From the Eco-Cities Emerging Newsletter November 14, 2009:
Greetings,
Welcome to the mid November 2009 edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
I’d like to share something inspiring that just happened. I had dinner with a man who saved the world! No exaggeration. Proves it can be done and if one of our Eighth International Ecocity Conference goals is to help open up the conversation about the links between cities and climate solutions, reversing the global heating problem may well have very positive precedent.
The occasion was a function of the ClimateWorks Foundation in San Francisco. Mario Molina, Nobel Laureate, was sitting two people to my left at a circular table of seven. He and his research partners Paul Crutzen and Sherwood Rowland discovered the links between CFCs in the atmosphere and the effects they would have on the ozone layer, and then, on greatly increased ultraviolet radiation and severe damage to all manner of living organisms including us humans. They engaged best scientific methods and, with great effort and determination, brought the information to the public and policy makers. The result: the Montreal Protocol and banning of CFC leading in turn to the beginning of the end of that enormous threat to life on the planet.
Our thesis at the Eighth International Ecocity Conference is that we humans have to know much better what to build if we are to solve our growing environmental and resources problems. As Paul Downton said at a climate change conference in Australia in 1988, “Cities can save the world!” Cities are key. You can help us unlock the solution.
See you there!
Richard Register, President, Ecocity Builders
Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series
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