New York - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday urged the United States, the world's biggest polluter, to lead the fight against climate change by enacting a tax on carbon emissions blamed for global warming. Bloomberg took part in a UN General Assembly debate on climate change and laid out his own efforts to shrink carbon emissions by 30 per cent from current levels by 2030 in the city of 8 million inhabitants.
His much praised programmes include converting the taxi fleet to hybrid cars, road congestion pricing, improving buildings' energy efficiency and planting 1 million trees in the next decade.
Bloomberg said the US must show leadership in fighting carbon emissions by setting "real and binding carbon reduction targets."
"So long as there's no penalty or cost involved in producing greenhouse gases, there will be no incentive to meet such targets," he said. "For that reason, I believe the US should enact a tax on carbon emissions."
US President George W Bush has refused to join the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty which sets limits on industrial nations' carbon emissions largely responsible for global warming. The Bush administration has also opposed a nationwide tax on carbon dioxide emissions or a cap-and-trade programme where companies can sell or buy extra pollution credits.
Bloomberg said the current US programme on carbon emissions reduction is "inadequate" and called for either adopting the Kyoto Protocol's cap and trade system or instituting a tax on carbon emissions.
The mayor also said his city wold take action on deforestation, which is a major ecological problem and accounts for 20 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg promised to reduce by 20 per cent New York's use of tropical hardwood for park benches, ferry landings and boardwalks at beaches, particularly at Coney Island, and on bridges like the iconic Brooklyn Bridge.
The city has been spending 1 million dollars a year to import hardwoods and is the largest consumer of the commodity in North America. But he said the city will immediately reduce purchases by 20 per cent and look for alternatives.
"New Yorkers don't live in the rain forest," he said. "But we do live in a world that we all share."
