Journalist Neal Peirce, perhaps our most talented observer of urbanism in the U.S., has stretched is reporting across the seas to Europe to find an exceptional level of government support for planning to reduce carbon emissions through a regional city-state approach. We have a touch of this with the Met Council but that body too often isn't proactive enough, or well-funded enough, to have much of an impact on pushing regional conservation strategies.
As Peirce writes: "Too often, when our local government officials travel overseas to observe others practices, political opponents and/or our local newspapers pillory their trips as “junkets.” Our city and county budgets allow a fraction of the amounts Europeans regularly allocate for foreign trips and contacts. Federal and state governments work to sell U.S. products overseas, but rarely lift a finger to explore areas in which we lag -- Europe’s leap ahead, for example, in perfecting (and making money on) solar and wind power systems. The German Marshall Fund of the U.S.eveloping at higher urban densities, building a variety of housing options into our communities to achieve social inclusion, eliminating environmental pollution impacts on poor communities and communities of color reducing the carbon footprint of new development, achieving energy efficiencies in our buildings, fully redeveloping our already urbanized areas before expanding into green fields and chewing up agricultural lands, expanding our transit system. And there's more: creating more walkable, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, developing green jobs and green manufacturing opportunities as we seek to reindustrialize America, creating better “career pathways” for low-income workers to access opportunities represented in the Green Jobs movement, securing new green spaces and park lands and funding high-speed regional rail systems
is a rare exception in seeking to support policy exchanges among local and regional officials.
Bottom line: We lose out, we lag, both environmentally and economically. In today’s fiercely competitive and dangerously warming world, it seems high time to kick our superior attitudes of “American exceptionalism.” That’s the notion that since we led the world on every step from the Declaration of Independence to winning two world wars and putting men on the moon, we’re inherently superior and don’t need to learn from others."
Summarizing Peirce, he sees the following as keys to reducing our carbon imprint substantiallyby d
Pierce makes the case that these issues, and some newer ideas, are sorely needed. His contention is that larger metro regions and major urban counties are in a unique position (because of their sheer size, willingness to experiment & incubate new ideas, economic output, fiscal resources, and national influence) to make substantial progress on mitigating the complex, negative impacts of climate change.
