• In the Spotlight: In Case You Missed the ICLEI Local Action Summit, a Recap
• Heads Up: How to Respond to New Carbon Footprint Rankings
• Winner: Santa Rosa, CA, Takes Home Climate Invitational

More than 400 people came together in Albuquerque for the ICLEI Local Action Summit ~ North America May 14-16. The event was jam-packed with inspirational speakers, hands-on trainings and plenty of time to connect with colleagues from around the country.

Find out what you missed! 

Tomorrow the Brookings Institution will release a report, Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America, that ranks the carbon footprint of the top 100 metropolitan regions. The report underscores the important role that local governments can and must play in our country’s response to climate change.

Find out more about the report and download supporting materials from ICLEI, including a template press release and a comparison of the Brookings data to the ICLEI methodology and your emissions inventories.

Santa Rosa, California, was honored recently with ICLEI’s Climate Innovation Invitational for their cutting-edge Aquatic Biomass to Fuel (ABF) project, which produces energy from wastewater, while at the same time recapturing methane, the most potent greenhouse gas. Runners-up in the field of 30 included Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, and Ashland, OR.

A new report released yesterday by the US Department of Agriculture, "The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Water Resources," finds that: higher temperature will negatively affect livestock; US forests are already impacted by increases in forest fires, insect outbreaks and tree mortality; and there is a trend of reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt runoff in the West.

Learn more and download the report.

Debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) is set to begin as early as this Monday, June 2. Stay tuned!

Bay Area to Fine Carbon Polluters

The San Francisco Bay Area will be the first in the nation to impose fees on businesses that spew the most carbon dioxide into the air. About 2,500 companies and agencies – supermarkets, gas stations, power plants – would be subject to fines based on the amount of carbon dioxide they pump into the air.

Read more about this historic first in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Coming soon to your ICLEI region are Regional e-Newsletters. In the meantime, here are a couple quick notes from the Northeast and Midwest:

Northeast:
Kim Lundgren, US Services Director based in Boston, will be speaking at the EPA New England Climate Change Forum on June 19. The forum will convene EPA scientists, experts from academia, and regional, state and municipal officials to examine the latest scientific research on the impacts of climate change on our natural resources, and the science tools under development or still needed to help government officials plan for these impacts.

Learn more and register.

Midwest:
ICLEI is hosting its first Midwest regional meeting in conjunction with the Green Procurement Exposition & Conference at Chicago’s Navy Pier on Wednesday, June 4, 2008, from 1:30 - 4:30pm.

Learn more and register.