A very St. Petersburg meet-and-greet at Kahwa on Thursday morning was followed by an Albert Whitted Park press conference where former New York City Mayor — and ardent climate change, put-his-substanitial-money-where-his-mouth-is, activist — Michael Bloomberg announced that St. Petersburg would be one of 25 cities accepted into Bloomberg Philanthropies' Climate Challenge.
What is the Climate Challenge? Simply put, it is an opportunity for 25 ambitious cities to significantly deepen and accelerate their efforts to tackle climate change and promote a sustainable future for their residents.
According to Bloomberg Philanthropies, since June 2017, when Washington backed out of the Paris Agreement, "mayors from more than 230 cities representing more than 70 million Americans have said, 'We are still in' and will continue to push America forward."
To that end, the organization chose 25 cities that will benefit from their support to "meet or beat" their close-range goals to reduce their carbon footprint.
The group has pledged $70 million to make those cities "Leadership Cities" that will, according to Bloomberg, have "powerful new resources and unprecedented access to world-leading support to help them."
This award comes after more than 18 months of applications and research (good thing Kriseman won the election, huh?)
CL will have more details as we learn them.
Every week, we sent the top news story to our weekly newsletter subscribers — you should be one, so subscribe to the Creative Loafing newsletter here. Contact Cathy Salustri here.
