BY KENZIE BOK

On February 16, 2005, the day the Kyoto Protocol became law for its 141 ratifying countries, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels invited other American mayors to join him in the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The compact pledges signatory cities to “strive to meet or exceed” the Kyoto target reductions of emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, and to lobby the federal government for national carbon emission reductions. As of December 1, 2007, the agreement now has 740 signatories, well above the 141 cities Mayor Nickels hoped to recruit when he first launched the initiative. The Climate Protection Agreement illustrates both the positive potential and the significant limitations of inter-city solutions to global problems. HPR sat down with Mayor Nickels to discuss the accord.

Harvard Political Review: Do you think that mayors need to see how environmental concerns directly impact their cities in order to get active, or can a theoretical understanding be enough?

Mayor Greg Nickels: Mayors are very practical. We meet people in the grocery store and on the street and have to explain to them what we’re doing. In 2002, when I became mayor, jobs and homeland security were on the front burner. But when [global warming] starts to affect your ability to provide electricity or clean water, it’s here and now.

HPR: Progress on some of the Agreement’s aims can be difficult to quantify. Some cities don’t even know what their carbon footprint was in 1990. How is are you tackling these challenges?

GN: That’s one of the reasons that ultimately we need the federal government. We need to understand what the measurements are, how to take them, and how to measure success. Aviation, for example, is a big emitter; how do we calculate that? It’s not in the city, we don’t run it, but we certainly contribute to it. So we gave ourselves 30 percent of the [airport] emissions and said we’ve got to reduce against that. We’re showing different ways to do it and hopefully there will be best practices that will be broadly accepted and become standard.

HPR: Do you think the presidential candidates are responding to the expectation of finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol? Are the mayors being heard on a national level?

GN: I think we have changed the political conversation. The next president, Democrat or Republican, will tackle this issue. When mayors sign onto the agreement, they say, "We will take local action but we also will advocate for federal action." It’s going to take that next level of effort, well beyond what we’re able to do. But we can change the trend and we can show it can be done without destroying the economy, which has been one of the main arguments that the [Bush] Administration has used.

HPR: How big a gap is there between the level of public interest that allows mayors to officially commit to something like the Climate Protection Agreement, and the level of political capital that would allow them to take more controversial action?

GN: That’s one of the interesting aspects of this. Just to say, "Seattle’s going to reduce its emissions," when Seattle is a fraction of a percent of the world’s population, would have been very difficult. Now one in four Americans lives in cities [that are parties to the agreement]. It’s not symbolic anymore. Each city has found its way there in a different fashion. For me it was a snowpack, for people in Florida it was the hurricanes, in Texas it was drought and heat. So we’re all coming to it for different reasons, but we recognize something’s happening. The political capital that I have in Seattle is probably high relative to many cities. We now have a campaign to get into people’s homes and get them to take individual action, including one called. "Save Santa." The polar ice cap is melting – we know reindeer can fly, but we don’t know if they can swim. So we’re talking to kids. We’re trying to engage the broader public so that they know that they can make a difference.

HPR: Have mayors raised serious objections to signing on to the agreement?

GN: The mayor of Milwaukee told me very early, "I’m not going to sign on. The biggest employer in my city makes internal combustion engines and I can’t afford to have people out of work." Six months later, he signed on. He found a way that made sense politically to talk to his citizens about the threat and about the opportunities. The mayor of Detroit asked me a few months ago, "How do I talk to people in Detroit about this? We’re worried sick about what’s happening to the auto industry." This is why the idea of green jobs and green industries is being created. You can’t really outsource the installation of solar panels – it’s got to be done right here, physically. So that’s an aspect that we are addressing for cities that see this as an economic threat.

But when the [U.S. Conference of] Mayors endorsed this in June of 2005, it was unanimous. [Political hesitation] has been less partisan and more regional: "What is it going to do to my economy and how are people going to react if I do this?" And one stumbling block for people early on was, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ I think both elements are feeling more comfortable now.

HPR: Do you think this sort of inter-city network is a viable model with which to address other problems?

GN: Mayor Bloomberg of New York and Mayor Menino of Boston have started a group on illegal guns. Crime is going down except crime with guns, so we banded together. In the ‘90s I was involved in an effort on tobacco. Tobacco companies were targeting children as customer, so we kicked the Marlboro Man out of our sports stadium. So I think this kind of grassroots action is a very good model.

HPR: In a big agreement like this, is there any tension about pollution that is the responsibility of one city but affects another?

GN: It really doesn’t matter if the carbon is coming from emissions in Seattle or in Beijing. It eventually gets in that atmosphere and affects every one of us. Every pound that I save helps everyone, and every pound that another person saves helps me. Which is why it’s been disappointing that, in the United States, one of the excuses we’ve used [for not ratifying Kyoto] is that China and India aren’t part of this. Are we going to destroy ourselves because they’re not doing enough?