Four years ago seven candidates for Louisville mayor, including the current mayor, took part in a forum focused on fighting climate change. Nearly 100 people participated in the Zoom call aimed at implementing the Louisville Metro Council’s 2020 resolution to power the city with 100% clean energy by 2040.
Nine Louisville and Kentucky environmental groups have come together to sponsor another mayoral environmental forum this year, on March 25, ahead of the primary election May 19. But a few very important things have changed in the past four years.
Since then the world has felt the hottest three years since record keeping started in 1850. Last year began with Kentucky’s wettest spring on record. And that only tells part of the story. The The Courier-Journal reported that in recent years those huge amounts of rainfall are coming clustered in fewer events, leading to devastating and deadly flooding.
Climate change even hurts the insurance industry
Nationwide, weather disasters have been steadily increasing since the 1980s. In 2023, 28 climate and weather events cost us $93 billion in damages and 492 deaths. Even homeowners insurance companies are feeling these climate change effects. Major insurers pulled out of Florida and California. Others in Florida and Louisiana became insolvent.
Something else has happened in the four years since the last mayor’s environmental forum. Despite all the evidence of a growing climate crisis, it’s getting less attention. Information overload from each scary new headline of the day distracts from the consequences of a warming planet.
Political sloganeering has made things even worse.
The Trump administration has led the way with a full-throated ridiculing of the global warming that causes climate change. And it’s backed up those attacks with action, canceling billions of dollars in renewable energy projects. Those projects, incidentally, were providing jobs for local economies as well as cheaper and cleaner energy.
Our own Kentucky legislature minimizes climate threats. It even went against the wishes of state electric utilities by making it harder for them to close inefficient coal-fired power plants.
Another climate disappointment comes from LG&E. As the monopoly that provides all of Louisville’s electricity, it could be a powerful partner for the Metro Council’s clean energy resolution. LG&E is involved in some renewable energy programs, but they fall far short of meeting the goals of the 2020 resolution.
(Background: That resolution calls for three stages of implementation. First, by 2030, all of city government would be powered by clean electricity. Second, by 2035, in addition to just electricity, all forms of energy used by the city government would come from clean sources of fuel. Third, by 2040, in addition to the city government, all of Louisville would be powered by clean energy.)
Climate change is not rocket science
While climate change has been tagged as complicated and politically divisive, the basics are simple. I learned about it in 6th grade science as “the greenhouse effect.” When sunlight enters a greenhouse and reflects off the floor or other surface, it gets trapped by the glass roof, heating up the greenhouse. Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere acts like that glass roof, trapping the sun’s heat. A huge producer of carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas. It’s why their emissions are referred to as “greenhouse gases.” The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing over the past 100 years, and accelerating dramatically in the last several years.
All of which makes this year’s mayoral clean energy forum even more important than the one four years ago. Louisville’s mayor will have to speak up and act for the environment against a tide of indifference and hostility to a more livable planet
And as if those profound substantive issue developments aren’t enough for you, there’s yet another wrinkle in this year’s Louisville mayoral primary.
There won’t be a Democratic primary or a Republican primary for mayor. That’s because in 2024 the legislature made Louisville’s mayoral primary a nonpartisan one. So on May 19 Louisvillians will pick from a list of the 12 candidates who have filed to run for mayor, and none of those candidates will be identified by party. The top two vote getters will advance to the November election.
Among the effects of that change is that now, a voter no longer has to be registered as a Republican or a Democrat to vote for Louisville mayor in the primary. Independent voters can cast a ballot as well.
All of the candidates for Louisville mayor have been invited to participate in the March 25th environmental forum. It will be a virtual forum, held by Zoom and hosted by the Renewable Energy Alliance of Louisville (REAL). It’s free and open to the public, with registration required. You can register and get more info on the REAL website, renewableenergylouisville.org.
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Paul Wesslund is a Louisville author who writes on energy issues and for 20 years was editor of Kentucky Living magazine. He is a member of the Renewable Energy Alliance of Louisville and is an organizer of the upcoming mayoral environmental forum. He wrote the book Small Business, Big Heart—How One Family Redefined the Bottom Line, and blogs on how decency succeeds in business and in life at paulwesslund.com.
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