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