Denver’s Mayoral Candidates on the Issues: Environment

Lisa Calderón: “I was actually the first mayoral candidate to talk about scaling up our investment in the Office of Sustainability. Right now, it is budgeted for less than $400,000, and we know if we are going to make sustainability a priority in this city, it will need [many] more resources than that.”

Stephan “Chairman Seku” Evans: “I’ve never seen it this bad in my life. With this influx of people coming in—especially on the construction front—now we got 700,000 people here, people are coming from all over the country, some of them with cars that haven’t been emission tested. With the congestion and traffic and everything else, the brown cloud is getting bad again.”

Jamie Giellis: “Denver can be a leader in moving to a solar or geothermal approach to buildings, and we can start with our own infrastructure. But, ultimately, we can control a lot through our building and development code, as well, if we are willing to be bold about that and work with developers on those issues.”

Michael B. Hancock: “We set the 80 by 50: cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050; 100 hundred percent renewable energy by 2030. We’re doing things necessary to begin to achieve that….In the next term, you’re going to see us become more bold with electrifying the city.”

Kalyn Rose Heffernan: “What I know is that, again, our more marginalized, poor communities experience some of the worst air quality, land quality. Environmentally racist businesses that are allowed to go in there and just wreck everything, and this has been happening for a very long time.”

Penfield Tate III: “We have environmental air quality issues we need to address. I’ll be pushing to get Denver’s fleet totally electric by 2030….I’ll talk with the governor and the legislature because Polis, I know, has been interested in accelerating the emergence of people driving electric cars. I’d like to see if there’s something we can do to help accelerate that in conjunction with the state.”