Before climate change arrived in the headlines in the late 1980s, the groundwork for climate leadership had been laid. The creators of urban climate innovation labs span three overlapping generations, each of which experienced its own jolt of awakening and urgent call to action. 

Those who are in their sixties, seventies, or eighties were present when the environmental movement came to life, assembling for the first Earth Day in 1970, spurred by biologist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which warned of the dire impact of pesticides, and by the mounting, visible crises caused by hazardous and toxic industrial processes.

City innovators in their forties and fifties, many of whom are entering positions of substantial authority in government, business, and the civil sector, were coming of age when a 1987 United Nations report, “Our Common Future”—known as the Brundtland Report after its chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s first female prime minister—put a new idea onto society’s radar screen. It offered “sustainable development” as an overarching concept in which the use of physical ecosystems and renewable resources would occur “within the limits of regeneration and naturalgrowth.” Brundtland called for action by all nations but also signaled the importance of cities: “The most immediate environmental concerns of most people will be urban ones.”

These two generations were joined by a third generation of innovators that arrived after the dawn of climate-change awareness. The commitment of countless numbers of twenty-and thirty-year-old innovators, many of whom are raising young children, was sparked by Al Gore’s 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, which detailed the advent of global warming, argued that the means were available to reverse the trend if only there was the political will to act, and called on viewers to take personal responsibility for solving the problem.

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CNCA members selected the seven Game Changers to share with other cities: next-generation practices that can accelerate and amplify decarbonization in cities.

Cities that are embracing these game changing opportunities are thriving and benefiting economically because they are clean, efficient cities where people want to live. Gregor Robertson, Mayor, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The Game Changers and the CNCA cities used as a main examples are:

• Adopt a Zero-Emissions Standard for New Buildings – Vancouver
• Build a Ubiquitous Electric-Vehicle Charging Infrastructure – Oslo
• Mandate the Recovery of Organic Material – San Francisco
• Electrify Buildings’ Heating and Cooling Systems – Boulder, New York City, Washington DC
• Designate Car-Free and Low-Emissions Vehicle Zones – Stockholm, London, Oslo
• Empower Local Producers and Buyers of Renewable Electricity – Washington DC, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro
• Set a City Climate Budget to Drive Decarbonization – Oslo

The report details the cities’ key implementation steps and lessons learned and challenges that other cities may face in implementing the actions. It was released September 12 at the Global Climate Action Summit.

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What a dilemma: we were having fun, being with each other at the once-a-year gathering of the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA), people from 20+ cities across the globe that are leading the charge on reducing GHG emissions. Also making it hard to frown: we’re optimists, “Yes We Can” people.

Being optimistic isn’t easy when you contemplate the slowness of the world’s response to global warming and the increasingly turbulent and dangerous weather we’re experiencing everywhere. And yet… without denying anything about our troubling “climate reality,” there’s something about being with the climate-change leaders from local governments in two dozen cities that leaves you inspired and energized. These cities–San Francisco, Washington DC, Melbourne, Yokohama, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Toronto, to name a few–are making extraordinary progress in reducing their emissions, while growing their economies and making their cities better.

The CNCA met in Boulder, Colorado, just before the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), at a time when the world is looking to city leadership to reduce GHG emissions. The Alliance’s members gathered to exchange “how to” information and advice and plan new climate-action innovations. They reviewed the Game Changers Report they would release at GCAS to help other cities take bold steps to accelerate decarbonization. Bottom line: great progress is happening and even more can be done by cities.

CNCA’s spirit of pioneering and sharing, or taking risks and making gifts to other cities, is the way of thousands of other city leaders around the world. They exchange with and advise each other, learn together, and collaborate. They recognize that no city can solve the climate problem by itself; that they need each other to act, as boldly and quickly as possible.

This spirit is part of what inspires Urban Climate Rebels worldwide and keeps us going against daunting odds. It’s why, at least for me, it wasn’t easy to wipe those smiles off of our faces. Click!

Read more about the Urban Climate Rebel Alliance in our new book Life After Carbon. 

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For more than two decades, growing numbers of cities have been doing what comes naturally: engaging with each other worldwide in formal and informal networks to share what they’ve learned about urban climate innovations and collaborate on developing and refining new innovations. these cities recognize that, for perhaps the first time in history, the success of any individual city depends, to a large degree on the success of cities collectively. 

We call this global mesh the Rebel Alliance, after the band of insurgents in Star Wars and Rogue One that pitted its meager resources against those of the Galactic Empire and plotted to destroy the planet-obliterating Death Star.

As we explain in Life After Carbon, it has been our great privilege to work with many of the cities best known for designing and implementing climate innovations. “As advisors and enablers, we’ve gotten to know funders of city climate innovators across greatly different contexts–all part of a new international community of urban climate practitioners.”

This community of practice did not exist back in the early 1990s when the first set of cities committed to doing something about global warming. Today, though, it is an integral part of the mass gatherings for the Global Climate Action Summit and Climate Week. It is a busy, effective, and growing swarm.

In Chapter 5 of Life After Carbon we show how this network of rebels is changing cities worldwide: learning, borrowing, experimenting, inspiring, collaborating. And it’s not just city government people in the mix. “Many of the world’s linked urban climate rebels come from the ranks of professions and business.”

More about the Rebel Alliance here. Better yet, order the book from our publisher.

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Familiar music blared out: the theme from Star Wars. Then more words:

Episode XXX

THE ALLIANCE AWAKENS

It is a time of deep unrest. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have broached 400 parts per million, and the effects of CLIMATE CHANGE are being felt in weather disasters around the world.

The fossil fuel industry remains all powerful, and the United State has abdicated leadership in the quest for climate stability.

Meanwhile, hundreds of CITIES have emerged as a global force for climate action. History has seen nothing with the focus and scale of this Rebel Alliance, but its members need help…

Enter Darth Vadar and storm troopers of the Empire, Princess Leia and defenders of the people. Light sabers flash and clash. Cue panel.

Lord Vader stalks environmental funders

We are at the 30th annual meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

The panel was developed by Kresge Foundation’s Jessica Boehland and me. Once the once the saber dueling ended, I moderated the session. My opening remarks:

Since about 2009 I have had the privilege of working alongside 100s of members of the Global Urban Climate Rebel Alliance, from cities around the world—including the 3 cities on the panel today. The book I’m writing with John Cleveland is dedicated to these Rebels. I want to read a short section from what our manuscript has to say about this Rebel Alliance:

Call it borrowing, copying, or stealing—when cities want to know what they might do next, what their future might be like, they look to other cities and their innovations. Cities naturally “connect, interact, and network,” scholar Benjamin Barber points out in If Mayors Ruled the World. For more than two decades growing numbers of cities have engaged with each other worldwide in formal and informal networks, sharing what they learn about, collaborating on, and spreading urban climate innovations.

The emergence of this dense web of connections among urban climate innovators and early-adopters of innovations has been spurred by visionary mayors, like London’s Ken Livingston and New York’s Michael Bloomberg, and funded in large part by philanthropies.

As little as 20 years ago, this energetic global uprising barely existed. It had no standing in world affairs. Today, though, it reaches deep into hundreds of cities, the private and non-profit sectors, key professions, and community-based organizations. It’s a self-organizing, tireless swarm with no commander-in-chief, following the “North Star” of climate action. These cities recognize that, for perhaps the first time in history, the success of any individual city depends, to a large degree, on the success of cities collectively.

The panelists: Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, Seattle Chief Resilience Officer Jessica Finn Coven, and Chicago Sustainability Director Christopher Wheat.

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In July, the 21 cities of the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, a global network of city governments most aggressively innovating to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, met in Melbourne, along with five visiting cities, for their fourth annual get together. (As an advisor to the network, I’ve been at each of its annual sessions.) There were perhaps 50 people present in the meeting room of the Community Hub in the Docklands area, a city redevelopment site. Among them was Ian Shears, head of sustainability for the host city government. Ten years earlier when Ian started working for the city, it was just him and one other staffer. Now there is a city staff of 60—with duties ranging from “low carbon future,” “climate resilience,” “open space planning,” “urban forestry and ecology,” and “sustainability integration.” This growth in local government staffing for sustainability, and particularly for climate-change work, is not unusual in the increasing number of cities worldwide that take the work seriously.

At Melbourne’s waterfront, CNCA members spell out their connectivity

Imagine, then, that each of the 60 city people in the Hub—spending two days exchanging expertise and developing collaborations for the future—connects to 50 people back home with a similar caring about reducing their city’s carbon emissions and a role—in local government or the private, academic, or NGO sectors—in doing something about it. Do the math: 50 x 50 = 2,500. Imagine further that each of those people knows 50 other people who care and play roles in responding locally to climate change. More math: 2,500 x 50 = 125,000 people.

Because people talk with and write to each other, whether it’s in person, online, or on the phone, some or much of what was discussed, learned, and dreamed up at the Hub, will be transmitted, without a particular plan or coordination, during the following weeks and even months, to many interested people around the world. The many in one room in one city become the many many globally.

The CNCA meeting was just one of the events that week that generated a worldwide flow of climate-change information, news, and knowledge—that informed, inspired, and guided people who were not in the meetings but were connected to them nonetheless.

This has been happening for years now—and the number of cities and people involved has been growing. Much of it is invisible precisely because it is distributed, not centralized or coordinated; it is happening beyond the horizon of the particular meeting or network. But it is happening: what’s emerging is a tribe of similar-minded people, with shared values and ways of understanding the world, with similar goals, and a deep commitment to helping each other succeed.

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