'On climate policy, focus on local goals and benefits'

In a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion piece, Mark Alan Hughes, professor of practice in City and Regional Planning and faculty director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, explains that at the local level, the pathway to greenhouse-gas emissions cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach.

Just because we can do something doesn't necessarily mean we should.

Yet this homely admonition seems forgotten in the otherwise admirable efforts of cities and regions around the globe to create more sustainable energy policies.

Since 2007, many governments have adopted a policy goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. It's a goal based on solid science about what needs to happen in the Earth's atmosphere to avoid the worst effects of global warming: floods, famine, disease, war . . . the whole biblical catalog.

The United States and many other nations have stated this goal in national policy and in multinational agreements, and it has been adopted by 16 U.S. states and 37 U.S. cities. Philadelphia seems poised to adopt the goal as well.