-and-acronym-laden COP 19 process held inside Warsaw's 58,000-seat soccer stadium. It's too late for any normal approaches to emissions reductions. Preventing climate disaster requires a radical measures and our economic system is not up to the task he said.

"Massive amounts of capital needs to be directed towards a low-carbon future straight away."

Not only does that mean governments redirecting the more than $500 billion they spend subsidizing fossil fuels, it means financial institutions and pension funds need to pull their money out of dirty energy and put it into green projects. If they're not willing, then governments will have to make them he said.

And for the next five years most of that money should go into reducing energy consumption. Alternative energy can't be built fast enough or at the scale needed to 100% replace dirty energy sources.

Automobile manufacturers like Kia and BMW already have non-hybrid, non-electric vehicles with double the fuel efficiency of the typical car on the road today. If governments put in tough new efficiency standards, CO2 emissions could fall 40-50% in 10 years he said.

As "pushers of petroleum" the Harper government isn't about to do anything like this said David Cadman, President of ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), the only network of sustainable cities operating worldwide.

"They don't understand science and are willing to leave future generations with a bleak and nasty world," Cadman told DeSmog in Warsaw.

The practical alternative vision is a green low-carbon future that is different but far better than the present. And cities are leading the way. Currently a group of 441 cities representing 15% of people on the planet are taking concrete action to reduce their emissions said Cadman, a Vancouver city councilor.

Cities like Vancouver, Mexico City, Hyderbad India, Osaka, Japan, and Bangkok have registered their efforts to reduce emissions on an official Cities Climate Registry. The idea is to raise the global level of ambition through taking measurable, reportable, verifiable local climate action. After only two years these cities have now found ways to reduce their collective CO2 emissions by 2.2 billion tons a year.

Cities are amongst the biggest source of emissions but equally important is their role in giving birth to a low-carbon global culture that we need to thrive said Cadman.

"The green way of living will be fairer, more compact, create more jobs, reduce energy and other costs, and be more in harmony with nature and our own true natures. It's the opposite of where we are now where a few get rich."

The climate action by cities and subnational governments (regional and provincial) is finally being noticed at the UN climate talks that are dominated by national governments. Thursday, 21 November was “Cities Day”, a first-of-its kind initiative that bundles numerous city-focused events.

"Cities are central in tackling climate change. They are proving grounds for our efforts in ensuring a low carbon future that benefits people and the planet,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the opening in Warsaw.

Now that cities are finally inside the UN tent, Cadman hopes their actions will help inspire generally fearful national governments to take ambitious action.

"That won't be enough however. Climate is simply not a priority of national governments. Cities and regional governments have to mobilize the public," he said.

This mobilization means working with civil society organizations, First Nations, business and especially young people.

"We have to work together to motivate national governments to help create a green future for all of us," Cadman told a packed audience on Cities Day.

Time is short. There are just two years before the new climate treaty is signed in Paris. That agreement needs to be the turning point.  We can’t wait for a second chance to keep global temperatures below the 2C threshold.

"Everyone must be involved. Nothing else is more important.”

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Investments in the oil, gas and coal industry are starting to lose their value and will become a liability based on a major UN report released today. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2000+page report confirms that Canada must keep more than 75% of its fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

Forget peak oil. This is the era of Unburnable Carbon.

In the IPCC report summarizing more than 9000 new climate research papers confirmed that only so much fossil fuel can be burned to keep global warming under 2C, the internationally agreed on cap. Written by hundreds of the world's leading scientists from 39 countries, the report also confirmed that half to two thirds of the 2C carbon budget have already been used up.

At the current 'burn rate' the remaining carbon budget will only last 15 or so years. And that's to have a 50% chance of staying below 2C of warming. No scientist regards 2C as 'safe.' The heating will be wildly uneven and spawn extreme weather events beyond any ever experienced in human history.

What is the liability of companies continuing to produce and profit from their carbon stocks?

"It's the reserves of oil, gas and coal that props up the stock prices of the industry," said David Cadman, President of ICLEI, the only network of sustainable cities operating worldwide. More than 1200 cities in the network are on their way to reducing their emissions 20% by 2020 and 80% reductions by 2050.

"This 'carbon bubble' is going to burst. What are the consequences for Canada now that we've tied ourselves to the fossil fuel industry?" Cadman, a Vancouver city councilor, told DeSmog.

At least 78% of Canada’s proven oil, bitumen, gas, and coal reserves, and 89% of proven-plus-probable reserves need to remain underground according to a 2013 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

"Business-as-usual for the fossil fuel industry is incompatible with the need to keep the global temperature increase to 2 degrees C or less," said CCPA Senior Economist Marc Lee. 

"We are in need of a ‘managed retreat’ from fossil fuel investments," Lee said in a press release.

Some of the first calculations about the size of the 2C carbon budget were published in the leading scientific journal Nature four years ago. That same year the first-ever Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change ended with a call to phase-out of fossil fuels.

The fact that carbon or CO2 traps heat from the sun was established more than 120 years ago. Burning fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities puts additional CO2 into the atmosphere where it remains essentially forever.

It is hardly surprising – and is certainly not scientifically controversial – that additional CO2 in the atmosphere acts as insulation, trapping heat.  

Humanity has already pumped out 531 billion tons of carbon* the IPCC confirmed. The resulting warming is now 0.85C and on its way to between 1.0 and 1.2C.

Add roughly 1 trillion tons of additional carbon* to the atmosphere and the blanket will be so thick the surface of the entire planet will heat up on average of 2C.

This heating, however, will not be even. The Arctic and the north will heat up 6 to 8C due to a process called Arctic Amplification. That guarantees the end of the Arctic sea ice in summers and major but unknown changes to the weather of the Northern hemisphere. It would also mean the end of the Greenland ice sheet, raising sea levels 7 meters over the next 1000 years. Local effects on Canada's northern region will be profound from collapsing permafrost, increased flooding in some regions and fires in others. And in this new climate there will be major impacts on wildlife and vegetation.

And that's the 50-50 budget: With that much CO2 there is a 50% chance of heating up more than 2C. And scientists acknowledge this budget doesn't include positive feedbacks like emissions from thawing permafrost that they know are draining the carbon account but not by how much.

Given the deadly serious consequences of blowing the budget, there is a high incentive to stay well under the budget cap. But the opposite is happening. Billions of dollars are being wasted by banks, investment funds and pension plans on the oil, gas, and coal industry's efforts to get more carbon out the ground.

None of this is theoretical. Lord Stern, the former World Bank chief economist, said on Sunday that the effort required to stay within the budget must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

"Delay is dangerous because greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and because we are locking in high carbon infrastructure and capital."

Lord Stern told the Guardian that cutting carbon emissions "will be full of opportunity, discovery, innovation and growth," if there is sound public policy.

*Correction: this originally stated 531 billion tons of CO2 had been pumped into the atmosphere rather than carbon. Note 1 ton of carbon = 3.67 tons of CO2.

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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