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Photo by Reed Hutchinson
Former President Bill Clinton said he'll use some of the same strategies that were successful with his global work to fight AIDS. |
Clinton rallies support for global warming initiative
BY CYNTHIA LEE
Today Staff Writer
UCLA was center stage August 1 for the launch of a global initiative by former President Bill Clinton, working with the mayors of 22 of the world’s largest cities, to cut energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in an urgent attempt to slow the pace of global warming.
Clinton joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, England, at Korn Convocation Hall after record-breaking heat seared California in July.
“It no longer makes sense for us to debate whether or not the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and it doesn’t make sense for us to sit back and wait for others to act,” said the former president in a statement.
A cheering crowd at Korn greeted the announcement that the Clinton Foundation was launching the Clinton Climate Initiative and partnering with an organization of large cities that have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Large Cities Climate Leadership Group is chaired by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has aggressively enforced “green” policies in his city by levying congestion and pollution charges on drivers.
Livingstone and Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Gavin Newsom of San Francisco described the measures being taken in their cities to address global warming. Cities are the source of more than 75% of all such emissions in the world.
“If we do not regard this issue with the gravity it demands,” Blair said, “we will be betraying in the most irresponsible way future generations. That is not something that I want on my conscience as a leader.”
Clinton praised the United Kingdom for disproving “the canard that led the United States Senate to vote against the Kyoto climate change treaty before I could present it.” While opponents predicted that signing the treaty would devastate the U.S. economy, the UK’s successful efforts to reduce emissions beyond the 12% goal set in the Kyoto agreement has helped that country’s economy prosper and created new jobs, Clinton pointed out.
“The main thing we have to do is to organize ourselves to move as quickly as possible,” the former president said. By pooling purchasing power and expertise, the cities will create a consortium to buy energy-saving products more cheaply and speed up the development and deployment of “green” technologies and products.
In Los Angeles, Villaraigosa has directed the Department of Water and Power, the city’s single major source of greenhouse gas emissions, to obtain 20% of the electricity it sells from renewable resources by 2010. “This single action will reduce the city’s global warming emissions by 20% from 2004 levels,” the mayor said.
Locally, the campus, through the Institute of the Environment (IOE), directed by Mary Nichols, is addressing critical environmental challenges through interdisciplinary research, education and service. IOE scientists are, for example, studying the effects of climate change on California’s coastal waters.
There are 20 other centers on campus engaged in environmental research, including seeking out alternative technologies to increase sustainability, Chancellor Norman Abrams said in his formal greeting to the city and world leaders.
“We at UCLA have been working tirelessly on the use of our own resources in ways that help to sustain the environment through local action,” Abrams said.
“For example,” he said, “UCLA has decreased its energy and water consumption through a variety of efficiency and conservation measures, and we have built one of the largest university fleets of alternate fuel vehicles in the nation.”
To coordinate campuswide efforts, a committee was chartered several months ago to promote sustainability in the planning, development and operation of campus facilities and environment.
“We’ve actually come to a very exciting stage where we are reaching out to volunteers,” said Nichols, who co-chairs the Campus Sustainability Committee with Tova Lelah, assistant director of Capital Programs.
Two subcommittees staffed by volunteers have been formed; one, dealing with student life, housing and food service, is looking into the possibility of abandoning the use of Styrofoam in those areas. The other, the academic subcommittee, headed by Associate Professor Francesco Chiappelli of the dental school, is pulling together information on all the work on sustainability being carried out by organizations and groups at UCLA.
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