Empowering Cities to Become Carbon Neutral by 2030
A Moonshot Climate Action Plan
An Initiative of Empowerment Institute
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.” — President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962
“That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” — Astronaut Neil Armstrong, upon being the first human being to walk on the moon, July 20, 1969
Climate scientists tell us we must achieve by 2030 what humanity is trying to accomplish by 2050 to avoid irreversible ecological tipping points. In other words, we must accelerate time by 3x. To achieve this, we need to change the way we think about change. Business as usual climate solutions are not up to the task. We need a climate moonshot strategy.
Empowerment Institute’s Cool City Challenge initiative is such a climate moonshot strategy. Its mission is to accelerate the decarbonization of the world’s cities which emit 70% of the planet’s CO2. It does this by integrating bottom-up and top-down climate solutions and building the transformative capacity of a climate moonshot team.
Combining a whole system climate solution with the transformative leadership capability of a moonshot team can accelerate the speed and magnitude of change. The Cool City Challenge selects qualified cities and then either builds and leads these climate moonshot teams or partners with an existing moonshot team and manages on the ground implementation.
Our specific commitment consists of funding, providing our behavior change and community empowerment tools, transformative leadership training and social change training and coaching around the building of a carbon neutral city. Finally, we provide a moonshot climate action plan strategy (this document) and support its implementation and integration with the host city’s climate action plan.
In 2022, Cool City Challenge awarded performance based grants to pilot this climate moonshot strategy in Petaluma, Irvine and LA. These moonshot grants are based on meeting rigorous yearly performance goals to receive continued funding. Our intention is to expand to 100 climate moonshot cities across the US and worldwide over the next several years.
It is technologically possible to achieve carbon neutral cities by 2030, but it is a speed and scale challenge. This is a second order change problem requiring a second order change solution, aka a transformative social change intervention. The Cool City Challenge is such a robust second order change climate solution. It is based on Empowerment Institute’s four decades of experience designing and implementing transformative social change strategies.
All those participating in this climate moonshot journey require a willingness, as the Star Trek motto states, “to go where no one has gone before.” Nelson Mandela describes the journey this way: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” This is an invitation to those hearty souls willing to push the boundaries of the possible. It will be a demanding adventure whose success is profoundly important to humanity’s future.