Seattle's Winding Path 20 Years into Its Global Climate Commitment

Seattle has been committed to climate action for 20 years, but remains far behind targets.

Seattle’s history of ambitious statements on climate change have long existed in response to the same kind of national abandonment of climate action that we’re seeing today. In fact, Donald Trump’s decision to force America to about-face and renege on the international targets it signed onto in the 2015 Paris Agreement — and the response of cities and states in the U.S. reaffirming their commitment to those goals — mirrors a moment two and a half decades earlier.

In 1997, 192 countries struck a treaty called the Kyoto Protocol that Bill Clinton and Al Gore helped steward. In it, governments agreed to reduce their emissions by 5% relative to 1990 levels come 2012: a meager goal but one that, if achieved, would have created the momentum for greater progress in the future. Despite its tepid aspirations, George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out in March 2001.

Within four months, Seattle’s City Council responded by unanimously affirming the city’s support for the protocol, and four years later, then-Mayor Greg Nickels rallied together more than 100 cities to commit to carrying out the Kyoto Protocol themselves, even if the nation no longer would — a critical commitment given the world’s metropolises contribute some 70% of global emissions. Seattle then cemented its aims in its first-ever citywide climate action plan in September 2006.

https://www.theurbanist.org/seattles-winding-path-20-years-into-climate-commitment/