Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego named next chair of Climate Mayors

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Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego will be the next chair of Climate Mayors, a community of nearly 350 mayors who have organized to help each other lead city responses to climate change across the nation. She also secured $15 million from the federal government to be used on electric vehicle charging stations. Arizona has five other mayors in the organization.

Mayor Gallego joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the work being produced by Climate Mayors.

Mayor Gallego said her priorities include supporting and defending federal funding for local climate action in the U.S. and seeing Phoenix “go beyond greenhouse gas reductions and continue to look at climate action, economic growth and improved public health,” she added.

“We have great solutions here. We’re pretty motivated to address climate, and so it gives me a much bigger platform to share what we’re doing successfully,” Mayor Gallego said.

She said she wants to focus on communicating the truth to the Phoenix community on what work is going into climate change, given the extreme heat Arizona faces in the summer months. That has not stopped the traffic of new faces and families moving into Phoenix.

During the last Trump Administration, Phoenix was given the largest grant for the South Central Light Rail, which was used in efforts to reduce emissions, according to Mayor Gallego.

“Since 2012, we managed to reduce, per capita, emissions by more than 20%; we really are getting great things done,” Mayor Gallego said.

The areas with the most room for growth in Phoenix are reducing energy bills and solar energy, according to Mayor Gallego. One of her goals is to show results on those topics in her local community.

Mayor Kate Gallego, City of Phoenix

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