The environmental ‘think globally, act locally’ mantra can be applied to elections. The first results of the 2013 campaigns, plus more news, this week in CIB:

Campaign Watch: Acting Locally on the Electoral Front

In this period of radical state-level retreat on a broad array of environmental laws and programs, the significance of having pro-environment leadership on the local level is growing. That makes it even more noteworthy than usual that North Carolina cities and towns began holding their 2013 primary elections last week for the offices of mayor and city/town council members.

The marquee results of the week were the mayoral nomination results for two of the state’s biggest cities, Charlotte and Winston-Salem.

In Charlotte, City Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon defeated fellow Council Member James Mitchell for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Cannon will face former City Council Member Edwin Peacock, the Republican nominee, in November. Transportation issues continue to loom large in Charlotte. Former Mayor Anthony Foxx—now the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Transportation—was an active supporter of expanding local passenger rail, including streetcar lines. The next mayor will continue to face that issue, while North Carolina’s state budget and policies are curtailing support for environment-friendly public transit options, especially passenger rail.

In Winston-Salem, long-time Mayor Allen Joines was resoundingly re-nominated for his fourth four-year term. Joines, a Democrat, faces only token opposition in November. His city is also working to improve its public transit and “green” options, including its bus system and greenways. Joines backed the long-debated expansion of city bus service to Sundays, which will make it a seven-days-a-week option for the first time.

As usual, questions of money were also on the ballots—including bond referenda in the city of Sanford. Notably from an environmental standpoint, Sanford voters said “yes” to more investment in greenways and sidewalks (biking and pedestrian-friendly green transit options).

Among NC’s largest cities, Charlotte and Winston-Salem are the only two which hold formally partisan elections for city offices. The primaries in many other cities and towns, including Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Fayetteville and Asheville, will be held later (October 8) using a non-partisan format. (Early voting precedes all primaries and general elections.)

CIB recommends: Check on your local municipal elections this year. Who’s running and where do they stand on environmental policy and programs like parks, stormwater management, and green transportation options?

Around the Globe: Summit Produces Climate Progress

While international attention obsessed on Syria (certainly an important matter), some quiet progress was made this month on climate change issues at the G-20 summit in Russia.

The top two emitters of greenhouse gases (the United States and China) agreed to explore issues related to the “phase down” of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions. HFCs are known to be hundreds to tens of thousands of times more potent as greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. The Obama Administration estimates that addressing HFC admissions would produce the impact of cutting 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2050, about equal to two years of global greenhouse emissions at current levels. (The Climate Post, 9/19/13.)

Center for American Progress chair John Podesta called the U.S./China agreement a milestone in “stepping outside of the historically deadlocked U.N. climate negotiations to tackle HFCs.” (Reuters, 9/6/13.)

The Other Side: Don’t Delete Those Emails

If you’re going to act like the fourth branch of government, don’t be surprised if someone sues you for access to your lobbying records. Last week, the Civitas Foundation received notice from counsel for the NAACP that the civil rights organization would be seeking the conservative advocacy group’s records on its involvement in development of legislation restricting voting rights in North Carolina.

The NAACP and other progressive policy groups believe that the 2013 state legislation changing North Carolina voter laws violates the federal Voting Rights Act in a number of ways. They assert that requiring photo IDs to vote, eliminating one-stop registration and early voting, cutting back the early voting period, enabling more challenges to voter eligibility, and other changes are designed to suppress voting opportunities, especially by historically disadvantaged groups.

These plaintiffs in legal challenges to the new voting law appear to believe that the Civitas records (including emails and other electronic data storage) may contain evidence that lawmakers knew that claims of voting fraud were weak and the true motivations behind the legislation were voter suppression.

Voting rights laws and procedures are significant to environmental policy–especially to citizen groups like NCLCV–because they directly impact our ability to hold legislators accountable through the electoral process for their decisions on the environment.

Education & Resources: Remember Climate Change Rules Preview Today

Reminder: The first regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions from power plants are due out from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by September 20. In a webcast discussion set for TODAY, Monday, September 16, at 1:30 p.m., representatives from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Duke Law School will preview the legal, political, environmental and economic implications of the expected rules. The webcast can be watched live on YouTube via this link here.

That’s our report for this week.