22 cities join Clinton fight against warming

Twenty-two of the world’s largest cities announced Tuesday they will work together to limit their contributions to global warming in an effort led by former President Bill Clinton.

The Clinton Climate Initiative – which will create an international consortium to bargain for cheaper energy-efficient products and share ideas on cutting greenhouse gas pollution – includes Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York as well as Cairo, Delhi, London and Mexico City. While the group is not setting specific targets for reducing emissions, Clinton said he is confident the effort will both cut pollution and create jobs in cities that contribute most to higher temperatures.

“It no longer makes sense for us to debate whether or not the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and it doesn’t make sense for us to sit back and wait for others to act,” Clinton said, speaking at a Los Angeles news conference with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and London and San Francisco city leaders.

The endeavor comes on the heels of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement Monday that he will work with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to trade carbon dioxide emissions and share clean energy technology.

It is unclear how much Clinton’s initiative can achieve in the absence of broader mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. The 40 cities he is targeting account for roughly 15 percent to 20 percent of the world’s emissions, Clinton aide Ira Magaziner said. City officials can cut their governments’ energy use and govern local building codes and land use, but they do not regulate the automobiles or power plants that account for much of a city’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate experts said the effort could help but by itself will not achieve the reductions needed to curb global warming. Drew Shindell, an atmospheric physicist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said emissions must be cut in half by mid-century to keep Earth’s temperature from reaching dangerous levels.

On Monday, Clinton – who was criticized by some environmentalists for not moving aggressively enough as president to curb greenhouse gases – said he cared about climate change before but feels “a greater sense of urgency” about the problem now in light of the mounting scientific evidence.