Science Friday - 20 Years Later, How Are City Climate Plans Actually Going?

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

In 2005, countries around the world ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It was the first big, legally-binding international climate policy, but there was a big drawback: The United States, the world’s richest country and second-highest emitter, didn’t ratify it.In response, American mayors took action. Even if the US wouldn’t commit to cutting climate emissions, their cities would. It was the classic “think global, act local” move.It started with mayoral resolutions—a bunch of “whereases” laying out the reasons cities needed their own climate targets. Whereas manmade climate change is happening. Whereas cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s emissions. Whereas more than half the world’s people live in cities. Whereas cities are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.Therefore? Our city is going to do something about it. Mayors proclaimed, city councils adopted, and gavels cracked on podiums across the country as city climate plans were created, along with a new job to manage it all: the chief sustainability officer.Twenty years later, hundreds of US cities have climate plans. Their chief sustainability officers are responsible for aggressive decarbonization goals that require deep cuts to emissions, and fast. But are cities actually meeting their targets? And do city sustainability officers have what they need to meet them?Read the rest of this story at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

If you're someone working at the city or municipal level, moving the needle on a global issue like climate change is harder than it sounds. It was just like a lot of whereas is. Whereas, whereas, we're going to do this, this and this. And then it was more, how do we make this real? It's Monday, June 24th. And you're listening to Science Friday. I'm Cy-Fri producer Charles Bergquist. After the Kyoto Protocol Climate Agreement of the 1990s, many cities and municipalities developed some kind of

climate or sustainability action plans. But have they made a difference? This episode, we'll talk about the challenge of bringing climate goals to the local front. Here's Cyphi's John Dan Koski. Climate change is a global issue. And so when we think about getting carbon out of the atmosphere, we often think about really big policies. I'm talking about international treaties and federal infrastructure bills worth billions of dollars. But...

Good evening. evening everyone and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's public hearing for today. Climate policy happens closer to home too. Bill 2028 resolution adopting the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan, which identifies targets and strategies for greenhouse gas emissions for the city of Pittsburgh. Over the last 30 years, hundreds of cities across the U.S. have adopted their own plans to cut emissions. But are city governments on track to meet these commitments. And what can one city really do about a global problem? Susan Scott Peterson is a climate reporter in Pittsburgh who's been covering this. Welcome to Science Friday, Susan. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, to start off, tell me why exactly you've been reporting on climate

policy in cities. Well, it actually started because I had something I was curious about my past, because I used to work in city government. This was back when I was in my 20s, and I was in Austin. And so, yeah, young and naive and wearing business casual to the office every day. And this was back in 2008, and we had a climate protection plan for the city. And I remember feeling at the time, like, you know, climate change is huge and big and scary and urgent, but we have a plan, right? And so, you know, a few years later, 2020 came around. And I just remember wondering, like, whatever happened to that, did we ever meet any of those goals? You know, it's a great question because I remember having the same questions when I started

to see these goals come across from different cities, because climate change is a global issue. So what difference do you think a city climate plan can actually make? Okay, I'm going to start by just telling you a little bit about the history of this. It kind of got started back in 2005 when the world ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which was the first big international climate treaty. But the U.S. didn't ratify it. And that's how cities kind of got involved. I talked to this woman named Hillary Varnador.

Hillary is like hilarious, H-I-L-A-R-I, and then Varnador is Viz and Victor. And she is the vice president for cities at the U.S. Green Building Council. And she told me when the U.S. didn't ratify Kyoto, that was when city mayors all over the country decided to do something about it. So they got together and they signed on to an agreement that was kind of like their own mini-Kyota protocol. And they made climate promises for their cities. So this was like our first big wave of mayors saying, even if our country isn't going to, sign on and participate, we're right here in the front lines. And so all of this happened almost 20 years ago now.

And today there are hundreds of cities across the U.S. that have their own climate policies. Okay, so the idea of this is a bunch of cities with climate targets is better than nothing. Yeah, I think that's kind of it. But I also think there are other good reasons for cities to have climate plans. One of them is that something like 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from cities. And so if you want to go after climate change, you really need policies at the city level. And the other thing is that cities are also where a lot of the climate impacts are happening. There are a lot of people living in cities.

There's a lot of expensive infrastructure and resources to support them. And so when there's something like a heat wave or a flood or a hurricane, cities are really vulnerable. Okay. So when we're talking about a city climate plan, what exactly is it? What does one of these things look like? So in the beginning, it was mostly mayors making proclamations and resolutions. This is Hillary Barnador again. It was just like a lot of whereases.

Whereas, whereas, we're going to do this, this and this. And then it was more, how do we make this real? So eventually, cities needed to put someone in charge of actually doing something. And so they created a totally new job. My name is Vivian Satterfield, and I'm the chief sustainability officer at the city of Portland. Ava Richardson, sustainability director for the Baltimore City Office. My name is Elizabeth Babcock. I'm the executive director of Denver's Office of Climate Action Sustainability.

I'm Floor Marion. I'm the assistant director for sustainability and a resilience. And these city sustainability officers were in charge of figuring out how to turn the mayor's resolutions. I call them the whereazas, actually do. Into this thing we call a climate action plan, which is basically a document with a bunch of different strategies like adding renewable energy or building bike infrastructure or capturing methane from landfills. And all of those strategies roll up to a climate goal. Okay, a climate goal. What exactly is a climate goal? So it's usually a decarbonization goal with a deadline. So for example, a lot of cities have an 80 by 50 goal. And that means an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2050. Okay. I've heard of a lot of these. What exactly is a target like that based on? I mean, is there any science that goes into making these goals?

Yeah. So the 80 by 50 goals are roughly aligned with what scientists said would limit global warming to about two degrees Celsius. But this was back around the time of the Kyoto Protocol. And the science has changed. So now scientists say we should limit warming to one and a half degrees Celsius. And so to get there, global emissions have to be cut as soon as possible to net zero by the year 2050. And most cities haven't adopted that target yet. Yeah. We see this in a lot of areas of science policy. There's this huge lag time between the science and the actual policy. Right. And I guess I'll also add that it is hard for cities to update their carbon targets when they're in the middle of dealing increasingly with actual climate change all at the same time. We have lots of greenways and urban forests.

We're very lucky in that sense. Floor Marion directs sustainability in Pittsburgh, which is where I live. And she told me about a climate-related issue that started cropping up here. But it also comes with lots of issues around invasive species and precipitation. And so the amount of landslide happening around the city are increasing, and that's a huge budget cost for us. And that really struck me. what she said about landslides being a huge budget cost.

Because I feel like one of the old cliches about city government is that all they do is run around fixing pot holes. But it's almost like landslides are becoming the new potholes, along with drought and heat domes and flooding. Yeah, actually in Pittsburgh, I saw pictures this spring. The three rivers were flooding major highways. So this isn't really theoretical there anymore. Yeah, we actually have a part of one of our parkways known as the bathtub. hub. Yeah, it's very immediate. It's real. And I think it's making clear that city climate planning isn't only about counting carbon. It's also about adaptation and resilience and equity. And it's,

it's about who's exposed to climate change and environmental risk on a daily basis. I was talking to Ava Richardson, who's the sustainability director in Baltimore. And I was asking her about carbon emissions from the waste sector in her city. And she let me know I was asking the wrong question. Waste in our city, and waste in generally is a huge environmental justice issue. And what she went on to tell me was that in South Baltimore, there's a massive trash incinerator in the middle of a mostly black community, and the people there are dealing with very real health impacts from breathing burning trash. While greenhouse gas emissions is like a very important measure that we want to track and we need

to track, that's not the thing that probably is the most important to people on an everyday basis. So I think in the past, city climate plans were mostly about carbon. But if you're only looking at carbon, you can really miss the big picture. So now Baltimore and the other cities I reported on are starting to shift their focus. Not exactly away from carbon, but they're trying to include the perspectives of people in frontline communities who are already dealing with this stuff on a day-to-day basis. That makes sense. So you said some of these cities have had climate plans for close to 20 years at this point.

So how is it going? Are they meeting some of the targets that they said? This is literally the question I set out to answer in my reporting. I am not able to give you a straightforward answer. Why is that? I think part of the problem is what I already mentioned, and that's that cities have different carbon targets. So they're the 80 by 50 goals and net zero goals

and honestly like a whole gamut of other goals. But I think the thing that's even more complicated is that these cities are counting carbon emissions differently. Like some cities are only tracking carbon from their city government operations like municipal buildings and city vehicle fleets. Other places are tracking. whole city emissions, but they all have their own methodologies.

So what you're saying is that Portland and Pittsburgh aren't even counting the same things. Right. So that means that you can't compare these cities to each other, and you really can't make any statements about them overall as a group. But what I can tell you is what the people in the four individual cities I reported on told me. This is Kyle Deesner, who's a climate policy analyst for the city of Portland. So our emissions currently are 21% below 1990 levels. But I think it's helpful to understand that from 1990, our emissions continued to climb until 2000. And they've been falling ever since 2000. So we're actually 30% below the 2000 peak.

And so what Portland is reporting here is roughly in line with what I heard from the other cities. Denver and Pittsburgh and Baltimore. They also told me they've cut emissions by between 20 and 30%. So I don't know. That sounds like pretty good news, doesn't it? But is that enough? I mean, are we going to save the planet with? cities cutting 20 and 30% of emissions? No, no, we're not. We're not, of course. So this does not

surprise me, but tell me more. Yeah. So I think the sense I got from my reporting is that a lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been gathered. It gets harder and harder to make deeper cuts from here. It's getting more urgent. And cities are really running up against a lot of barriers. Okay, like what kind of barriers? Well, some of it's just political cycles. Like these targets are big public mayoral announcements. But then eventually a new mayor gets elected. and their administration may have different priorities. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Different priorities with the different administration.

Yeah, but so there's this other thing that I heard about when I was reporting. And it seems very mundane, but it's actually a really big deal. And that's just that these sustainability directors are spending a ton of time just making these climate action plans. They're complicated, ambitious plans. They take years to develop and adopt. And then there are a bunch of other plans that just spin off of the big plans. So they've got the big plan, and then they have a plan for hazard mitigation,

and another one for solid waste, another one for bicycles. This is Eva Richardson from Baltimore again. Many people will hear these different plans, and they'll feel like we just put out a lot of plan. I acknowledge there's a lot of planning. So then these offices need to report on how they're doing with these plans, and for that, they need data. And it can be really tough to get. This is Floor Marion from Pittsburgh.

Accessing the data is what's taking them off. time. Right now, we often still send emails to get the information. Hey, it's the end of the year to have the information for this year, and then we get a spreadsheet that we enter in our system. When I spoke to her, her team had just finished putting together Pittsburgh's latest greenhouse gas inventory. It was a huge accomplishment, but it had been nine years since they completed the last one. It had been nine years, huh? So I guess if the data had been easier to get, they might have been able to use it earlier to, I don't know, correct course along the way or something. Yeah, exactly. And these are small teams without much funding, and some of them are really caught in this cycle of planning and reporting and planning and reporting on their plans. And it all gets in the way of actually doing the doing part.

Yeah. So what are cities doing to move past this? Well, one big one is a few sustainability offices are getting a lot more funding and resources. This is Elizabeth Babcock, and she is the executive director of sustainability for the city of Denver. I think there was this mythology for a long time that one person, you know, a chief sustainability officer, is going to somehow just kind of like change all the systems and then everything will be sustainable and that's all you need to do. And so I think that we need to break through the belief that we can do it alone with one or two staff with a shoestring budget and really figure out how we can make the right kinds of investments that benefit us regardless of what happens on the climate change front globally. So in 2020, that story of the lone wolf's sustainability officer really changed in Denver. And that's because they passed a sales tax to fund sustainability. It was very exciting, game-changing, rather than constantly doing planning, and that's all you're doing. You're actually able to scale and implement in a way that a lot of places are not able to.

So in Denver, the budget for sustainability increased dramatically from about a million dollars a year to over $40 million. Okay, so that's a big jump. but is it enough to make a real impact in a city that big? Yeah, I wonder the same thing, and I asked her about that, because I was thinking, to make a really big dent in carbon emissions, you need to pay for big overhaul infrastructure projects. And $40 million just doesn't go that far. But Elizabeth told me that they've been using the money to leverage other dollars,

like applying for federal grants and doing things like making policy changes. So, for example, it's a lot easier to get a big heat pump policy passed if her office can pay for the incentives for heat pumps. And, you know, I guess I'll add here that when I was talking to her, I really found her mood to be optimistic and sort of energetic. So hopefully more cities will start to get more funding for their sustainability offices. I'd like to get back, Susan, to this question of how cities are actually counting emissions. Are they counting all of the emissions?

And what exactly do you know about that? So there is a huge category of emissions that most cities are not counting at all. I mean, we're Americans. We are at consumers more than anything. That's Vivian Satterfield, who's the chief sustainability officer from Portland. And she's talking about a category called consumption-based emissions. And it has to do with all the stuff we bring into a city, like cement for new buildings and food and Amazon packages. All that stuff comes from somewhere else, and it comes with carbon emissions. And it's a really big category.

Our consumption-based emissions are nearly double what. our scope one and two emissions are combined. So in Portland, they are counting this category. And what they found is that the carbon emissions from everything they're doing within the city limits, like driving cars, using electricity and buildings, burning natural gas. When you add all of those emissions up, the total is actually smaller than their consumption-based emissions. But you're saying that this is a category that most cities aren't even counting.

Yeah. And Portland has been looking at this long enough that they know that when their emissions go down within the city limits, their consumption-based emissions go up. And that basically means that as city emissions fall, that doesn't mean our demand for stuff falls. It just means that it's being made somewhere else and we're importing it. And all of that brings up a pretty big question. This is Kyle Deesner from Portland again.

Can we get to zero globally while maintaining the level of consumption that we have today? And I think the answer is no. And that is very challenging. And there's a lot of questions about the role of guys. government in that conversation. So I think this question about consumption could become a part of city climate planning in the future. Susan, can I ask you about the people in these jobs? I mean, I don't know. I imagine it can get pretty frustrating. What was their mood? Were they like energized, were they burned out? What was the sense you got from them? I think a lot of people working in

this space are dealing with some climate grief, to be honest. But I also feel like the people I talk to were making a really clear choice to not given to despair. I got to meet Floor Marion from Pittsburgh in person because Pittsburgh is my city. And so we sat together in an office at our city hall. And I asked her what she's learned doing this work. I've learned that all of government employees are passionate and dedicated to making their city better. And I want to highlight it because we often hear stereotypes of government employees. And I have never met anyone that was just there for ease or whatever people's assumptions are.

everybody is really working tirelessly to make the city a better place for everyone. And that's a really proud to work with these people. I don't know if we're going to do all of the work on time. But making sure we're bringing joy to our community right now is important. I asked her where she's finding joy right now. And she said that one of the things is the new stormwater code. And I have to say that as a former city government employee, that is my kind of joy.

That's great, Susan. Thanks so much for your reporting. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Susan Scott Peterson is a climate reporter in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can read more about this issue and what cities are doing about it on our website, Science Friday.com slash climate policy. That's all the time we have for now. A lot of folks helped make the show happen this week, including

Rasha Eredi. Dean Petersman. Sandy Roberts. Shoshana Bucksbaum. and many more. Next time, Lost Birds, how researchers are harnessing crowd-sourced data to identify and locate birds

that haven't been spotted in over a decade. But for now, I'm SciFry producer Charles Burquist. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.