Yesterday, mayoral candidate Mike McGinn came out swinging against Mayor Greg Nickels, criticizing his record on the environment because, among other things, he opposed last year’s parks levy, supported 2007’s roads and transit ballot measure, and has failed to meet emissions goals in Seattle despite his high-profile position as founder of the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.
Just three years ago, however, McGinn had nothing but praise for Nickels’s environmental efforts; in a press release for the Sierra Club, which gave Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims its Edgar Wayburn Award that year for “outstanding service to the environment,” McGinn said he “couldn’t be more proud of both leaders for their tireless work and political courage. Both have tackled very difficult problems and even faced brutal criticism, but they have shown a real knack for rolling up their sleeves to find creative solutions that benefit our economy, our environment and our communities.”
Two caveats: McGinn was speaking as a member of the Sierra Club, the group giving the award, so it’s not THAT surprising he’d have nice things to say. As a spokesman for the Sierra Club, he says, “I would praise people when they did something good but I would also criticize them when they did something bad.” And 2) 2006 was three years ago, before both parks and roads and transit (although not before questions had been raised about Nickels’s commitment to the environment).
McGinn says he believes the mayor “deserved the award when he got it. He committed Seattle to meeting the Kyoto Protocol, and he signed up cities around the country to meet it, and that was a significant achievement.” However, he adds, “When you say you’re going to meet the Kyoto Protocol, you’ve got to meet it.”
I’m shocked.
SHOCKED !
Has McGinn given any specifics of how as mayor he would meet Kyoto? Because if he hasn’t, he doesn’t really have much of an argument here. How much of a city’s total emissions does the city really control?
I’m with Fnarf @2.
You can accuse Greg Nickels of masterminding a phony-ass, cynical ploy with this whole mayors climate initiative–a feel-good publicity stunt tailor-made for the Prius-driving, PCC-shopping crowd that cares about climate change but doesn’t want to think too deeply about it.
But you can also accuse Michael McGinn of naïveté, of actually taking at face value the preposterous claim that somehow individual municipal governments can reduce in some effective, useful way the carbon emissions that take place in their city limits.
I’m not sure what’s worse: Greg Nickels’ cynicism or Michael McGinn’s naïveté. (I’m assuming Nickels isn’t dumb enough to actually have been sincere about the whole mayors climate initiative.)
Given that transportation makes up over half of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions, it’s pretty easy for our municipal government to effectively reduce our emissions – invest in transit and real mobility options, not a $3 billion tunnel.
Just to qualify what I wrote @3. The “preposterous claim” I mention is really that somehow individual municipal governments can reduce carbon emissions in their city limits by signing a pact, or that it is at the level of municipal governments that such a pact should be signed.
But Nickels got to be in a photo-op with Gavin Newsom. And that’s all that really matters, amirite?
If this is the best challenger in the next election, it’s a guaranteed win for Nickels.
@2,3
How is Nickels’ colossal insincerity (his defrauding of naive voters) with regard a crucial policy area not fair game for his opponent?
New contest. Find a Nickels self contradiction?
Slog bragging rights are on the line.
Elliott @7, the problem is that the whole “mayors taking on global warming” enterprise was itself an exercise in “colossal insincerity.” What’s naïve about McGinn’s response is not that this pact hasn’t accomplished anything; it’s that anyone ever took it seriously as an attempt to accomplish anything to begin with.
Does anyone seriously think that Nickels would be challenged from the environmental community if he had lived up to his promises?
Cressona– Nickels is still running on his insincere global warming promises. While you may have (rightly) seen through him from the start, if you were running against him, would just let him keep saying these things unchallenged?
@3 It would be Nickels’ naivete if he committed to the warm and fuzzy idea of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and thought no one would call bullshit when he didn’t actually decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
Look, all our mayors are externally Green – to the rest of the world.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is what they do IN SEATTLE.
You know, like the Tunnel choice that literally has double the global warming emissions during both construction and operation as either of the Viaduct rebuild or the Surface Plus Transit options.
Or … heck … sidewalks.
Not having sidewalks encourages car use. Duh.
I’m under the impression that the State of Washington doesn’t particularly give a shit one way or the other what Nickels thinks about the tunnel. The mayor doesn’t set much of the transit agenda in the area, or have much to do with implementing it, except in piddly little pissant ways. If anyone thinks that the SLUT is having a big impact on carbon emissions either way, they need medical help.
I’m hardly Nickels’s greatest fan, but also don’t think you can really bash him for stuff that’s not part of his job description. McGinn’s got to find some other platform to run on besides “everything should be different!”
Thing is people connect the whole tunnel thing, the whole snowplow-bus thing, and the whole Mercer Millionaires thing to the Mayor.
Just like they do the sidewalks.
Heck, most of them phone city council to complain about the schools!
Wow. You’re so savvy erica. I wish i could be just like you. Except for your arrest for stealing wine from the QFC earlier this year, you’re so perfect.
Will–you want an elevated viaduct. How is that better than a tunnel?
the fact that 900 cities have committed to actually doing something about global warming is “naive”? take a deep breath folks. not everyone is as perfect as all of you. geesh, no wonder it’s so hard to get the majority of people to focus more on global warming and steps they can take. you all bug the heck out of the vast majority of Americans.