Earth Day 2014 focuses on Green Cities. How do we make our cities greener?
Last year, Earth Day Network launched the Green Cities campaign to help cities around the world become sustainable and reduce their carbon footprints. The campaign focused on three key elements – buildings, energy, and transportation. The goal: help cities speed up their transition to a cleaner, healthier, and an economically viable future through reform in regulation, improvements in efficiency and investments in renewable technology.
Most of the world relies on archaic electric generation structures that are inefficient and dirty. To help cities become sustainable, we must redesign the current system, effecting a transition to renewable energy sources by implementing 21st century solutions.
Buildings account for nearly one third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. We can reduce those emissions drastically, through simple efficiency and design improvements to buildings. To realize this vision, cities must update regulations, switch to performance-based building codes, and improve financing options.
Transportation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, three quarters of which comes directly from road vehicles. To reduce the smog caused by these emissions, we must improve standards, increase public transportation options, invest in alternative transportation, and make cities pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly.
Upon taking office, President Obama set in motion the first-ever national policy aimed at increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S.
So far, 23 companies have joined the National Clean Fleets Partnership to reduce oil consumption by replacing their old fleets of trucks with fuel-efficient models. Collectively, they operate about 1 million commercial vehicles nationwide. As a result, the green technology sector of our economy is growing, creating jobs and generating more clean energy. We’re pumping out less dangerous carbon pollution.
President Barack Obama said, “As the world's technological leader and home to some of its most breathtaking natural wonders, America has a special responsibility to safeguard our environment. On Earth Day, we celebrate our rich legacy of stewardship and reflect on what we can do, as individuals and as a Nation, to preserve our planet for future generations.”
As we focus this Earth Day on green cities, we must acknowledge the intimate connection between our cities and our oceans. Three-quarters of the world’s largest cities are by the sea, and more than one-third of the world’s population lives in coastal areas. Covering almost three-quarters of the planet, oceans regulate our climate and weather and are essential for cycling water, carbon and nutrients. More than 1 billion people, many in the least-developed countries, rely on fish as their primary source of protein.
Recently, Minister Leo Brincat, Minister for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change, reiterated the importance of the blue economy and emphasized the need for nations to manage maritime activities, protect the marine environment and heritage and fight pollution.
Oceans and their resources are critical to everyone’s well-being. But the oceans are in trouble. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the perils of the greenhouse effect on oceans during his visit to Indonesia in February 2014. Average sea temperatures are rising. Increasing acidity from coal-fired power plants and other pollution spills into the oceans. As a result, certain species like cod or sardines can no longer live where they once lived, devastating the world’s fisheries.
The good news is that advances in science, new community initiatives and new government policies are working toward ensuring a sustainable future for the oceans. While no single step can reverse the effects of climate change, all nations have a moral obligation to future generations to leave them cleaner, healthier and more stable cities and oceans.