Bloomberg: Cities Are On The Front Lines Of Climate Change Battle

(WATCH) Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says cities are prepared to fight climate change.

PARIS ― Cities have the solutions to fight climate change.

So said Michael Bloomberg ― former mayor of New York City and current board president of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change ― while in Paris for the COP21 UN climate-change conference.

While national governments are negotiating the final treaty that will attempt to limit rising global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius or lower, it is cities that more often than not absorb the biggest impacts of extreme weather and climate change.

Asked whether cities are more nimble than national governments when tackling climate change, Bloomberg noted that “the federal, national governments have a place in it, but whatever the federal governments decide, it is the cities that implement. And so you see more action from the cities.”

He also noted that cities are “where climate change comes from. That’s where the people are, that’s where the problems are, that’s where the solutions [are].”

Bloomberg and Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes (also theC40 Chair) hosted a number of events at multiple venues throughout the Paris metropolitan area the first week of the conference. Those events included a C40 Cities Awards dinner, that celebrated innovations in cities globally, from Rotterdam to Cape Town to Stockholm (as well as in U.S. cities, such as Boston, New York and Washington, D.C.).

Watch the video above to see his answer in full more about how cities are on the front lines of climate change.

This piece is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post on the U.N.’s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. The series is putting a spotlight on the mayors of C40 cities, a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change, and is part of HuffPost’s What’s Working editorial initiative. To view the entire series, visit here.

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