In the US, New York City is leading the way on climate change.

While the USA debates a Green New Deal to tackle climate change, New York City has passed The Climate Mobilisation Act. This is 10 bills designed to help the city keep to the emissions reduction targets set by the Paris Climate Agreement.

The mayor is expected to sign the bill into law within the next few weeks, despite President Trump. Read what NYC is doing at council.nyc.gov/data/green

The mayor hopes the act will have the same effect as taking more than one million cars off the road by 2030, with a significant impact on air quality in a city which has higher than the national average rates of asthma.

It is also expected these measures will create thousands of new jobs.

Much of the city’s everyday operations are controlled by the state government so it has only been able to draw up these measures by largely focussing on local building standards.

This set of bills requires that many of the city’s buildings slash their carbon emissions, starting in 2024, and reducing overall emissions 40 per cent by 2030. This is clever as, according to a 2017 estimate, buildings are responsible for almost 70 per cent of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions.

If landlords fail to meet targets, fines of up to millions of dollars per year will apply. Trump Tower, the Empire State Building and One World Trade Centre are some of the buildings which will have to comply.

To help this programme work, a low-interest energy loan has been created to make these improvements more affordable.

As demonstrated by New York City, it does not only have to be done by central government. Our city fathers, too, need to take responsibility to improve things.

This is the kind of thing we could do in London and our top ten major cities. Greater London (population about 6.7 million), Birmingham (population just under one million), Glasgow (population about 715,600), Leeds (population about 709,000), Sheffield (population about 532,300), Liverpool (population about 476,000), Bradford (population about 462,5000), Manchester (population about 450,100), Edinburgh (population about 438,700), and Bristol (population about 384,400).

If they all did the same as New York City, our country would see a significant improvement in, not only air quality, but also reduced energy use, CO2 emissions and new jobs.

A win-win situation for us all.