Kirk Watson leads a city in Texas, but these days he feels like he is stepping into a role vacated by Washington officials.
Weeks away from November’s global UN COP30 climate talks in Belem, Brazil, Watson and other US mayors said they want to use the summit to reaffirm their growing climate work and seek ideas and support.
“Subnational action and subnational diplomacy is the primary place to make change,” Watson, the mayor of Austin, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
“We’re proving that at a time of stress regarding the government taking action to address the climate, cities can grow, we can prosper and cut emissions at the same time.”
Calling climate change a “con job” at the UN General Assembly in September, US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement twice and cancelled clean energy investments worth tens of billions.
It is uncertain whether the US will send an official delegation to COP30. The White House referred questions to the state department, which did not respond to a request for details.
“For far too long, arbitrary climate goals have bankrupted nations and sent manufacturing to countries that don’t play by the rules,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email.
“It is time to put a hard stop to the brutal green energy policies before it is too late and destroys the free world,” she said.
In Austin, federal cuts to community solar and other projects have threatened the city’s plans for major emissions reductions by 2030, which Watson said residents demand amid worsening wildfires, flooding and winter storms.
The mayor wants to use COP30 events to talk to other local leaders about funding ideas, keeping residents safe from extreme weather and strategies for dealing with rising climate disinformation.
COP30 host Brazil has placed particular emphasis on local governments, while another event in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the official summit is expected to draw hundreds of mayors, organisers said.
“This is the first time since I’ve been at COP that our subnational leaders are such a big pillar of the work,” said Julie Cerqueira, chief programme officer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington think tank.
“What I’m hoping is we continue to see state and local governments and the private sector are the drivers of climate action,” she said.
New chapter
In the US alone, continued action by cities, states and businesses could help the country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 62% by 2035, according to the University of Maryland.
US cities have their own regulators and set their own budgets, wielding particular authority over building codes, transportation, waste management and the local adoption of renewable energy.
To make that happen, US cities are looking to COP30 to build partnerships with cities around the world and discuss creative financing solutions, said Kate Johnson, North America director for C40, a global network of cities.
She pointed to a rise in successful local financing, such as Seattle’s voter-approved $1.6bn (R27.7bn) transportation funding which will be used to expand bike lanes and electric vehicle charging stations and test low emissions delivery services and more.
Cities will need more funding help. C40 estimated in a recent report that urban climate action is going to cost around $4.5-trillion (R78-trillion) per year globally until 2030.
The COP remains a nation-led process, but recent years have seen growing recognition of the role local officials play in implementing climate work, said Ayse Kaya, a political science professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
“How many EV chargers does a town need now and into the future? Local leaders know the best,” she said.
Trump has rolled back far more sustainability measures in his second term after his predecessor Joe Biden’s multi-billion-dollar clean energy plans.
However, cities’ experience of Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021 strengthened partnerships between state and local leaders on climate action and governments outside the United States, said Cerqueira.
“This time they’ve flexed this muscle,” she said.
“They’re tapped into the multilateral systems and know what they can contribute to international climate goals.”
Thousands of cities across the world have pledged to reduce emissions, with many adopting more ambitious targets than their national governments.
Many American cities are feeling the effects of budget cuts, in part because much of Biden’s climate investments were directed towards local implementation.
“We’ve been deeply impacted by the change in energy policy,” said Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego.
“We’ve seen some companies in the EV space go out of business. We are seeing some big cuts in clean energy sectors.”
Gallego chairs Climate Mayors, a national network of 349 local leaders that formed when the US first withdrew from the Paris agreement in 2017.
She said: “In the local government community we’ve had outreach from other countries that want to continue working with us, particularly in Europe.”
Reuters
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