Government won’t solve the climate crisis but our cities and mayors can Across the world, city mayors have already given hope and taken the lead

Climate action may not be the priority of our world leaders, but we can find hope in our cities in 2020.

Australians have seen how poor a bad prime minister can be in a climate-related emergency. With wildfires sweeping across the country, Scott Morrison went away on holiday, in a snub to people facing a virtually apocalyptic disaster.

In the USA, President Trump is pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement and has rolled back over 80 environment regulations. And here in the UK we are entering a dangerous period under a Trump-inspired prime minister, elected on a promise of completing Brexit as quickly as possible. His priority will be making trade deals at all costs, not the climate emergency or environmental protection.

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The warning bells are already ringing loud and clear. Speaking to parliament after the Queen’s Speech, the prime minister hardly mentioned climate change and made not one mention of the climate emergency itself. This was despite a warning on the very same day from the Met Office that 2020 will be one of the hottest on record, and a letter he received the day before from the Committee on Climate Change to say UK efforts “have so far fallen short” of what is needed to meet even our current targets.

So what can we do?

I believe real hope lies in our cities, with elections due in 2020 for mayors in places like Manchester, Bristol, the West Midlands, Liverpool, and of course London where a mayor, and an assembly, will be chosen in May.

Across the world, city mayors have already given hope and taken the lead when national governments have proved themselves not up to the job. When Trump decided to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, it was the mayors of cities across the USA who stepped up to go over the president’s head and attend the UN climate talks in Madrid last month.

Across America, the ‘We Are Still In’ initiative has seen states, cities and businesses build a bottom-up leadership movement, setting targets and regulations with the powers they have to cut climate emissions. These include states adopting their own zero-emission vehicle regulations, caps on power plant emissions and more than 90 cities have committed to reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 (sooner in many cases, and with some cities already achieving this goal).

Action in US cities since 2016 has shown that, despite one of the world’s most famous climate deniers sitting in the White House, the people can reduce carbon emissions with local action, with cuts already achieved in big cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City and Washington DC.

As Greens, following our most active year as campaigners and our most successful year in elections for three decades, can we offer similar hope here at home? I think we can, and must, take up this challenge.

I am standing for Mayor of London in 2020, as I did in 2016, and I know that bottom-up leadership is not only what this country needs, it’s also built into the DNA of the Green Party. We believe in powering local action and working with communities, not imposing on them either inaction or top-down solutions.

A big group of Green councillors in Bristol are holding city Mayor Marvin Rees to account for his slow action on green transport and his backing for local airport expansion in the face of the climate emergency. Green Mayor candidate Sandy Hore-Ruthven will be a strong challenger to provide real leadership for his city this May.

Greens have sat on the London Assembly since 2000, where we already have an unparalleled reputation for strong opposition, good ideas and getting things done. From our early work saving the cycling budget from cuts by Ken Livingstone to pushing Sadiq Khan on his failure to create a public green energy company or a clean air zone to cover the whole city.

I believe that London has too big an impact not to be leading the way forward on climate action, no matter who is sitting in Downing Street.

Across the UK, our cities could lead the way in 2020 and create new hope. And with a fairer, preference-based voting system for city mayors, we can all kiss goodbye to the confusion of ‘tactical voting’ and simply vote, with hope, for what we want to see: the environmental leadership our country needs.

Sian Berry is co-leader of the Green Party.