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Aspen in the environmental spotlight worldwide

  Aspen Mayor Steve Skadron was recently at the climate talks in Paris. One of the takeaways was that the Aspen community may be small on the world stage but its environmentalism has the spotlight.

Skadron says he was surprised by how many leaders knew not only about Aspen but were familiar with its environmental initiatives. Skadron says Aspen’s Canary Initiative, transportation plan and affordable housing program all serve as efforts more easily done on a local level than on a national one.

“One breakout session I went to was with the Chinese delegation. They had mayors from some of China’s biggest cities and they spoke to these issues and laid out their plans to address this. Now they are changing their transportation infrastructures and dealing with many of the value sets we are talking about," he says.

Skadron was invited to the climate summit for local leaders by the mayor of Paris. That’s partly because the city of Aspen is one of the few [local governments] in the United Sta tes that operates on energy that is 100 percent renewable.

To hear more of Skadron’s post-Paris interview, tune into Cross Currents today at 3:30.