U.S. cities will continue local efforts to address climate change even if national efforts come to a halt under the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump, the mayors of the U.S. cities included in the C40 said Friday.
“Mayors don’t look at climate change as an ideological issue. They look at it as an economic and public health issue,” Michael Bloomberg, C40’s president of the board and U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for cities and climate change, said in a release. “Regardless of the decisions of the incoming administration, US mayors will continue to deliver action and lead the way.”
According to a report released Friday coinciding with the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City, U.S. members of the C40 could contribute roughly 33 percent of the needed emissions reductions for the nation to meet its commitment under the international Paris Agreement on climate change. The U.S. members of the C40 are: Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Houston; Los Angeles; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Seattle, and Washington.
Under the Paris Agreement, which entered into force Nov. 4, the U.S. has committed to reducing its emissions to between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. However, the national commitments made the agreement are not legally binding, which means that President-Elect Trump could simply ignore them.
Trump’s current position on the Paris Agreement is somewhat cloudy. While he stated several times during his campaign his intention to “cancel” the agreement, he recently told the New York Times he was keeping an open mind on the issue. Other reports, however, suggest that he is exploring the possibility of pulling the U.S. out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty under which the agreement was struck.