Announcing an ambitious plan to reduce a city’s greenhouse gases is the easy part; when it comes to putting goals into action, local officials tend to run up against significant roadblocks. To take just a few examples: The subprime mortgage crisis has left taxpayers across the country unable to fund efficiency-minded proposals. Across the country, homeowners’ associations have vetoed plans for home solar panels on aesthetic grounds. In one city, police pushed back against plans for less-polluting cop cars, saying it would restrict needed speed. And everywhere, individuals are resistant to changing their habits. “They’ve seen the Al Gore movie, but they still have their lifestyle to contend with,” says Ann Hancock of the California-based Climate Protection Campaign. With that in mind, says Laura Fiffick of Dallas’ office of environmental quality, “the idea is to figure out what emissions we are going to go after and what we can do and then set the goal. When you set the bar too high, it becomes demotivating.”
