Dear friends:

I delivered this address this afternoon on the occasion of a visit by President Bush, Secretary Rice, and Secretary Rumsfeld to Salt Lake City. Thank you for all the work you are doing to stand up and speak out against the disastrous policies of the Bush administration and our Congress.

Best regards,

Mayor Rocky Anderson
Salt Lake City, Utah

Several commentators have recently expressed profound pessimism about the possibility of addressing the challenges posed by catastrophic climate change. Some have argued that current technology is insufficient to address the problem, and that we can only hope for an as-yet unknown technological panacea to effectively combat global warming.

Our experience in Salt Lake City shows that individuals, businesses, and governments on every level can employ measures available with current technology to address the serious challenges of global warming. On the eve of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, I committed Salt Lake City to reduce global warming pollution from municipal operations by seven percent by 2012, in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol. Last year, we surpassed our Kyoto goal, seven years early. Salt Lake City's efforts in improving efficiency and sustainability can be easily undertaken by other municipal, state, and federal governments, and lead to significant cost savings.

An op-ed I authored on how climate change can be effectively addressed at the local level, using current technology, appeared in the Arizona Daily Star and other newspapers through the McClatchy-Tribune Wire. The op-ed is available here: http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/138594. The Arizona Star also published an accompanying editorial enumerating effective solutions on the local level to the problem of disastrous climate change, available here: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/138597.