After recently watched Mayor Greenberg’s annual State of The City address I have to say I came away encouraged by the progress being made on many social and governance issues, but more than disheartened by the complete absence of policy or progress updates on climate change. You have to ask, what does that say to the electorate when our administration, who named climate change and environmental matters as one of their 5 key focus areas in the 2022 mayoral race shuffles the subject off the stage, hoping we don’t notice its disappearance.

Louisville, under Mayor Greenberg, has made little climate progress, and in the words of one of my old teachers in my end of term report ‘he showed early promise, but now needs to apply himself to get results’ This is all the more critical with recent developments in Washington which firmly thrusts our states and cities into the spotlight, and asks that they more now than ever carry the torch for sustainability, and resist its rollback at a federal level.

Our current city administration, now well into the second half of its term, started strongly to move from the prior decade of environmental support but little action, to enacting fundamental changes. Rapidly building a highly capable and respected Office of Sustainability, which ranks as one of the most capable in this part of the US. This strong base has helped make progress on energy cost reductions,  EPAD, Solarize Louisville, Cool Roof Incentives and possible federal grant funding. We even last October saw the award of the first three contacts to put solar on city buildings, a fire station, a library and a community center. None of those projects however have yet to break ground.

Most significantly by far the city set itself some bold goals to make real change happen on climate change and resiliency. Points to anybody who can remember what those are, or equally importantly what progress has been made. Just in case you can’t recall:

100% renewable electricity for Metro operations by 2030

100% clean energy for Metro operations by 2035

100% clean energy community-wide by 2040

These goals will truly make the ‘fundamental changes’ to our Jefferson County’ energy future Mayor Greenberg seeks for his key projects, as he promotes the end to incremental ‘at the edges’ improvements.

But, and this is a big but, we have been given no insight as to how these goals are going to be achieved, what projects will get us there, what investments will be required and where we are in the process. To get to these goals requires huge shifts in the local utility and commercial power supply structure that will take years to achieve and as far as we can tell, nothing is going on! Even more disturbingly we see power hungry data center developments being applauded recently that if built actually put us in a worse hole by adding consumption spikes equal to a new 100,000 person city.

So, the city set itself a generational bold goal on climate change that will shift our local carbon dioxide emission trajectory for ever, but now seems minded to run silent on the subject, hopefully not to later abandon its efforts. We as Serra Club members have a critical role in holding them accountable. As we all meet with our council members, attend their public forums, speak at council meetings, speak to the press or dialogue on social media lets resolve to always bring this subject up and press for details and progress, again and again and again. This must be about a promise made, is a promise kept. Nothing less will do for our city.