NYC Mayor de Blasio to address climate change at Vatican

The Vatican conference, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences under the direction of Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, culminated in a statement signed by the Pope and the mayors, calling for action to address climate change and stop human trafficking.

“Addressing both of these phenomenon, climate change and modern slavery, is a herculean task for us as city administrators”, said Tony Chammany, the mayor of Kochi, India.

“It will be great honor, I hope, to spend some real time with him in New York in September”, Mr.de Blasio said.

The pope linked human trafficking to climate change during a meeting with mayors from around the world. “Our goals are accessibility, equity, and sustainability for all Portlanders, making everything we love about Portland and that puts Portland on the world stage with all Portlanders”.

In related news, The Guardian reports that the Philippines is aiming to secure 10 million signatures for the Global Catholic Climate Movement’s (GCCM) petition, which will be delivered to world leaders at December’s Paris summit.

Around 60 mayors from the United States, Europe and South America also offered testimony on global warming – which along with modern slavery is at the top of Pope Francis’s agenda – ahead of a UN conference in Paris tasked with producing a historic climate pact. “It’s increasingly clear that we, the local leaders of the world, have many tools, more than we may have in fact realized, and we must use them boldly even as our national governments hesitate”.

San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee announced new measures of his own, saying the city that takes its name from the pope’s nature-loving namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, would transition its municipal fleet of fire trucks, buses and trucks from petroleum diesel to renewable energy sources by the end of the year. That benchmark would be on target for the city’s larger goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming, 80 percent by 2050. That attitude, he said, has caused a rise in unemployment, particularly among young people.

The climate conference in the French capital “may be the last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2°C, and aim to stay well below 2°C for safety, yet the current trajectory may well reach a devastating 4°C or higher”, the mayors’ declaration said.

After listening to the Pope, Hodges signed a declaration that makes a commitment to the environment and to one of the Pope’s other priorities, stopping human trafficking.

I regard it as a great honour for Bristol to have been invited to address this vitally important conference, hosted by the Pope at the Vatican.

“It was a profound experience”, she told WCCO. “So much of the challenge of global warming has gone unaddressed by the Congress. I think the timing couldn’t be better”. “We can take [the pope’s] message out of the room, and as policy makers, mayors, and governors, we can direct policy without going through a lot of legislative stuff”, stated Walsh.