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Anthropocene Magazine reports on “If climate mayors ruled the world”

After President Donald Trump announced last Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda denounced the decision and reaffirmed its member cities’ commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change.

The group, informally known as the “climate mayors,” surged in membership to include 223 US mayors representing a population of more than 57 million by Sunday night. It’s easy to imagine that their stance is mostly symbolic, but that’s not necessarily the case, suggests a study published in Nature Climate Change three days before Trump’s announcement. It shows that cities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and that city-level policies are key to counteracting its effects.

The researchers analyzed climate data from the 1,692 largest cities worldwide, and found that since 1950, 27 percent of cities, home to 65 percent of the urban population, have been warming faster than the globe as a whole.

Read full story at: If climate mayors ruled the world | Anthropocene