Seattle Area: Leadership

Seattle Times article this morning: "Mayor urges Seattleites to Help Slow Climate Change" by Arlene Bryant.

Yesterday's entry was about Ron Sims on NPR, and today's is essentially an article about Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels climate change mitigation plans. Mayor Nickels helped drive the US movement for large cities to embrace Kyoto in spite of federal dilly-dallying. That pretty much makes him a global warming hero, in my book.

Mayor Nickels and Ron Sims are both strong personalities. It's beginning to sound they see a lot of political capital in a gently co-operative competition on climate change. I hope so. The importance of local action is the subject of my most recent article on global warming.

Tips readily available on the City of Seattle web page, Climate Action Plan section, by the way.

So that's local. Seattle. I can see it from here. Some times I actually visit. I work for a smaller city, which is even more local in some ways. Our Council has signed up to do this same thing, and I know we are, for example, investing more in alternative fuel cars. It might be fun to gather up all that data and get it on the web page. And from my workplace, which is truly involved (but maybe every other workplace is, too, in some way), we come to home. I notice my blackberry charger is still plugged in. The least I can do is unplug that right now. This was one of the tips on the credits from Al Gore's movie.

There, now I feel better. Every little bit helps.

Sometimes it seems hard not to feel a little guilty just for being human.