Miami-Dade’s motto: Think globally, act locally County a world leader in cutting greenhouse gas production

Sun-Sentinel, December 9, 1997
By Robert McClure, Staff Writer

Even before Harvey Ruvin left South Florida for the climate treaty talks in Kyoto, Japan, he realized that divisions among the more than150 countries represented there might prove intractable.

But Ruvin, the clerk of the courts in Miami-Dade County, has a backup plan.

As a county commissioner in 1993, Ruvin oversaw the development of an ambitious program for Miami-Dade County to cut its production of the gases thought by most scientists studying climate to promote global warming.

The result, according to a recent United Nations survey, is that Miami-Dade ranks ninth among local governments world-wide in cutting greenhouse gas production

“Think Globally – Act Locally,” proclaims a poster on the wall of Ruvin’s office, located in traffic-clogged downtown Miami.

As an officer in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Ruvin encouraged Miami-Dade to make its own operations more energy-efficient.

Miami-Dade converted vehicles to relatively climate-friendly natural gas; allowed citizens to conduct much of their court business from home; encouraged environmentally friendly buildings; set up a busway along South Dixie Highway (with mixed results); and generally looked through every county department for ways to reduce the production of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

To qualify as a member of the council’s greenhouse initiative Miami-Dade committed to reduce its greenhouse gas production 20 percent by 2005 – matching the largest cuts being proposed at the Kyoto talks.

The level of greenhouse awareness among other local governments in South Florida ranges broadly, from doing nothing to programs like Miami-Dade’s.

Ruvin says that if the Kyoto talks fail to produce a worldwide agreement, he hopes to spearhead a program that will increase the number of governments taking steps like Miami-Dade.

And even if it turns out that the dominant scientific view about global warming is somehow flawed, it will still be worthwhile, Ruvin says.

“The worst that will happen is that we will have cleaner air to breathe, we will have saved enormous monies from our local government budgets and we will see perhaps the greatest startup of commercial [alternative energy] ventures in the history of the planet.”