How city mayors are taking action on climate change Eric Garcetti

and so i mean let’s just i think

dive right into it you know as the mayor

of one of the largest cities in the

world

you undoubtedly you know have a myriad

of challenges and crises at any given

moment that you’re having to juggle

and by becoming the chair of c40 cities

you’ve kind of put a stake in the ground

and put a spotlight on climate

so you know why do you think it’s really

important for cities yours and others to

to really

prioritize climate action right now

absolutely so so for the uninitiated

c-40 is a network of mayors founded by

mayors

a few years back and now it’s 96 of the

most populous

metro areas in the world that account

for about a quarter of the world’s gdp

so when you think about it it’s bigger

than any country in terms of our gdp

output and mayors are now in charge of

cities that have never kind of in some

ways been more important

more people are moving to cities than

ever before majority of humanity

lives in the urban environment but it’s

a very diverse set of cultures and

geographies and languages

with a common set of problems which is

that challenges whether it’s a pandemic

or in this case

climate crisis really doesn’t care about

borders

they don’t care about national borders

they don’t care about regional or state

borders

so this network is about mayors a kind

of there’s an old saying that

good mayors borrow great mayor’s steel

so the

ideas around the world that we steal

from one another about how to

promote green jobs more inclusive

economy wean ourselves off of fossil

fuel build

a transportation future that’s low

emissions um

create buildings that also help us

reduce the heat

that is enveloping the earth this is

really the the call of our lifetimes

and while there’s other crises we are

navigating as well

before and after the pandemic the

climate crisis will be the defining

crisis of our lives and this decade must

be a decade of action

i call it the climate decade where it’s

too late to reverse things

but it may not be too late to actually

implement policies

that not only help save human life on

this planet but also

make it more just equitable and fair for

its inhabitants

i mean and talking about some of those

policies in your in your tenure so far

as chair of c40 you know you’ve really

championed this idea of this of this

global green new deal

um where you’re putting climate at the

center of all decisions that cities are

making

could you talk a little bit more about

this vision and what that really looks

like

yeah i think you know most human beings

have at least before the pandemic had

two main sources of stress one is if you

talk to a young person they wonder will

the earth still be around as we know it

obviously the earth will survive but

will human life sustain as we know it

second if it does where will i fit into

the future economy

everything is changing so rapidly uh

automation

elimination of jobs uh industries that

are dying out that we thought would be

with us forever

and so the global green new deal is

really about combining these two things

which is saying

we have to solve one with the other in

fact you can’t solve one

without the other that if we just save

the planet but

the disruption that could be caused by

mass migration because of global warming

for instance

somehow gets mitigated we save cities

from being flooded

and other extreme weather events that

doesn’t mean that the social fabric will

be strong

if the poor are still very poor in

cities and the most successful cities

still i mean look in los

angeles we have one of the largest

homeless populations in america

um even though we have one of the

strongest economies and in other parts

of the world

it’s not just within cities it’s between

countries still and so if we don’t have

a just economy

um the social fabric will tear apart as

well whether that’s based on

racial prejudice and racism that’s

historic whether it’s based on

economic discrimination and caste

systems whether it’s looking at the way

that the economy

is putting more and more wealth in the

hands of fewer and fewer people we

really see an opportunity to bring these

together

because the big mega industries of

tomorrow are green industries

and so either you’re a city that will be

planning for that and reap the benefits

of it for your city and your people

or you’ll be left behind and sooner or

later you’ll have to do this but don’t

be late to the party is our message

join together with a network of cities

that can push national governments in

some cases that are very slow to act

and take you know humanities needs into

our hands directly

i mean you started to touch on this a

little bit and thinking about your work

in los

angeles you know what are some of the i

guess specific ways that you’ve enacted

some of this climate action in

in los angeles so the main three uh

things that are

driving global warming are

transportation um

buildings and of course our electricity

generation energy

and so we have looked very aggressively

at all three

uh whether it’s looking at um getting

away from fossil fuels for the

generation of our electricity

we’ll be completely off of coal soon and

um i

move forward with closing down huge

natural gas electricity plants

replacing them with solar we have the

biggest solar uh

generation and storage facility in the

country that is going to be built eland

it’s actually cheaper than a new gas

plant would be so this is good

economically enough to power

uh enough electricity for about a

million people just in the desert uh

above los angeles so

first is converting our energy sources

uh second is transportation

we’re gonna move all of our buses to

electric buses um we’re buying many of

them we already have the largest

electric

bus purchases in the country for our

metro system which is los angeles county

but whether it’s looking at electric

vehicles now a majority of the purchases

we make for our city vehicles are

electric as well

but it’s reducing those emissions and la

knows a lot this isn’t just for

uh global warming it’s also good for the

air that we breathe and reducing smog

asthma cancer and then third it’s

looking at the ways that we can make

sure that buildings which are really the

biggest emitters of all

can become much greener it’s going in

there creating jobs where people

go into homes and inspect people’s homes

and help them save money and also save

the planet

as well as the big commercial buildings

and looking at ways we can make those

electric run

and clean electricity from the first

point so those are three of the things

but we have a huge agenda we have our

own

uh green new deal here in los angeles

and it looks at everything from shade

for instance shade is an equity issue

if you look at black and brown

communities in my city they’re the ones

that are in the hottest areas of town

with the fewest trees

and when you’re waiting for a bus if

you’re a senior or a student that

becomes something that when you get home

that student doesn’t want to do homework

so you have to think about this

environment not just as the planet but

about the people on the planet

and the way this affects our lives in

terms of equity as well

and look at that by neighborhood look at

that by race look at that by

income and so we’re trying to apply that

lens of an inclusive green new deal

as well really driven by the people for

the people

that sounds great and i mean i guess i’m

thinking about c40 and as you mentioned

you’re working with 96

different cities around the world um and

you know you mentioned things like

uh electric vehicles and having the

largest fleet in america

but of course in you know many cities

this is something in other parts of the

world that we’ve already

we’ve seen that they’ve sort of

implemented these electric vehicles and

so i’m curious through

c40 uh sort of what inspiration you’ve

drawn from other cities and what are

some examples you can share

ways that other cities are sort of

leading the charge on on climate action

being a mayor is a humbling exercise

always somebody joked when uh

i think there was a national uh

candidate that was

um you know somebody talked to at the

grocery store and had some words with we

said oh that’s our typical

trip to the grocery store we get to milk

go get milk for our spouses we probably

have five conversations about

you know the potholes on the streets the

racial justice work we have to do

what’s happening with our economy um but

in particular right now i think that

mayors are facing you know this triple

threat of

covid of the economic dislocation and

then ongoing

social fissures most notably here in

this country but around the world around

racial justice but i’m so proud that

mayors are kind of tying a lot of these

things together and

um it’s a humbling to be mayor because

when you think you’re doing the best

there’s some mayor who’s doing even

better so

for instance with electric buses

shenzhen china converted the entire

fleet so we’re talking about

hundreds of buses now here they have

over 10 000 already done

checked off they’re the first big city

in the world to do that

when i think in africa um mayor of

freetown and she is looking at ways that

um you can mitigate the flooding that’s

coming from the extreme weather which

she said maybe we’ll get to buildings

and energy later

right now i’ve got to literally save

people’s lives from the flooding that’s

happening each year

or when you look in in a town like

medellin in

colombia where you have an incredible

mayor who’s looking at ways right now to

expand bicycles and public

transportation

you really see that whenever you travel

the world and we’re able to take the c40

network together

you always learn something in another

city that informs

what you can do as well and during this

covet 19 pandemic i think a lot of us

are trying things we’ve never tried

before

just let everybody take over streets and

put tables out there because it’s safer

for

restaurants but all of a sudden you’re

more closely connected

close down streets to cars and let

people walk on the streets

first so they don’t contract covet 19

but maybe after covet 19 people

say maybe we don’t need cars on as many

streets as we do

so i think there’s a lot of disruption

that’s happening

and some positive silver linings out of

this pandemic as people are saying i

don’t want to return

back to the way things were if that

means pollution

traffic if that means a warming earth

let’s try things differently and this

showed us that we can do things

collectively

in a country and in a world right now

and i want to talk more about sort of

how the coronavirus and

this pandemic has affected your work at

c40 and just climate action in general

but before we get into that i know our

community is really eager to ask some

questions of their own so

let’s see if we can take a couple of

questions

so we have a question here in a recent

interview you said this virus messes

with your mind and messes with your

instincts that’s not reassuring

coming from someone who’s tasked with

taking decisions in the public interest

can you elaborate sure uh i mean that in

a way that if we’re aware of that it can

be reassuring because we know that

sometimes it pushes us

at the beginning i said sometimes when

it feels wrong

is the right time to do things for

instance when it felt too early to close

things down

that was the right time to close things

down and save millions of lives

at the same time vice versa this is a

virus that exploits

our weaknesses in terms of human nature

and we have to overcome that so when i

say that it’s to inspire us to know that

hey when things are good we think the

virus is licked well until there’s

you know a non-uh pharmaceutical sorry

until there’s a pharmaceutical

intervention or a vaccine

this virus is as dangerous today as it

was on day one

so we can’t be lazy it exploits our

laziness it exploits when we say hey

i’m going to assume people aren’t

infectious instead of like at the

beginning of this when we assumed

everybody

was infectious so we would keep our

distance wash our hands

make sure we’re always wearing our masks

so i’m always making decisions based on

the science and the medical advice

and i think it’s very important for each

one of us to recognize how

we aren’t kind of programmed to deal

with a virus and a pandemic and we’ve

had to learn that sometimes go against

our basic

instincts to have a collective instinct

based in knowledge based in science

based in medicine

to be able to save the lives that we

have been able to do and i think that’s

an important part of leadership

pointing out those hard truths and kind

of retraining our brains sometimes

to do things that might seem wrong but

that actually are the right moves

and it seems like in many ways you know

you can take that in both a negative or

positive way but you definitely are

taking sort of a positive spin on how

you can

you can pull this mind shift to better

the world for all of us i’m better than

the experience that’s right and and some

people have said you know

people feel so powerless i’ve been

reading about pandemics for you know

a couple millennia back and people do

lose their minds

um you know it’s funny i’m glad i live

in a democracy now oftentimes they

they overthrow and sometimes kill their

leaders no matter what like people just

go nuts in a pandemic to be

told at home stay home uh quarantine

which was a

you know comes from the word meaning 40

days 40

days that was supposed to be enough this

is long much longer than 40 days

i think it’s really important for us to

recognize that we do have the skills to

overcome this that human beings always

have

um but don’t let yourself fall prey to

you know

relaxing because the moment we relax is

when the virus spreads

all right let’s take another question

here from our community

so patrick asks why is it so difficult

to get a consistent message across to

the public think of wearing masks

masks is it a messaging problem or a

listening problem

i think that it was actually people

exploited it and politicized masks

i mean we were the first city in america

to mandate masks a big city in america

to do that

i was waiting i want to do it maybe a

week or two even earlier but i kept

waiting for national leadership on this

i kept waiting for a level above us to

say do it because i knew that we

couldn’t just do it as a city

we have 88 cities in la county five

counties in our region

a big state and an even bigger country

and there weren’t walls between us

but i finally took that plunge because

the evidence was clear

but it’s ironic now to see leaders who

are saying wear your mask in texas and

florida and others

who really were anti-masked because

somehow people turned this into a red

blue democratic republican thing i think

it’s also a very male thing there was

kind of a

machismo in a country where people

hadn’t worn mass before

i said real men wear masks we still have

a president who refuses to do that even

the vice president now says

wear masks governors who are saying that

stupid are absolutely 100

with it so i don’t think that it was

just a messaging one you can message as

clear as you want you can point out

all the studies you can let people know

that even if it would help one percent

will take any weapon and it helps much

more than that

but when people exploit and say no this

is about taking away your rights and

your freedoms

again it preys on that human instinct

not to be held down

not to be told what to do and so it

really requires i think

you see in the countries that are

successful conservative liberal

politicians from the left the right come

together and just say look the science

is clear

and up in canada you see that where you

have conservative lawmakers praising the

more liberal ones

for their leadership because this

shouldn’t be something politicized

and if we had seen that here i think the

united states it wouldn’t have been

tough it’s not just that people hear it

differently or say it differently

it’s that people exploit that

partisanship right now

in this country and want to politicize

anything i mean they want to politicize

sunshine they will want to politicize

rainbows i mean

things that are just facts and truths

somehow become

about your identity and your ideology

and that’s really really i think

destroying this country in so many ways

too

well let’s talk a little bit also about

how the pandemic has affected

your work with c40 and thinking about

climate action you know

you’ve talked to the ways in which um

climate change i’m sorry the pandemic

has devastated

uh you know our experiences here in the

united states

and uh with c40 you know this is

obviously something you’re seeing

happening uh to cities across the the

world that they’re grappling with this

in really unique and different ways

and you’ve established a task force to

to really place climate action at the

center

of recovery efforts and so could you

tell us a little bit about

about that yeah it’s been really

exciting whitney um i

i have to say one of the most moving

days of my professional life was in the

midst

of the pandemic remember when it was

starting to peak um in northern italy

and we said as c40 we’re probably the

strongest network of mayors around any

topic area in the world of the big

cities so let’s see if we can get a zoom

call together across all these time

zones

and whether it was the mayor of

melbourne who was up i think at 1 am

uh myself up at like 7 a.m or 8 a.m

um or europe latin america africa in

between we suddenly had

all these mayors i think about 48 of our

96 were on a call

it was straight out of like you know get

me the mayor’s in a superhero movie and

then suddenly we had literally the mayor

of london and the mayor of delhi and the

mayor of seoul

and the mayor of seoul talking about how

they their early testing really

bent that curve how the mayor of delhi

said he locked down

delhi with a stay-at-home order and two

days later the national government

followed in india and a billion people’s

lives were affected by a decision a

mayor made two days

earlier and then the mayor of milan

giuseppe giuseppisala

was in that at that point that was the

peak place was talking about what we

could all expect to come

and it was so important and helped us

save so many lives and i asked

uh mayor saleh of milan if he would had

a task force that would look at covet 19

response

and recovery for cities around the world

so we could convene that with

representation from africa latin america

oceania

asia east asia and south and west asia

um so and europe of course in every part

of the world to write this kind of

playbook

of how do you respond how do you rebuild

and then most importantly how do you

reimagine moving forward because to that

point of not

returning to the normal not returning

backwards

what can we do in this moment to in the

three concepts have

jobs and inclusivity have resilience

and equity and then health and

well-being

guide everything that cities are doing

because there’s the temptation to just

put a bunch of gas into buses again open

everything up get factories that are

dirty going instead of using this as a

moment to build for the future

and not just for a year or two recovery

but to be a strong economy for decades

ahead and so we are going to be putting

this out and

releasing the midterm report of this

task force uh which will talk about

those things from

you know there shouldn’t be any stimulus

that’s not a green stimulus

that this has to be inclusive of all

people and look at the issue of equity

that it’s a champion mass transit that

we need to look at

generating green energy and getting rid

of fossil fuels in our buildings and in

our

cars and vehicles in all of our city

streets

and that this has to be sustainable this

just can’t be a recovery for this moment

i think these guideposts are so

important for our climate crisis

but even if we didn’t have a climate

crisis they’d be the smart way to

recover

to build a strong economy and a fairer

economy for everybody

so it kind of builds on this global

green new deal overlays this crisis

and inspires people to be bold as the

poet says to

make sure that our reach exceeds our

grasp

you know what we don’t think we can hold

suddenly we can when we stretch just a

little bit further

and so we’re very grateful to um

giuseppe he goes by

salah our mayor of milan and the other

mayors who

served on this task force on top of

everything else they were doing because

we want this to be a playbook not just

for the c40 cities

but the smallest hamlet and you know

south america

to the biggest city in china and

everything in between

because we feel like all cities right

now can lead the way especially where

national governments have broken down

and you mentioned earlier just racial

inequity and sort of have talked about

how that’s been a big part of

these plans and this thinking and of

course you know in the united states um

we’ve been

dealing with a huge outcry against

systemic

racism especially on now on the heels of

um you know several violent and deadly

attacks against the black community

and it’s a movement that we’ve seen um

has really reverberated around the world

and caught fire

um in many in many parts of the world

and so i’d love to hear from you just

more specifically i guess how c40 is

sort of centering um

this work and thinking about the

intersection of social and racial equity

and climate on the city level

so i feel very blessed to be part of

this network at this moment which is

both an american and a global moment

when it comes to

our unique history of racism in the

united states but the universal

racism that we’ve seen around the world

in the history of colonialism

and caste systems and other things

around the world

based sometimes on religion oftentimes

based on the construct of race

and certainly on geography first you

always have to go

internal so we did that same thing that

i think a lot of enterprises are doing

we have a very global staff

to listen to the voices for instance

we’ve heard for a long time and i used

to live in africa one of my priorities

as chair was

this was before the pandemic my first

trip was going to be to visit our

african members

and to convene them um we’ll do that as

soon as i can get out of this covet

19 moment but african nations were

saying for a long time we are so proud

to be a part of this

but suddenly we’re being told by the

rest of the world that we have to reduce

our emissions when we

are barely responsible for any of the

world’s emissions and we still need to

develop as countries

so what assistance can you give us right

now to mitigate

climate crisis because as we saw you

know in mozambique for instance the huge

floods

those weren’t caused by emissions coming

out of mozambique those are emissions

coming out of

china and europe and north america

primarily that

or warm the earth cause extreme uh

weather

and then the victims are in countries

like in africa and other places where

the infrastructure isn’t as strong so i

think if you look at at climate

in terms of the racial inequities

globally

you begin to understand you have to

place leadership black leadership

whether that’s global black leadership

or domestic black leadership squarely at

the center of what we’re doing

and i think that’s a wonderful thing

about this we have vice chairs we

we have quotas for every region we make

sure that there are women and men on

here because if you’re not intentional

about gender or racial equity

it just will not come secondly then

we’re looking at what we can do

in terms of standing up for this moment

and saying when you rebuild

if you’re not rebuilding your economies

in a green and racially inclusive way

you’re you’re going to leave many people

on the sidelines

human suffering will continue but more

importantly you’re going to lead

economic prosperity on the sidelines

think about that in america

when we look at the idea for instance of

reparations the estimates of how much it

would boost our gdp

just to erase the wealth gap between

black and white americans

why wouldn’t we do it why wouldn’t we

add that to our economy

when everybody would prosper from that

globally it’s the same thing

and i hope that we can build a global

system potentially with

new leadership in the white house which

i’m very optimistic about of re-engaging

with the world

and america paying its peace as well as

europe and other places into a global

funds that can help

poorer nations who are often blacker and

browner

around the world to be able to have the

tools to build green economies of

tomorrow

and not suddenly inherit all of our gas

trucks when i mean our

fuel trucks when we convert them all to

elect electric

or uh suddenly have coal plants that are

being built um or

ecological devastation with dams as we

see happening right now

those things i think are critical if

we’re going to put our money where our

mouth is about fighting against racism

not just in our own communities

but really around the world and

eradicating it once and for all

that’s so important to hear and great to

hear that that’s sort of that’s been a

conversation that’s been

had uh in c-40 and around the world

people are thinking about that

um let’s take some more questions from

our community great

so terry asks what tools are you using

to facilitate meaningful conversations

in your community around current social

equity social justice issues so

really touching on this conversation

right here

so thank you terry so many different

tools uh but lead first and foremost

before you use a tool i think you need

to find a prism

what do i mean by that so i just wrote

an executive directive executive

directive 27

in los angeles that basically mandates

racial equity we’ve done this before

with gender equity too very successfully

as a central value of all of our

operations as a city

both internally in terms of the city

government and then externally the

impact on our people

so instead of i think the first thing

you have to do is desegregate

um social equity social justice from

its own column where it’s just the

specialists those of us who care a lot

about this or

your equal opportunity offices or your

uh you know racial equity programs

are done by a few and you have to place

the responsibility for these things

on the shoulders of all leaders so all

38 of my general managers from the

fire chief to the person who runs the

airport and the port of los

angeles all now have to own racial

equity have a racial equity officer they

already have a gender equity officer

and then they have to develop plans on

racial equity on social justice

in these areas we facilitate these

conversations by first helping people

count

you have to measure because if you don’t

measure you can’t manage if you don’t

look for it you won’t see

where wages are lower where promotions

have not happened we’re hiring

doesn’t occur where procurement has not

happened with black or women owned

or latino or in firms these are

important things to count

and then second you have to manage it

and hold people accountable so every

year when i come

and go through 38 general managers

reviews i ask them what are you doing

and what have you done

on your plan on racial equity and i hold

them accountable and if they aren’t

doing it i’ll find somebody else who

will

in the general population the tools that

we’re using are widespread i think

community groups are always the best

poised

because they have relationships already

within communities so don’t try to

create this anew

we started for instance with a group

here called community coalition which

has done

fabulous work was actually founded by

karen bass the

congresswoman now who’s the head of the

congressional black caucus and a dear

dear friend

we’ve had conversations where people

would have dinners and

consciously invite people of different

racial backgrounds and cultural

backgrounds

and with a facilitator have those

discussions long before this kind of

george floyd moment

to engage in those tough conversations

now that have just blossomed everywhere

and my encouragement is you can’t go

straight to the policies and say what

you’re angry about

if you don’t do the work internally

first to look at your own bias

no matter what background you have to

look at the ways that that triggers

decisions that you make

and measure in your own household

measure in your own uh

enterprise are you buying 10 or 15

percent of your goods

from black owned businesses if you’re

focused on racial justice what are you

doing to achieve gender parity

we have 300 plus commissioners in the

city of los angeles that oversee these

very powerful departments

and within six months i made sure over

half of them were women for the first

time in our history

and government’s supposed to move slow

the private sector tells us so i always

tell the private sector

look at your board make a change in the

coming week or month

or at least year to bring gender equity

it’s not that tough to do

so i think those conversations start

internally then you have to really

measure and look

and then you have to hold accountable by

making this as i said desegregated from

just being something that specialists

deal with to something that we

all own wherever we are

and we’re running out of time here but i

just have uh sort of one last question

for you which is

you know you focus so much on on city on

cities as

a mayor and also as the the chair of c40

but you know

you mentioned the election the united

states and and there’s so much more

that’s needed from federal governments

and from nations

and so what do cities need from from

from their governments and how can

individuals also

take part in bringing about some of this

change

i think we have to remind all

governments and there’s a conversation i

have with mayors

around the world but i’ll just focus on

my own country that

nations are not made up of their

nation’s capital

telling the rest of the country what to

do here in america we have 19 000 local

communities that are the nation

when barack obama was president we would

get calls from the white house all the

time saying we want to do something on

policing and racial justice or we want

to do something on housing

and economic opportunity what’s going on

in los angeles or in other cities

and they would listen and let those

things bubble up to the nation’s capital

rather than somebody sitting removed

from communities

in a bubble saying this is my philosophy

and this is what the nation’s going to

do

i think when it comes to climate change

for instance i told people even though

we had president trump

threaten to withdraw from the paris

climate accords which we haven’t done

yet we can still stop that

in this election because it doesn’t

happen until just after

um we suddenly got on the phone

and got over 150 now over 400 cities in

america to pledge to do the paris

climate accords on our own democrats and

republicans and i reminded people even

if hillary clinton had been president

we still would have had to do that work

locally so i think

it’s just reminding people that we live

where we live local communities

are really what we’re connected to it’s

where 90 percent of the change happens

most of our budgets are spent

the things that affect our lives from

schools to the streets that we walk on

and bike on and

and drive on those are where we are in

cities

and so if you change your city you’re

changing the world and if you demand

that your city network with other cities

to do it together like we do in c40

there is great hope and help for

humanity

wow all right well if you change your

city you change the world i think that’s

a

a great way to sort of leave this

conversation thank you so much mayor

garcetti for your

for joining us today and for your your

thoughts on all of this and we’re

looking forward to to partnering with

you for countdown and i’m having

more conversations in the months ahead

me too thanks so much whitney appreciate