New York mayor pledges 40% cut in CO2 by 2030 as world mayors urge 'bold climate agreement' at Vatican summit
Tue 21 July 2015
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The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has pledged to reduce his city’s carbon footprint by 40% by 2030. The Mayor made the announcement at a Vatican-hosted conference of mayors and governors from around the world who assembled to consider the environmental challenges facing their respective cities and the correlation between global warming and modern slavery.
At the summit, Pope Francis urged the world's leaders to take bold action at the UN climate summit taking place in Paris in December and the 60 mayors signed a declaration in support of this position, saying it may be the last chance to tackle human-induced global warming. In June Pope Francis issued an encyclical to his church's 1.2 billion members on climate change, the first ever dedicated to the environment.
The mayor of New York is a founding member of a group of local leaders who have said they would reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, but De Blasio used the Vatican conference to issue an interim goal: a reduction of 40% by 2030. He said that with the Paris summit just months away, "we need to see it as the finish line of a sprint, and take every local action we can in the coming months to maximise the chance that our national governments will act boldly."
The New York Times reported that the two-day conference, which also focused on fighting forms of modern slavery, was not the first time that the Vatican had organised a meeting on the issue. But it was the first time that it specifically invited local officials, hoping to mobilise grass-roots action and maintain pressure on world leaders ahead of Paris.
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