Mayor Muriel Bowser reaffirmed the District’s commitment to fighting climate change and on Monday pointed to environmental successes, including a program to put solar panels on low-income families’ homes. News4’s Mark Segraves spoke with a satisfied recipient in Southeast D.C.
President Donald Trump may have pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change accord, but Washington, D.C. will continue to follow it.
Mayor Muriel Bowser signed an executive order Monday morning reaffirming the city's support of the landmark deal to slow global warming.
"We will, no matter what the decisions are at the federal level, continue to form the policies that will help to protect our earth," she said.
Bowser joins the mayors of 211 major U.S. cities -- including New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles -- in rejecting Trump's announcement Thursday that the U.S. will withdraw from the agreement.
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The state of Virginia, Georgetown University and these individual cities in Maryland and Virginia say they also will uphold the agreement:
-- Alexandria, Virginia
-- Blacksburg, Virginia
-- Charlottesville, Virginia
-- Hyattsville, Maryland
-- Richmond, Virginia
"If the federal government insists on abdicating leadership on this issue, it will be up to the American people to step forward -- and in Virginia we are doing just that," Gov Terry McAuliffe said in a statement.
D.C. already has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and begun work on what they say is the largest on-site municipal solar generation in the country.
Members of the D.C. Department of Energy & Environment posed for photos Monday morning holding a D.C. flag that was green and white, instead of the usual red and white.
