The big wins by Democrats in Tuesday’s elections across the U.S. turned into a rallying cry at an environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London and co-chair of C40 Cities, a global network of major cities committed to tackling climate change, stayed up all night watching CNN to find out what happened to many of his counterparts in the U.S.
“I don’t apologize for being very happy,” said Khan to applause while speaking Wednesday in Rio. “Every candidate Donald Trump backed lost.”
Democrats registered their largest political gains since a stinging loss to Trump a year ago, racking up wins in state and local races in locations including Virginia, New Jersey, New York and California, as the party coalesced around a message of economic affordability. Those results reverberated at a gathering of local leaders from around the world in Rio, just before next week’s start of the COP30 United Nations climate talks in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem.
Many mayors, even those from outside the U.S., looked to the election results as a signal that green initiatives can survive the Trump administration’s attempts to lead a global turn away from climate policies.
Three quarters of the U.S. economy is still committed to combating climate change, said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, who also spoke at the Rio event hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies as part of the COP30 Local Leaders Forum.
Gallego, who chairs the Climate Mayors network, spent a lot of her time in Rio explaining to global counterparts that a majority of the U.S. supports setting global climate targets. The outcome of the elections, where 41 candidates associated with the network were victorious, made that job easier, she said.
“Our climate mayors did very well on the ballot,” said Gallego, who also drew applause. “We want to send this message from the U.S.”
There are other signs of progress. Most C40 cities have passed peak emissions, according to a report by the group. Stockholm and Copenhagen led the charge, with both slashing emissions by more than 40% in the past decade, buoyed by progressive European Union, national and city policies, the report found.
Investments in renewables, efficient energy and mobility upgrades are the main reasons for the emissions cuts, Copenhagen Mayor Lars Weiss said in an interview. The next step is how to deal with the construction sector, he said.
Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is president of the board of the C40 Climate Leadership Group.
The celebratory atmosphere on Wednesday was a clear shift from the previous day when attendees specifically referred to climate denialism in the U… During closed-door sessions, European officials were called upon to hold the line and set an example for the rest of the world for how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Governments need to offer an economic transition that creates jobs in green industries to maintain public support, Rotterdam Mayor Carola Schouten said in an interview.
“If it’s not affordable, people will reject it,” she said. “It’s easy to get behind a leader who says there is no climate crisis.”
One of Rotterdam’s challenges is to convince governments and voters to subsidize new technologies such as green hydrogen until — like wind and solar — they can compete with traditional energy sources.
Rotterdam aspires to become a global hub for the fuel, according to Schouten. She said she attends conferences such as the Rio event to meet with counterparts from Brazil, Chile, Namibia and other countries that have abundant potential to produce inexpensive wind and solar energy.
“You need a few years to overcome the gap,” Schouten said. “It can be done.”
Other city leaders who traveled to Rio are working on finding ways to insulate their cities from the fallout of global warming and more extreme weather events, despite doing very little to create the problem.
“Right now, my city is going through extreme heat,” said Chilando Chitangala, the mayor of Lusaka in Zambia. “We contribute the least but suffer the most. Climate change challenges are real.”
