As evidenced by last night’s festivities, Chapel Hill isn’t your average small town. It doesn’t think small, whether it’s thousands crowding Franklin Street for Halloween or a national championship — or, as it turns out, when it comes to the environment.
With election day coming this day next week, this small town’s big ideas about sustainability have been put in the spotlight. They’re so big, in fact, that they resemble the PlaNYC initiative in the ultimate big city by a politician who’ll be awfully familiar to Chapel Hill come commencement day — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg wants to make New York the world’s “first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city.” But he doesn’t stop with the Big Apple. As chairman of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, an international organization of big-city mayors committed to reducing emissions, he encourages all cities to follow his reforms.
Chapel Hill doesn’t have an Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower like C40 members, but it’s plenty green. In 2006, it took its 2005 emissions and committed to reduce them by 60 percent by 2050.
It is now required for applicable buildings constructed by the town to “employ the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.”
The environmental movement is taking notice. In 2008, the U.S. Conference of Mayors awarded the town an Outstanding Achievement Award, followed this year with a Climate Protection Award in the small cities category. This year’s local elections have called attention to this track record, and more importantly, the need to continue it.
Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, for his part, has been endorsed by the Sierra Club for his persistence in ensuring a sustainable future for the town.
His challenger Tim Sookram also supported green initiatives at a candidates’ forum hosted by the Sierra Club and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. He said he ranked environmental protection over economic development “because otherwise we’re all just going to die.”
Dramatics aside, that approach ignores the fact that environmentalism has often, and successfully, gone hand in hand with economic growth under current leadership.
