Hundreds of U.S. cities already adopted climate plans. What happened?

Grim warnings from the world’s leading climate scientists on Monday make clear the earth now faces irreversible changes from global warming and stress the need for immediate and wide-scale greenhouse gas reductions to avoid further damage.

Calling it a "code red for humanity," the report says that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades. That will mean more flooding, more wildfires, more wild swings in weather.

Those startling projections come despite a chorus of pledges to curb carbon emissions from coast to coast.

Over the past three decades, more than 600 local governments across the United States adopted their own climate action plans setting greenhouse gas reduction targets. These pledges were in addition to America’s commitment to the 2015 Paris Agreement, an international treaty signed by nearly 200 nations to limit the impact of climate change.

But experts now say that, despite the good intentions, many of those cities’ individual plans were aspirational at best. Now they must work harder if they’re going to curb the warming trend.

The USA TODAY Network reached out to a half dozen communities with climate plans. Reporters found some have made progress on reducing emissions, but others struggle to keep pace.

Austin, for example, successfully decreased its building emissions by 20% despite a booming population, but experienced an increase in transportation emissions between 2010 and 2018.

Phoenix reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by .5% between 2012 and 2018, but over the same time period its population grew by 12%.

And in Palm Springs, California, the city met one of its climate goals by reducing its 2020 emissions to 16% below 2010 levels. But it fell short on its plan to cut emissions to 7% below 1990 levels.

Indianapolis was late to the party, having established its inaugural sustainability plan in 2019. Like others, the city aims to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050, but has a long way to go.

USA TODAY Network’s findings are consistent with a study last year by the nonprofit Brookings Institution. It found just 45 of the 100 largest U.S. cities had adopted a serious climate pledge, and two-thirds of those with plans have fallen short of their targets. More than a dozen appeared to have no emissions tracking at all.

The good news is that those 45 communities have made a small difference, the Brookings Institution said. Together, they will eliminate some 6% of total annual U.S. emissions compared with 2017 levels – the equivalent of 365 million metric tons of carbon pollution or taking 79 million vehicles off the road.

A small window of opportunity remains for local governments to get serious about curbing climate change, according to the IPCC report. But, to achieve any kind of major corrective action, emissions must be slashed by the end of the decade.

The pressure is on to limit emissions faster at every level, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

Cities can play a key role in the nation’s ability to cut greenhouse gas, but more need to adopt action plans, Muro said, and those that have “need to deliver on their promises and tighten them.”

“Within this decade we have to make a sharp turn,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If there’s going to be a shift, we need ambitious goals.”

Cities already feel the heat

Top U.S. cities must reduce their annual emissions by 64% by 2050, the Brookings Institution said.

If they do not succeed, heat, droughts and extreme rain events will increase with every additional increment of global warming, the IPCC panel wrote. Already mountain and polar glaciers are committed to continue melting for decades or centuries, and the panel reported it’s “virtually certain” global mean sea levels will continue rising over this century.

Drastic and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could lead to discernible differences within 20 years.

For the first time, the IPCC report included interactive tools to help communities set those goals by allowing the cities to visualize the local impacts of the changing climate and rising seas.

Some communities told USA TODAY that they plan to be carbon neutral within three decades. Their motivation is driven in part by the climate impacts they already experience today. Sweltering in record high temperatures baking the southern half of the United States, cities like Austin, Phoenix and Miami are racing to cut emissions by beefing up public transit, adding electrical charging stations and making it easier to get around on foot or bicycle.

Austin succeeded in lowering building emissions by 20%, but saw transportation emissions rise over the past decade. Last year, the city voted to allocate $7.1 billion to an ambitious transportation plan officials say could help them meet some emissions-reduction goals.

In a plan expected to come up for a vote later this fall, Austin hopes to see 40% of its vehicle miles coming from electric cars by 2030 and hopes to have a 50% tree cover by 2050.

Palm Springs also has seen success in reducing emissions, but the city sweltered this summer during its hottest June and July on record and fears the rising heat will impact its tourism-reliant economy.

It reduced last year’s emissions to 16% below levels a decade ago. That was due in large part to a collaboration with a community-choice program launched last year that allows local governments to purchase electricity for its residents. All residents were automatically enrolled in Desert Community Energy’s carbon free plan, which provides electricity from carbon-free sources such as hydropower, wind, and solar.

Without the program, city officials said it would have seen a nearly 5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

The city is reviewing 78 potential measures to see where it could reach the biggest gains, hoping to reduce emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below its 1990 levels by 2050.

Miami-Dade announced plans last year to reach 60% of its 2018 greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and carbon neutrality by 2050. The city was one of the earlier local governments to adopt a climate action plan and already faces worsening impacts from rising sea levels.

"I think we welcome the (IPCC) report because it spotlights and gives us better data on the things we have been planning for almost 30 years,” said Jim Murley, the county’s chief resilience officer.

The city is expanding its fleet of electric buses, but has encountered difficulties in finding buses to buy, Murley said. The city is competing against a huge demand for the vehicles, he said.

Community officials also find that ongoing high-tide flooding sometimes demands more urgent focus and funding than its climate planning. For example, the city collaborated in a public-private partnership to build a billion-dollar tunnel that will improve traffic to and from the seaport, but includes flood gates to protect the city from a rising tide during storms.

Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona, is another community that needs little reminder..

The number of days at 110 degrees or higher is projected to double by 2060, said Diana Bermudez, director of strategy for the Arizona Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. Even deadlier are the number of nights with a low temperature of 90 degrees. “In 2020, we had 28 days where the temperature never dipped below 90.”

Maricopa County already reported 47 confirmed heat-associated deaths as of July 31, compared to 15 over the same time span last year.

Phoenix reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by .5% between 2012 and 2018, but over the same time period its population grew by 12%.

The city's updated climate action plan, now open for public comment, calls for transitioning the city’s electrical use to carbon neutral by 2030. Like Miami, Phoenix proposes to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

Late adopters making gains

Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana are later entries to climate action planning.

Columbus last year announced that emissions actually increased by 2.3% since 2013 as more people moved to the area, according to data released in November 2019. The goal was to reduce emissions by 20% in 2020. The city is in the process of setting new emissions reductions goals.

Though planning has been underway for a few years in Columbus, some are calling for more specifics and accountability in the draft plan it released last year.

Cities can say they’re going to do a lot, said Aaron Wilson, an atmospheric scientist at Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “But if you're not monitoring what you're doing and those changes, and you’re held to a standard of accountability, then what's the point in having a climate plan?”

“You have to be able to monitor it, to show that goals are being met, or that goals are changing based on the progress or how things are proceeding,” he said.

The city took comments in March on a proposal to slash emissions by 25% by 2030 using 2018 as a baseline, and to become carbon neutral by 2050.

The public’s response was “we need to do more,” said Erin Beck, assistant director of Sustainable Columbus, a city environmental initiative. “And we need to do it faster, which is certainly supported, and underscored by the IPCC report.”

The city expects to have a plan approved by fall. But, as of Monday, the city still hadn’t decided where to set its reduction goal.

Indianapolis established its inaugural sustainability plan in 2019. Like others, the city aims to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050, but has a long way to go.

According to a 2008 Brookings study, Indianapolis had the second highest carbon footprint among the top 100 major metropolitan areas across the country.

The average Indy resident emitted roughly 3.4 tons of carbon from a combination of both transportation and residential energy use. The average American, on the other hand, emitted only 2.6 tons of carbon - almost an entire ton less.

“This is a large puzzle, so we are still fitting all those pieces together,” said Morgan Mickelson, the city’s sustainability director. “But all the progress we’ve been making will help us set some more tangible targets.”

City Councilmember John Barth wants to do more.

The question becomes “does this plan go far enough and is it moving fast enough,” Barth said. “My vision is to spend time on that and think through if there is more we can be doing and for the plan we already have, is there a need to accelerate the work we’re doing.”

Climate experts would answer with a resounding yes.

So far, what’s happening in Indianapolis and the Midwest isn’t “nearly enough,” said Gabe Filippelli, executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University. Cities need to make sure they’re not only carbon neutral by 2050 but carbon negative.

But there is hope for the cities to achieve the goals, according to experts like David Victor, co-author of the Brookings report and professor of international relations at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

“Cities make great laboratories for combating climate change because some of the hardest tasks in cutting emissions involve activities such as urban planning and rebuilding transportation infrastructures—areas where cities are on the front lines,” Victor said. If the nation’s cities take action one by one, it could add up to “a powerful approach to climate mitigation.”

Contributing: USA TODAY Network reporters Nicole Foy, Debra Krol and Erin Rode.

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Hundreds of U.S. cities already adopted climate plans. What happened?

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