Even if you’ve never been to Paris, the cab ride from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the center of the city would likely be a familiar scene to most Bostonians — it’s a lot like Boston’s southeast expressway during rush hour.
Traffic congestion is thick, forcing vehicles to move at a snail’s — or perhaps an escargot — pace here. The morning drive-time radio, French style, is on, and one of the main topics this week is, of course, climate change.
World leaders are meeting for the second week in Paris in an attempt to negotiate an international agreement to deal with climate change, and urban areas are at the frontlines of the fight.
Tackling Climate Change By Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
At the ornate Hotel de Ville — City Hall in Paris — the mayor of Paris has been playing host to officials from cities around the world.
Featured speaker Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s The Earth Institute, told local leaders that national government officials negotiating a global climate treaty don’t understand the nuts and bolts of adapting a city’s infrastructure to climate change.
"After the agreement is reached, who’s going to be the first to start implementing that? It’s going to be the mayors at their desks the next morning, because they have to make contracts with utilities. They have to decide where the next road is going to go, how public transports going to work, what kind of vehicles are going to be riding on the streets of the cities,” Sachs said. "So literally where the rubber hits the road is the world’s cities.”
Boston is among those cities leading by way of example on how a local government can prepare for a future in whichclimate change requires a transformation of urban infrastructure.
Austin Blackmon, Boston’s chief of environment, energy and open space, came to the summit in Paris to receive a prestigious C40 award — beating out Melbourne and New York City in an award category that praises a city’s ability to engage residents in planning for climate change.
"The city of Boston was very, very thankful to win the award,” Blackmon said. "We hope in future years other cities will get recognized for copying those ideas.”
It’s a quick five-hour flight from Boston to Paris, 3,235 miles as the seagull flies. A few days before he left for Paris, I met with Blackmon in Christopher Columbus Park, a few feet away from Boston Harbor.
When it comes to climate change, it’s clear the planet is in the same boat. However, different cities face difference challenges.
"Hopefully coming out of Paris we’ll have an agreement that will incentivize all of the nations of the world to take drastic action, but if we don’t do enough then there’s a chance that areas like this will be subject to flooding on a twice-daily basis,” Blackmon said.
Boston set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by mid-century. The city is on target, with a 17 percent reduction in just a decade. Boston pioneered an innovative funding mechanism to retrofit its 321 municipal buildings. The city used savings from energy efficiencies to pay off loans for the improvements.
Now, Boston is helping cities of a similar size in China prepare for climate change.
"That’s really, really important, because as much work as we’ve done here in Boston — as great as that is — if we can help Chinese cities avoid a ton of CO2, the number of people that live in China on a per capita basis, if we can influence that change, that affects us globally as well,” Blackmon said. "And so we can really multiple our impact.”
