Mexico's Former President Says Cities Face 'The Last Window' of Opportunity to Clear the Air

The world's cities present the biggest hurdles as well as some of the most fertile opportunities to slow global climate change in the coming decades.

This was the theme used by most people who spoke at a meeting at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., Thursday.  Private engineers met public urban planners, city officials sat next to logistics experts, and political leaders alluded to changing infrastructure needs at a conference about how modern transportation modes can transform cities, improve energy efficiency and lower heat-trapping carbon emissions.

"It is possible to tackle climate change and at the same time create economic growth," said Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012 and the chairman of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, which proposed a path to a low-carbon international economy in its report.

Calling the notion that governments can either expand economically or reduce their carbon emissions a "false dilemma," Calderón, delivering the keynote address, said nations can make great strides by reforming how they develop and consume energy ("decouple economic growth from energy"), modify how they inhabit and use their territories ("stop the degradation of land" and improve agricultural efficiency), and prevent cities from sprawling into their surroundings ("it is impossible to continue" at the current rate).

"We see that the next 15 years are a window of opportunity and probably the last window we have," Calderón said.  Carbon pollution, the byproduct of burning fossil energy sources, is subsidized by nations' citizens through the taxes they pay, he said.

"The lack of the right economic incentives for natural resources" is financially damaging, he added.  "We need to price out externalities."

How should a billion more people live?

Cities, already home to more than half the world's 7 billion people, are responsible for the bulk of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions -- 70 percent, according to a 2011 U.N. study -- and economists forecast urban areas will only continue to increase in population.

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