Following the lead of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, cities from New York City to Topeka, Kansas thumbed their noses at President Bush this week. At the U.S. Conference of Mayors (held in Chicago, June 9 through 13), Nickels convinced some 300 U.S. mayors to endorse a resolution supporting the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that mandates a reduction in greenhouse gases. Nickels's resolution is not just feel-good politics. This is concrete stuff. It calls for U.S. cities to implement local policies that will reduce greenhouse gases 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012-a key component of the Kyoto Protocol.

Sitting in a Chicago hotel after his resolution was approved on Monday night, Nickels fired off this power quote from the shores of the Urban Archipelago: "What we're saying is if the federal government is not going to take action, we will, city by city."

Nickels's resolution didn't pass without a fight. The Bush administration (which opted out of the treaty in 2001) sent a lobbyist to Chicago to counter Nickels's effort. The White House lobbyist cornered Seattle city staffers Brian Kristjansson and Susan Crowley and tried to convince Team Nickels to scrap all references to the Kyoto Protocol, so that the resolution didn't read like an affront to Bush.

Nickels refused to lose any substantive language about Kyoto. "I was not willing to compromise and take out language that directly referenced following the Kyoto Protocol," Nickels says. Indeed, the resolution as adopted reads: "Whereas, on February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol went into effect, we will strive to meet or exceed Kyoto Protocol targets in our own communities."

White House Spokesperson Michele St. Martin would not say how the Bush administration felt about Nickels's success in Chicago. She simply told The Stranger that Bush policy would "reduce greenhouse gases 18 percent by 2012," adding: "We oppose policies that produce [greenhouse gas] reductions by putting Americans out of work."

The Bushies appear to be playing fast and loose with the facts. The administration's goal is-through voluntary commitments from industry-to reduce greenhouse gas emission intensity (not greenhouse gas emissions). This means reducing gases as a percentage of economic output, but not reducing pollution overall. In other words, as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change found, Bush's policy will actually result in an overall 12 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions. "The numbers speak for themselves," says the Pew Center's Judi Greenwald.

As for the White House's insinuation that Nickels's resolution will hurt job growth, Team Nickels ain't buying. "They believe this will cost us jobs. We think the exact opposite is true," says Steve Nicholas, director of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment. "We see business opportunities and job creation in the transition to cleaner energy. The need for change will create innovation." Nicholas points out that a cottage industry around biodiesel fuel is already germinating in Seattle thanks to local policies that are forcing Metro buses to use cleaner fuels. "We built our current economy on fossil fuels," Nicholas says. "A similar economic wave will be created by the transition to cleaner fuels."

Nicholas is right. Japan's auto industry is burgeoning right now, because it has taken the lead on hybrid car production. In the U.S., sadly, we're moving in the opposite direction, giving tax breaks to businesses that use SUVs. Meanwhile, on June 7, General Motors announced that it's laying off 25,000 people. ■