As the meeting got underway on Friday, the Sierra Club announced that 118 mayors from across the country have endorsed a goal of powering their cities with 100 percent renewable energy.
The Sierra Club also released a new report that found transitioning all 1,400 U.S. Conference of Mayors member-cities with populations of 30,000 or more to 100 percent renewable electricity would significantly reduce electric sector carbon pollution nationwide and push the US close to meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord event without federal government participation..
The analysis found that if cities belonging to the US Conference of Mayors moved to 100 percent renewable energy, it would reduce electric sector carbon emissions by more than that of the five worst carbon polluting US states combined.
Further, the report said, if the 100 percent energy targets were achieved by 2025, the total electric sector carbon pollution reductions would fill anywhere from 87 percent to 110 percent of the remaining reductions the US would need to achieve in order to meet the goals of the climate accord.
"There's near unanimity in this conference that climate change is real and that humans contribute to it. There may be a little bit of a disagreement about how actually to deal with it," said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Saturday as he began his term as the conference's new president.
"If the federal government refuses to act or is just paralyzed, the cities themselves, through their mayors, are going to create a new national policy by the accumulation of our individual efforts," he said.
The conference also distributed a questionnaire to members asking them for their thoughts and strategies for deploying renewable energy options, energy-savings programs and low-carbon transportation options.
Already nearly 70 cities have filled out the questionnaire and of those, more than 90 percent said they are interesting in partnering with other local governments to create climate plans and deploy renewable energy programs.
Most of the early respondents also said they've already bought green vehicles and integrated them into their municipal fleets, and have energy efficiency programs in place in city buildings.
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