Seattle mayor has plan to clear the air
Nickels says Seattle should set example for world
Saying Seattle must lead the world in battling the globe-warming gases that spew from our cars and furnaces and power plants, Mayor Greg Nickels today will unveil the most comprehensive plan to date to reduce Seattleites' impact on the climate.
The plan amounts to a call for everyone who lives here -- along with the city's businesses -- to change how they get around and how they heat and light their homes and offices. It could mean charging tolls for using certain roads, additional taxes on parking and other measures to encourage people to get out of their cars and use mass transit.
The 34-page list of actions Nickels is proposing range from the very specific -- spending $530,000 over the next two years to save natural gas in city buildings, for instance -- to aspirations whose outcome the city can't control, such as persuading the Legislature to follow California's lead and cap so-called "greenhouse gases."
The basic message: Seattle can do this. And so can the world.
"We can make a difference," Nickels said.
"The struggle with climate change is that since it is global by nature, no individual or city feels like it has the power to change the course. However, we're all in it together, and if we act together, we will be able to make a difference," he said.
The proposal is heavily reliant on voters approving two ballot measures in November, the city's proposed nine-year, $365 million property tax for transportation improvements and King County's one-tenth of 1 percent increase in the sales tax to fund improved bus service.
That would provide better sidewalks, trails and stairways to encourage pedestrians; more-frequent buses; additional bike paths; a doubling in size of Seattle's modest system of on-street bike lanes; planting of trees; and improvements to help move freight through the city more efficiently.
Of the $37 million Nickels' plan would cost the city over the next two years, $34 million would come from the "Bridging the Gap" property tax for transportation on the November ballot. King County's "Transit Now" sales-tax increase would provide $10 million annually.
If those ballot measures don't pass, Nickels and other supporters say, they'll be back asking again.
The plan being released today is a road map for how Seattle can by 2012 reduce its production of carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-warming gases to 7 percent below 1990 levels -- the goal of the Kyoto Protocol, the global plan to help moderate the warming climate. President Bush and the Senate have rejected the treaty.
The document the mayor is releasing today does not offer a complete explanation of how Seattle will meet the Kyoto goals. The plan's authors don't show how much of the reduction in greenhouse gases will come from which steps, because in many cases they are unsure how much can be accomplished.
Over the next few years, though, the plan contemplates trying out dozens of ideas, grouped in 18 broad areas, and measuring how they work: How many commuters switch to bikes or buses? How many cars are traveling fewer miles? Is per capita electricity use dropping?
"One of the efforts of this plan is to connect the dots for people who may understand that climate change is a problem, but don't understand that their everyday actions contribute to it," said John Healy of the city's Office of Sustainability and Environment.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Mayor has plan to clear the air
