Mayor Murray was among a dozen U.S. mayors and governors who joined a delegation of Chinese subnational leaders making climate commitments and agreements at the U.S.-China Climate Leaders Summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Summit is the first official gathering of U.S. and Chinese leaders under the Climate Change Working Group and represents a key opportunity to galvanize climate action before December’s United Nations climate conference in Paris.
The U.S. – China Climate Leaders Summit fulfills a key element of the U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change by Presidents Obama and Xi last November, and helps to ensure that the ambitious actions to address climate change that both leaders committed to will be implemented at the state and local level, where they matter most. The Summit also shows the determination of both countries to continually deepen and strengthen cooperation on climate change, and to engage city, state, municipal, private-sector, and NGO partners in this critical effort.
The Summit included a Declaration to be signed by a diverse set of U.S. cities and states including Seattle, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Connecticut, Portland(OR), Houston, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Carmel (IN), Pinecrest (FL) Miami-Dade County, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.. The Declaration is the first of its kind between multiple community leaders from the United States and China to take parallel steps to address climate change at the state and local level, and is a concrete statement of intent by city, state, and provincial leaders from the United States and China to implement ambitious, verifiable actions to address climate change and simultaneously to support and expand bilateral cooperation and dialogue.