Clinton, Gore tell mayors to lead fight against global warming

Speaking at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, Former President Bill Clinton this afternoon urged a gathering of more than 100 of the nation's mayors to embrace climate change as an economic opportunity, saying that their involvement in fighting global warming is crucial to show the rest of the world that it can be done.

"They (developing countries) won't do it anywhere unless we can prove that we don't have to become poorer for it," Clinton told the audience, gathered for a climate summit by the United States Conference of Mayors. "This is an opportunity. It's not a burden."

To help spur the movement, Clinton today announced a new program between his private Clinton Foundation and the Conference of Mayors to make energy-efficient products more affordable for 1,100 U.S. cities by helping them buy as groups and get volume discounts.

His Clinton Climate Initiative has already started a similar project with 40 of the world's largest cities, along with several major banks that help finance projects to increase energy efficiency.

Clinton said energy-efficiency programs represent some of the easiest ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by conserving energy in inefficient buildings and other infrastructure.

A new emphasis on such "clean" technology is also a key to tapping into new industries with growth potential, which could help turn back a decline in real wages in the U.S., Clinton told audience, which greeted his talk with enthusiastic applause.

Earlier today, Clinton's former Vice President, Al Gore, told told the mayors that the nations of the world should hasten negotiations on a new and ambitious treaty on global warming.

Speaking via satellite from Nashville, Tenn., the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize also called for a halt to construction of all new coal-fired power plants unless they can be equipped to capture and store the climate-changing gas they spew.

Gore told the mayors that the threat of global warming is too big, and too urgent, to wait until the existing international Kyoto treaty expires in 2012 to begin negotiating a new one.

Noting that some scientists have warned that in just a decade the world's atmosphere could reach a tipping point, Gore said, "We don't want to waste four, five of those 10 years just talking about it."

Gore praised the mayors for pushing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in their cities, and for pledging to meet the Kyoto treaty targets even though the federal government has refused to sign it. More than 700 cities have signed the pledge, a movement championed by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Gore said that when he spoke to audiences in Europe recently, he confronted disillusion over the U.S. government's opposition to the treaty.

"It's just great when I tell them, 'Ladies and gentlemen, almost 700 cities have stepped up to the plate,'." Gore said. "Don't count the United States of America out. Our mayors are doing a fantastic job."

But Gore also reminded the crowd of recent findings that the polar ice cap this year had melted more than in any other year on record. He said it should serve as a wake-up call much like in the 1980s, when a giant ozone hole in the atmosphere eventually led to an international treaty that reversed the problem.

"This is the alarm bell," Gore said. "It's time to act."

So he suggested halting new coal-fired power plants unless they are set up so that in the future they can quickly be adapted to capture and store greenhouse gas, Gore said.

Coal power has long been a tricky issue for national politicians because they are leery of jeopardizing support from states in the Rocky Mountains, Midwest and East that have abundant coal supplies.

"Coal is in many ways the biggest part of the problem," Gore said. "We've got more than enough to completely incinerate the planet."

Clinton is scheduled to appear at a book signing at the University Bookstore on University Way Northeast in the University District at 8 p.m.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com