Kansas City actually taking environmental steps?

This Kansas City Star article about KCMO's "first environmental steps" (Feb 15th issue) is very interesting:

As early as next week, city council members could get a peek at a groundbreaking proposal from the city's environmental commission. The commission wants Kansas City to implement a far-reaching citizen-based initiative to combat global warming.

The program is based on the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which has been signed by more than 200 mayors across the country, including Mayor Kay Barnes. It is an attempt to slow global warming. The mayors came up with the agreement after the United States spurned the Kyoto Protocol that was ratified by 141 nations. Those countries are introducing measures to try to stabilize dangerous greenhouse gas concentrations.

Barnes signature caught area environmentalists by surprise. Until then the mayor had not been considered environmentally astute. . . .

nitiatives of the climate protection program include:

? Maintaining healthy urban forests and promoting tree planting to absorb pollution.

? Increasing the average fuel efficiency of municipal fleets.

? Making energy efficiency in homes and businesses a priority, while promoting green homes and buildings and encouraging purchase of Energy Star appliances and equipment.

? Reducing sprawl, preserving open space and creating compact, walkable urban communities.

? Educating the public, businesses and industry through schools, jobs, and professional associations about how to reduce global warming pollution.

If successful, "you could end up with a sustainable city that not only works better and operates more efficiently at lower cost, but it's dramatically more beautiful than the asphalt jungle we look out the window today," said John Ware, an architect with Gould Evans Associates and an environmental commissioner who put together the climate protection resolution and report.

Judy Widener, Volker Neighborhood Association president, believes the global warming protection initiative will work because of lessons activists learned from the recycling effort.

The answer, she said, is grassroots.

This opens up some real opportunities for bicyclists and pedestrians in the city. Bike/ped should be a big part of the effort to make KC "greener".

A quick calculation based on MARC & census figures shows that if the MARC region moved from (current) 4.3% bike/ped mode share to (current national average) 9.5% mode share we would save these whopping amounts:

385 million kg of nitrogen oxide annually
5.9 million kg of particulates annually
107 million tons of carbon dioxide annually