Daniella Levine Cava Returns To the Global Environmental Stage

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is back in the international spotlight after joining a congressional House committee for a recent hearing on climate action, where she testified on strategies that can propel environmental goals forward at the local level.

Levine Cava virtually joined the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology for its “Now or Never: The Urgent Need for Ambitious Climate Action” event April 26. It was her second time in the global arena, after attending the November 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where she announced that her administration would shepherd the creation of the world’s first chief heat officer.

During the three-hour event last Thursday morning, the mayor shared the stage with leaders in the field of climate science, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s senior advisor for climate, Ko Barrett, who also serves as vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Jeremy Harrell, chief strategy officer of ClearPath, a nonprofit that focuses on clean energy; and Dominique David-Chavez, Ph.D., assistant professor of indigenous natural resource stewardship at Colorado State University.

Although many of the committee’s questions went to Barrett and Harrell by virtue of their involvement with big-name, research-led organizations, Levine Cava proved to be the hearing’s bedrock for subnational testimony.

“In Miami-Dade our environment is our economy,” said the mayor, alluding to the Magic City’s status as a year-round destination for beach lovers. “It’s what attracts our visitors, it fuels our prosperity and truthfully, we are the canary in the coal mine for climate change.”

At the same time, she said, it’s the county’s coastal location that makes Miami-Dade so vulnerable to sea-level rise and extreme weather, especially hurricanes.

To that end, Levine Cava cited countywide initiatives that have launched since her election in 2020, including ongoing work to electrify county buses, extend the public sewer system to replace failing septic tanks, and expand tree coverage as protection against extreme heat. She also referenced a continued focus on restoring water flow in the Everglades and conserving the health of Biscayne Bay.

And she said she wants to dive deeper still by exploring equitable solutions that will address coastal property damage, saltwater intrusion and health risks caused by heat and pollution.

All of these efforts should ultimately contribute to the committee’s overarching goal of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming in the next century, as well as to adapt to those changes that have already been deemed irreversible.

Several of the committee’s members expressed a degree of pessimism – or perhaps, realism – about meeting that goal. Of three recent IPCC reports, together focusing on physical changes to the earth, resulting risks, and methods to adapt and mitigate, one makes the alarming and somewhat unprecedented observation that the planet is already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.

A common trend throughout the hearing was that the United States is but one country in an expansive global network – and that one nation’s efforts, no matter how large, could be undermined by a neighbor with a smaller will or capacity to cooperate.

Republican California Rep. Jay Obernolte seemed particularly discouraged by the IPCC reports, insisting that they paint a bleak picture. He said his confidence in the feasibility of possible solutions is low, especially as developing countries inevitably use up more energy in their efforts toward economic and social growth.

Obernolte wasn’t the only one to express concern over the interplay between individual countries.

Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas, also a Republican, encouraged panel members to remain wary of actions that – although often referred to as obvious and necessary solutions – would disempower the United States in the global market.

He fears that passing punitive or prohibitive measures against fossil fuel production would give Russia the upper hand on natural gas and fund President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Lucas also advises against sending taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, which he believes only fuels the Chinese Communist Party, as its emissions continue to increase despite the country’s pledges to the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That sentiment was mirrored by California Rep. Michael Garcia, who expressed frustration toward what he sees as the futility of efforts undercut by China’s actions – although the country itself has vowed to have its emissions peak before the decade is up.

Barrett responded to concerns with a fair degree of optimism, insisting that the committee look to lower-scale initiatives – such as those implemented by Levine Cava – for hope.

With that, the mayor emphasized the need for collaboration between all layers of government. She commended Gov. Ron DeSantis for his recent last-minute veto against a net metering bill that would have threatened financial incentives for residential solar energy.

Levine Cava also made a special shoutout to local nonprofit Catalyst Miami, which she founded in 1996 to advocate on behalf of underserved communities. The organization has since begun to grapple with concerns in environmental justice, such as the displacement of low-income families living on elevated lands as a result of rising seas – an issue known as climate gentrification.