City Unveils Climate Action Plan

If you are not all that familiar with the terms "greenhouse gases" and "carbon footprint", you probably will be by this time next year.

Mayor Littlefield has signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection act..and appointed a committee to direct the city's efforts to be more environmentally responsible.The 12 person committee hit the ground running is headed-up by city forester Gene Hyde...and today they released their action plan.

The city environment problems are mostly in two areas:transportation and electricity.

The committee set their goals high...they are working for a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 3 and one-half years. That kind of talk could scare-off a lot of people

MAYOR RON LITTLEFIELD "Three and a half years might be overly ambitious...but to start like we only have three and a half years to do this...dramatic things are changing."

Mayor Littlefield says all Americans are changing their attitude about conserving energy and cleaning up the air. He says who would have predicted 4-dollar a gallon gas a couple of years ago.

JIM FRIERSON, ATTR RESEARCH PROGRAM AND CO-CHAIR OF THE COMMITTEE "At first things that seemed a little big experimental a year ago or two years ago are quickly becoming main stream alternatives..people are seriously saying tell me about an electric vehicle..tell me about a plug-in hybrid."

But what about that report back in May that accused Chattanooga of having the 13th largest carbon footprint in the nation.

MAYOR LITTLEFIELD  "how you calculate a carbon footprint is something that is still very much in discussion. And, I don't believe Chattanooga is as bad as they calculated,,or not as good, I'm sure we're not as good as we'd like to be."

City arborist Gene Hyde heads up the committee, and he addressed the complaint of electricity being a problem. The report means the loss of such electricity.

GENE HYDE, CITY ARBORIST AND COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN "In terms of the buildings, certainly we'd want to look at doing some energy audits on them ..And looking at how we can make them more energy efficient."

Ambitious..or impossible. Chattanooga's new Climate Action Plan sets the pace for what the leadership thinks is a necessary step for the 21st century.

MAYOR "The health of the population and more and more, the economics of our community is dependent on our environmental quality."

if you'd like to read the full report from the Green Committee check this link to the city.

http://www.chattanooga.gov/ChattanoogaGreen_CGC_GetInvolved.htm

There are lots of things you can do to help, like carpooling and using more public transportation like the free electric shuttles downtown

Turn off lights when they are not being used, and raise the temperature on your air conditioner thermostat

And yes, even recycling is part of the plan Check the curbside plan.