Dozens of mayors want a green pandemic recovery

By Jenny McGrath July 15, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, but some mayors are already planning for a future they hope is a lot more “green and just.”

Mayors of Los Angeles; Hong Kong; Milan, Italy; Rotterdam, Netherlands; and dozens of other cities are pushing for a recovery that’s focused on limiting carbon emissions. Principles and goals guiding recoveries include improved public transit, creating green jobs, and increasing streets that are open to pedestrians and cyclists.

“New Orleans, like many cities, bears the dual burdens of climate crises and COVID-19,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement. Curbing the pandemic without also addressing climate change isn’t just a missed opportunity, the mayors argue; it would exacerbate the inequalities facing vulnerable populations.

The mayors are part of C40 Cities, a group of nearly 100 cities focused on combating climate change. One of the objectives in the agenda they released Wednesday is to transform existing infrastructure in ways that support the “15-minute cities” concept. Everything residents need would be accessible by short walks or bike rides. Some roads would be permanently closed to cars, so robust, zero-emission public transit is also a necessity in such cities.

The agenda says that “the only stimulus should be a green stimulus,” with money going to transit projects, renewable energy, and retrofitting buildings for great efficiency. That’s all easier said than done. Many U.S. transit agencies are currently looking for money from the federal government amid ridership declines.

In Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan recently announced 20 miles of residential streets that will be permanently closed to most traffic, according to the Seattle Times. It sounds like a lot, but advocacy groups want 130 miles of “Stay Healthy” streets.

The C40 mayors, who come from all over the world, say the initiative can’t rest on local measures alone. “As London and the rest of the world start to emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown, global collaboration between cities will be key to achieving a recovery that tackles climate change at a local and global level,” said London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Jenny McGrath is a senior writer at Digital Trends covering the intersection of tech and the arts and the environment. Before…

Computing

How Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to take on Apple

An Intel Meteor Lake system-on-a-chip.

It seems like Apple might need to watch out, because Intel and Microsoft are coming for it after the latter two companies reportedly forged a close partnership during the development of Intel Lunar Lake chips. Lunar Lake refers to Intel's upcoming generation of mobile processors that are aimed specifically at the thin and light segment. While the specs are said to be fairly modest, some signs hint that Lunar Lake may have enough of an advantage to pose a threat to some of the best processors.

Today's round of Intel Lunar Lake leaks comes from Igor's Lab. The system-on-a-chip (SoC), pictured above, is Intel's low-power solution made for thin laptops that's said to be coming out later this year. Curiously, the chips weren't manufactured on Intel's own process, but on TSMC's N3B node. This is an interesting development because Intel typically sticks to its own fabs, and it even plans to sell its manufacturing services to rivals like AMD. This time, however, Intel opted for the N3B node for its compute tile.

Computing

How much does an AI supercomputer cost? Try $100 billion

A Microsoft datacenter.

It looks like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Sora, among other projects, are about to get a lot more juice. According to a new report shared by The Information, Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a new data center project, one part of which will be a massive AI supercomputer dubbed "Stargate." Microsoft is said to be footing the bill, and the cost is astronomical as the name of the supercomputer suggests -- the whole project might cost over $100 billion.

Spending over $100 billion on anything is mind-blowing, but when put into perspective, the price truly shows just how big a venture this might be: The Information claims that the new Microsoft and OpenAI joint project might cost a whopping 100 times more than some of the largest data centers currently in operation.

Computing

There’s an unexpected, new competitor in PC gaming

Snapdragon's X Elite PC SoC.

Windows gaming on ARM is becoming a legitimate possibility, and it's not just thanks to the recently unveiled emulation options, but it's chiefly due to the fact that Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is shaping up to be pretty excellent. Spotted in a recent benchmark, the CPU was seen beating some of the best processors on the current market. Are we finally at a point where it's not always going to be a choice between just Intel and AMD?

The benchmarks were posted by user @techinmul on Twitter, and the results couldn't be more promising for the upcoming Qualcomm processor. The chip was tested in Geekbench 6, and although it's important not to take these results entirely at face value, it's an impressive show of performance that bodes well for upcoming thin and light laptops.