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Environmentalist to aid cities in combating global warming

Darden Rice, a Sierra Club official, will coordinate the national campaign.

By JON WILSON
Published January 28, 2007

Darden Rice, a veteran advocate for the environment and a former City Council candidate, has become second in command of a national campaign to combat global warming.

The Sierra Club recently named Rice its national field coordinator, which means she will continue a drive to get city governments to join the "Cool Cities" movement, which encourages energy solutions such as reducing carbon emissions.

"I'll be part mechanic, part trainer, and make sure we are moving," said Rice, 36.

A six-year Sierra Club official, Rice has been based in St. Petersburg and will remain here.

She said the global warming issue generated the Sierra Club's first national mobilization focusing on an issue, although the organization has often mobilized around specific events.

The nonpartisan club's full-bore entry into discussion of the issue suggests it has risen above politics, Rice said.

"We can't afford to look at this issue in terms of politics. More and more, it's becoming a moral imperative as to what we can do to reduce the threat" of global warming, she said.

A big job awaits.

Rice said the club's goal this year is to persuade the governments of 200 cities to join and get aboard the Cool Cities campaign.

Of that number, the idea is to get 75 of the cities to adopt specific clean energy policies: green fleets, energy efficiency programs and renewable energy purchases, for example.

A further goal is to get 40 cities to adopt a comprehensive global warming actions plan that will result in emissions reductions that will fall 7 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The club lists 369 cities across the nation in which mayors have gotten aboard a climate protection agreement.

St. Petersburg is not among them.

Attitudes have changed toward global warming, even in the six years Rice has been with the Sierra Club.

"It was then the red-headed stepchild, even with the Sierra Club. Now it's our flagship campaign," Rice said.

"It tells you how quickly this is moving and we have more and more science backing this up, and more and more industry stepping up to the plate and proposing solutions," she said.

[Last modified January 27, 2007, 21:40:18]