Climate change is here. Cincinnati City Hall must act like it | Opinion
Whether you're personally ready to accept it or not, global warming is real, and it's making the extreme weather events we've experienced in Cincinnati lately both more likely and more severe. We also need to accept that human greenhouse gas emissions are the primary driver of the climate change we're observing.
It's bad enough that the ideological right is running a massive misinformation and disinformation campaign to confuse the public into believing global warming isn't the biggest threat we face as a nation and as a civilization, going so far even to call it a "hoax." It may be even worse, though, that the neoliberal supermajority in Cincinnati City Hall is failing the climate test, too.
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Transportation choices matter
Even on the easiest of science-informed policy stances, which would be to support moving away from automobile infrastructure vigorously and toward transit infrastructure, Mayor Aftab Pureval and Cincinnati City Council have failed. The transportation sector is responsible for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., yet the mayor and council support the massive, and massively expensive, I-75 highway expansion, which will induce demand and increase greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. This is without them even calling upon ODOT to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement on the project, which it has not done in contravention of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Pureval and City Council are failing this climate test.
Protect the natural infrastructure
City Hall is failing on climate adaptation as well. For instance, the mayor and council support the developer- and special-interest-heavy makeup of the Cincinnati Parks Board of Commissioners, a group that routinely destroys urban forest and replaces it with grey space that increases the urban heat island effect and accelerates stormwater runoff.
Two of many obvious examples are the massive bike course in Mount Airy Forest and the concrete dog park in Burnet Woods . We need parks leadership that's focused on preserving and expanding urban forest, not destroying it, if we are to have any hope at all of absorbing the brunt of climate change.
The mayor and council are failing this climate test.
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Not too late for a course correction
The good news is, it's never too late to do the right thing. Pureval and City Council can correct the error of their ways immediately by demanding an EIS on the I-75 expansion project and reforming the Cincinnati Park Board. If they don't, history will remember them as the mayor and council who had all the science they needed to know what good climate policy looks like, but who chose to fail the climate test in order to assuage their wealthy PAC donors and to selfishly pursue their personal political ambitions.
The token climate programs they tend to tout in the media do not meet this critical moment, and history will not look kindly on their failure to meaningfully act.
Bob Hyland is an associate professor-educator in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Cincinnati. The views expressed in this opinion piece are his own.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Climate change is here. Cincinnati City Hall must act like it | Opinion
