Former New York mayor says he will 'carry the flag' for Ban Ki-moon's attempts to get heads of state to agree 2015 climate deal

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

New York's former mayor, Mike Bloomberg, said he plans to spend his post-political career helping the United Nations with the “very difficult” and “frustrating” work of herding leaders towards a global climate deal.

Bloomberg, who was named UN special envoy for cities and climate change last week, told a conference call he sees his next mission as getting leaders on side for a global climate deal.

The former mayor put climate change at the top of his agenda during his 12 years running New York, and led an international group of cities acting on climate change, the C40.

He told a conference call organised by the C40 group the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, could use a push getting world leaders to turn up to a summit in New York in September with “concrete solutions” to climate change.

“The secretary general – he has a very difficult job,” Bloomberg told the call. “I think he is probably a little bit frustrated that the nations of the world haven't come together in Rio+20 and all the others things like that have to be taken to the next step. What he is trying to do is get as much help as he can so at the national level they take the bull by the horns, and really make progress.”

He went on: “If I can carry the flag for him, and get him a little bit of information and be a spokesman for him, I would really love to do that,” Bloomberg said.

As mayor, Bloomberg committed to cutting New York's greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030, retrofitting official buildings with energy saving features, cleaning up waste, and installing bike lanes.

He told the call cities produced a large and growing share of greenhouse gas emissions. Three-quarters of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, according to projections.

Bloomberg argued that city mayors, through their use of executive powers, have greater scope for action than state or national legislatures.

“While little progress is made on international levels, cities are just forging ahead," he said.

The 63 member cities in the C40 group had between them committed to 8,000 different actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report out on Wednesday.

Those actions ranged from introducing energy-saving building codes to investing in bus rapid transit systems which take thousands of cars off the roads, and installing LED street lighting.

Some 90% of cities were now moving towards the more efficient LED lighting, the report said. Among those is Glasgow, funded by the UK's green investment bank. Thirty-six cities had bike sharing schemes.

Not all of Bloomberg's efforts succeeded, of course. He failed in one of his biggest battles to get a congestion charge, taxing vehicles entering Manhattan, through the New York state legislature.



But the mayor told the call he saw his two-year term as UN climate envoy as a chance to persuade national leaders there was a lot they could do to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“It is in the interests of all these countries to do something, and sometimes I think the benefits just get lost in all of the verbiage and structure,” he said. “Sometimes just bringing something to people's attention just gets them to focus and take action.”