From Commitment to Action

An interview with Steve Nicholas, ISC's Vice President of Climate and Environment Programs

Steve Nicholas was previously Seattle’s top sustainability officer. During his tenure, the city became an award-winning model for cities across the United States. At ISC since 2009, he is helping other communities achieve their green goals.

What are your proudest moments as director of Seattle’s office of sustainability?
My job was to help city departments translate the often fuzzy concept of sustainable development into effective on-the-ground action. It’s been really rewarding to see how they have integrated sustainability into the way they design and implement programs, and deliver services to the residents and businesses of Seattle. For example, we helped the Department of Transportation understand that sustainable urban mobility is about creating a rich diversity of transportation choices—not just highways and bridges, but transit-friendly, bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and cleaner vehicles and cleaner fuels.

I’m also proud of the Seattle Climate Protection Initiative, for which we won the Innovations in American Government Award in 2007. It included the Seattle Climate Action Plan, which I believe has been influential in many other cities—and it’s working: Seattle’s carbon footprint is shrinking. The initiative also included the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, an idea of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels that created an unprecedented “movement of mayors” who not only pledged to reduce their own carbon footprints, but who also spoke in a louder, more coherent voice about the need for stronger federal policy. This movement—now comprising more than 900 cities—has made a big difference in terms of both the breadth and depth of the conversation about global warming in Congress and at the White House.

Will future growth threaten Seattle’s progress on reducing carbon emissions?
It certainly makes reducing Seattle’s overall carbon footprint more challenging. But we saw absorbing more growth in people, jobs and housing units into already urbanized parts of our city as an act of climate-friendliness. Research suggests that the carbon footprint of a compact, mixed-use, transit-friendly urban development is about 25-30% lower than the carbon footprint of low-density, suburban-style development. So even though absorbing growth meant that it would be harder to reduce our footprint, we felt we could do it if we were sufficiently smart, committed and aggressive.

What challenges did you have to overcome?
Sustainability at its core is about two things: integrating across economic, environmental and social challenges, and taking future generations into account on all decisions that we are making today. Both are very hard to do in local government or in any complex organization because most are very compartmentalized. And taking the long view is hard where you have a four-year election cycle and a two-year budget cycle to contend with.

Where do you see ISC’s climate program going?
We have two fantastic building blocks with our work in China and on the U.S. Gulf Coast. In China, we are helping industries and pilot communities in Guangdong Province make themselves more energy-efficient and climate friendly. On the Gulf Coast, we are helping communities redevelop themselves sustainably in the wake of Katrina and other devastating climate events.

I see an enormous opportunity to expand and replicate our work in U.S. communities. People are now realizing that reducing climate pollution also improves quality of life: it achieves cleaner air, saves residents and businesses money through greater resource efficiency, creates new business opportunities and jobs. More and more communities understand these enormous benefits, but relatively few have the capacity to translate that enthusiasm into on-the-ground action.

How can ISC help fill that gap in capacity?
ISC can play a role in creating mechanisms that accelerate the transfer of best practices, helping communities tailor tools to their specific needs, and providing customized training and mentoring. We are developing the idea of a Climate Leadership Academy, an intensive three-day workshop on community-based climate solutions with a faculty made up of practitioners from cities that have led the way on global warming. The workshops would culminate in the creation of a yearlong mentoring relationship between a practitioner from a leading city and one from a less experienced community.

What made you choose sustainable development as a career?
During preparatory meetings for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, I realized that the way to avoid the shell game of trading off between our environmental, economic and social goals was to embrace the more holistic notion of sustainable development. I came to see sustainability as a high calling. It’s not about saving the polar bears, or even the planet; it’s really about saving ourselves—human communities and human economies. It’s about the quality of life we are leaving behind for our kids, which is especially resonant for me now that I have a beautiful, one-year-old son. In 15 years, I don’t want him to say, “Dad, didn’t you see this coming? Why didn’t you do anything about it?”