City joins effort on climate

When the Portsmouth City Council voted unanimously last week to join Cities for Climate Protection and sign the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, its message was clear.

"The city acknowledged the severity of global warming and embraced its responsibility to do something about it," City Councilor Ned Raynolds said last week.

Tom Rooney, chairman of the Portsmouth mayor's Blue Ribbon Committee on Sustainability, described the vote as a "positive step" that is consistent with the directives in the city's master plan to conserve resources, obtain efficiencies and reduce harmful emissions and waste

"I think the city is ready to really embrace the issue of environmental sustainability," said Raynolds.

Cities for Climate Protection is a non profit group that provides assistance and support to more than 500 local governments throughout the world. The organization was founded in 1993 after the United Nations adopted a declaration that called for the establishment of a worldwide movement of local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, widely blamed for global warming, and improve air quality.

"Membership provides us with a framework for a number of projects we're already engaged in," said Raynolds. "It gives us a little focus and a greater sense of purpose."

Raynolds said the organization provides case studies, referrals, and software to help cities cut down on greenhouse gases, which are created by burning fossil fuels, among other sources of combustion.

"It gives us access to a lot of technical tools and makes us part of a network we can tap into," he said. He added that the city will get the benefit of the expertise of officials from other communities who have successfully cut down on greenhouse emissions. "Global warming is an international problem with local solutions."

Raynolds said the computer software package available through the group will be particularly helpful. "It's a very sophisticated program," he said. "It will allow us to plug in figures for energy use, solid waste, and transportation, and allow us to create a greenhouse-gas-effect footprint for the city, both now and in the future,."

The Mayors Climate Protection Agreement calls on cities, communities, and the federal government to take actions to reduce global warming and pollution. It was adopted by the US Conference of Mayors last year.

"It's more of a political document or policy statement, part of a crescendo of criticism of the current presidential administration's lack of a policy to deal with global warming," said Raynolds.

"I think a lot of people look at the environment as an international or national movement, but it is changes made at the local and state level that will make a difference," said Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand.

The mayor said joining Cities for Climate Protection and signing the Climate Protection Agreement are not a first step, but the continuation of a process already begun in the city. He noted the new environmentally friendly public library scheduled to open next month, which uses a minimal amount of water, maximizes the heating effects of sunlight, and is built with some recycled materials, and several municipal trucks that run on biodiesel fuel. "But that's only a first step," he said. "I hope to begin running some of the trucks on ethanol. It will benefit the environment, the economy and local farmers," who produce the corn from which ethanol is made. "There are lot of ways we can be environmentally friendly and save money, too."

Marchand also noted that Keene joined Cities for Climate Change in 2000. "I'm hoping we can get a little healthy competition going -- see who can be the most successful and make the biggest changes."

City Councilor Harold Whitehouse voted to join Cities for Climate Protection and to sign the climate agreement, but not without reservations. He was concerned that the program could be expensive for Portsmouth, but was reassured by city officials that it would not incur extra costs. "We're doing a lot already to address this issue," he said.

Whitehouse said he hopes the city will investigate the use of windmills to generate electricity. "I think we could generate enough to power a building or two. We're going back to my mother's day, when we saved all the bacon grease and didn't waste anything."