01/16/2007

TC Commission approves climate protection agreement

By Vanessa McCray

vmccray@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — The city will conduct an emissions inventory as part of an effort to reduce global warming pollution.

Monday, city commissioners unanimously gave support to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The pact calls for participating cities to cut back controllable emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Hundreds of cities across the nation and a half dozen in Michigan signed the agreement. Traverse City joined those ranks to applause from a group of local environmental activists who urged the commission to implement steps to reduce global warming pollution.

Traverse City can be an "example of sustainability” in the midst of "the nasty reality of global warming,” said Tom Karas of Interlochen.

"All of you deserve to be proud of the numerous actions the city has already undertaken,” said Karas, a representative of the Traverse Group of the Sierra Club.

City officials plan to purchase software to undertake an "emissions inventory” to determine the city's current level of emissions and what was happening in 1990. Other future activities will include considering alternative bids for projects that incorporate sustainable building and for hybrid cars when constructing facilities or making vehicle purchases.

City Manager Richard Lewis said the city is doing many of the actions suggested by the agreement "because it made good economic sense to do so” and already may have met the reduction goal.

Commissioner Scott Hardy called for the city to "redouble those efforts” and to take the agreement "seriously.”

"I feel just very encouraged about where we are going with this,” said Ann Rogers of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council.

Other spots in the state that inked the pact include Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Marquette.