Bloomberg on Climate Change: “Most People Unfortunately Don’t Care” - Ecocentric - TIME.com

Bloomberg shared the stage at the Hong Kong Convention Center in a brief roundtable with (freshly ousted) Toronto mayor David Miller, Johannesburg major Amos Masondo, and Edward Yau, Hong Kong's Secretary for the Environment, to talk about how their respective cities have stepped up to the challenge of greening themselves. In his remarks, Bloomberg talked about how cities that got built up several decades ago — like New York and Hong Kong — share a unique dilemma that newer cities don't. In most places, the bulk of carbon emissions comes from transportation, and a lesser percentage comes from buildings. In New York and Hong Kong, it's just the opposite, so both cities are faced with challenge how retrofitting old buildings.

Figuring out how to get people involved, he said, was the task at hand. Bloomberg, who has made environmental issues a central theme of his office, has made slow but steady progress on his green initiative PlaNYC. When you talk about what emissions are going to do to the earth in 50 years, "most people unfortunately don't care," he said. He went on to say that it's more effective to frame the argument for improving policy in terms of how people's lives are affected today — and that goes as much for the air they're breathing as for the money in their pockets." Capitalism works," Bloomberg said. "When you build parks, they enhance property values. When you plant trees, they enhance property values."