Former U.S. Democratic vice president and environmental activist Al Gore praised Nashville Democratic Mayor John Cooper for a new initiative patterned after the Paris Climate Accord.
Cooper recently announced his initiative, as part of what is known as the Global Covenant of Mayors, in a press release.
“Mayor Cooper’s administration will also work toward reducing Nashville’s community-scale emissions 30 percent by 2030 and 70 percent by 2050. To lead by example, CO2-reduction targets for Metro Government will be 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050,” Cooper’s press release said.
“Using Nashville’s most recent emissions inventories as a baseline, these targets were developed upon surveying those adopted by peer and aspirational cities and align with science-based recommendations in the Paris Climate Accord to reduce absolute CO2 emissions by three percent annually until 2050 in order to hold global warming to 2°C.”
In the press release, Gore said Cooper “is thinking globally and acting locally — as we all should.”
The Global Covenant of Mayors is a precursor to the city participating in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a coalition of 94 leading cities around the world who say they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to Cooper’s press release.
Cooper’s other climate change initiatives include, among other things, a solar panel array atop the Metro Courthouse, which he will include in the next Capital Improvements Budget. Cooper’s initiative also includes a Sustainability Advisory Board to review active proposals as they are implemented through legislation, according to Cooper’s press release.
Cooper also plans to install solar power across other Metro facilities, the press release said.
“This would constitute the first retrofit of an existing Metro building under the Metro Council’s local ‘Green New Deal’ enacted under Ordinance Nos. BL2019-1599 and -1600,” Cooper’s press release said.
“This legislation adopted a renewable energy standard outlining staged goals toward eventually achieving 100 percent renewable energy for Metro-owned buildings by 2041. The ‘Green New Deal’ legislation also adopts an energy retrofit program across at least 9 percent of metro government-owned buildings with a goal of achieving at least 20 percent.”
As The Tennessee Star reported in 2017, former Nashville mayor Megan Barry criticized U.S. Republican President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, which, in effect, declared that as mayor she was bound by Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which prohibits state governments specifically, and metropolitan governments within states by extension, from entering “into any treaty, alliance, or confederation.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Al Gore” by JD Lasica. CC BY 2.0. Photo “John Cooper” by John Cooper. Background Photo “Nashville City Hall” by euthman. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Tweedle dee & tweedle dumb
Has Algore still not done any prison time for his criminal enterprise, the Chicago Climate Exchange?
It’s not easy being green….
Al Gore’s Inconvenient Reality: The Former Vice President’s Home Energy Use Surges up to 34 Times the National Average Despite Costly Green Renovations, by Drew Johnson
https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2017/08/01/al-gores-inconvenient-reality-the-former-vice-presidents-home-energy-use-surges-up-to-34-times-the-national-average-despite-costly-green-renovations-by-drew-johnso/
“Gore paid an estimated $60,000 to install 33 solar panels. Those solar panels produce an average of 1,092 kWh per month, only 5.7% of Gore’s typical monthly energy consumption.”
I followed Drew’s original story back in 2007 documenting the waste at 20X use rate of the average TN home by Algore and thought, what a great opportunity for Algore to use LEED and all that globalist climate accord stuff to prove to us all what great energy savings could be accomplished at his own mansion. Except it didn’t work. Maybe Algore’s mansion should be the pilot project for Nashville. Maybe be forced to get it to work with solar before mandating it for everyone else.
Volcanoes put out more pollutants than humans. Just ask New Zealand.
Does Copper realize that if the grid goes down so do all of his solar cells. Just ask the poor folks in CA that bought into the lie of solar power that lost their power right along with the rest of the citizens that don’t have solar power when the electric company shut them all down. Unless you are off the grid solar is a total money making scam. It is very expensive and you still need a back up system.
It appears to me that Mayor Cooper missed a few science classes when he was going to school. CO2 is NOT a pollutant but the source of ALL life. The more CO2 the more life. So I guess he has no problem with seeing trees, plants, crops, animals and humans dying in his city as he reduces the very thing that sustains all life. Cooper like Gore is a communist puppet……better known as useful idiots.
Cooper is a bigger idiot than I thought he was. Aligning himself with losers like Al BORE and the idiotic Paris Accord really shows his true colors. As if there was any doubt in the first place. I once thought Nashville deserved better but it looks like Cooper is in step with the liberals that have swamp a once proud city.
It’s the same old refrain, Orange Man Bad!….Dirty Fossil Fuel Bad! While there is a place for renewable energy it is foolish to believe that we can run the nation on wind and solar as is mandated in the Green New Deal. Wind and solar make sense for remote power generation such as wind turbines in remote Inuit villages in the far North or in the developing world where the infrastructure does not already exist that supports distributed power.
The Socialist Republic of Vermont is years ahead of most of the nation when it comes to mandating reliance on renewables. They have been at it so long that the associated problems are now evident. IN 1998 the VT legislature created a program whereby residents could install solar panels on their rooftops and yards (power generated was sent back into the grid, not used to power the home) with the power companies being mandated to purchase the power from the homeowners at an inflated rate. This is known as Net Metering. Many companies sprouted up to do the installations, so instead of paying the power company for your electricity you made payments to the companies that installed the panels. You saved no money, but you felt good because you were helping to stop global warming. So many people jumped onto this bandwagon that the power infrastructure began to suffer because when people sell their excess power back to the power companies as credits, the power company does not receive hard revenue to maintain the power grid, such as replacing aging transformers and power lines. Consequently there are more power outages. Another problem is that only wealthy individuals and companies could afford these installations, meaning the rest of the customers were forced to pay higher rates due to the loss of revenue that would have been used to maintain the grid. It is a very bad idea to get involved in “net metering”, it’s a feel good scam that does more harm than good.
I can only surmise that belief in climate change is the Kool-Aid that keeps the Left driving these detrimental environmental programs and policies. No, it’s not settled science. I believe that Hitler has been credited with the saying, “If you tell a lie long enough people will believe it”. If you take a long dig into both sides of this issue you will find that while the climate is always changing, dirty fossil fuel is not responsible.
Two American Statesmen
Clowns a-pair.
Doesn’t Cooper have more important things to do?
@Mary
Well he’s supposedly worried about the city debt. Think he’ll scratch the new soccer stadium and put the money toward those solar panels?
Associate with Gore lose votes and friends. Get the homeless people out of Nashville and that will clean up the environment.
Oma gah! Al Gore brand solar panels at the mayor’s office. Totally aahwwwesome!