Mayoral candidates bid to out green each other

By Eric Smalley

The Boston green mayor forum held on July 9 at Suffolk Law School featured plenty of green testimonials from the nine candidates who participated. The candidates also offered several interesting ideas and numerous pledges for specific actions and goals.

The candidates agreed that it’s critical to reduce carbon emissions by making buildings energy-efficient, shifting energy consumption to renewable sources, and getting people out of their cars. They also recognized the threat climate change poses to our sealevel city. Hurricane Sandy was invoked numerous times.

Here are some highlights:

• Charlotte Golar-Richie, like many other candidates, said she’d tap experts on climate change and alternative energy. Unlike the other candidates, she offered a name: Stanford professor Mark Jacobson. If you don't know who he is, naming an academic from the West Coast would seem to be a risky move for someone seeking office in Boston, given the large number of brilliant minds just across the river at Harvard and MIT. However, Jacobson stands out for showing that it is technologically and economically feasible to shift our economy entirely to renewable energy in the next few decades.
• Rob Consalvo declared that climate change would be his number one priority as mayor. He called for Boston to be a carbon-neutral city by 2050, upping the ante on Mayor Menino's goal of reducing Boston's carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.
• John Connolly called for 100 megawatts of installed solar electricity by 2020, which would quadruple the current goal. He also called for all municipal buildings to be zero net energy by 2025.
• Felix Arroyo called for the city to divest from fossil fuels.

Mayor Menino has raised the bar on environmental leadership. There's a lot of work to do, but most of the candidates appear willing to continue, if not expand on, his legacy. The question is, which candidate has the best plan, will hire the best people and is most likely to turn words into actions.

GreeningRozzie is joining with other green groups in the city to develop an environmental positions questionnaire for the candidates. Stay tuned for the results.