3 February 2014: Following on from a recent announcement that London’s former climate change and energy advisor had been appointed to head up the C40 Cities climate and energy initiative, news that the President of the Board of C40, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been appointed as the UN’s first Special Envoy on Climate Change and Cities. The World Bank’s news release states:
“…building low-carbon cities – is critically important. The United Nations Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change needs to be a visionary who ruthlessly pushes to reach bold targets as quickly as possible. The selection of Michael Bloomberg is inspired. He has the potential of helping mayors across the world turn their cities into clean metropolises that dramatically reduce emissions of dangerous levels of pollutants into the atmosphere. The potential global good is enormous: Estimates show if the world’s cities take a low-carbon development path, we could cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 giga-tons, or 30 percent of the world’s emissions, which is twice the annual carbon footprint of the entire European Union.”
This new post builds on an announcement made by the World Bank in October 2013 of a new Low-Carbon Livable Cities (LC2) Initiative – more of which here.
And good to see our own Mayor welcoming the creation of this new position:
