A newly formed pro-environment group met for the first time Thursday with the goal of inspiring Evanston to become more eco-friendly.

The Global Warming Group of the Network for Evanston’s Future wants the city to sign the Kyoto Treaty. The treaty would involve reducing the city’s emissions of gases that contribute to global warming to seven percent below the 1990 levels by the year 2010. About two dozen people attended the group’s first meeting at Lake Street Church, 607 Lake St.

“It’s a very positive (meeting),” Evanston resident Hal Mead said. “As opposed to blaming someone – it has nothing to do with that. We have work to do, and we all need to work together to deal with (global warming).”

The Kyoto Treaty has three criteria. First, participating cities must urge federal and state governments to put in place policies and programs to meet or exceed the target reductions. Second, the cities must push Congress to pass bipartisan greenhouse gas reduction legislation. Finally, the city must work to meet or exceed goals for target emissions by taking action in its own community.

Unlike other countries, the United States has signed the protocol on a city and state level, rather than nationwide. In February 2005, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels sent letters to 400 city mayors asking them to sign the protocol and try to meet its targets. So far 224 mayors have signed it. The Evanston group was especially interested in exploring what other cities that have adopted the protocol have done to meet the emissions targets.

“Some are just signing it and it has no meaning,” said Andrea Orcutt, who organized the group. “But it really needs to say (if) you sign it, it means that you have a plan of how you’re going to do it, where you are now and what your goal is, so you can measure whether or not you’ve reached the goal.”

The inspiration for the group came from an Earth Day meeting on April 2, when a Portland, Ore., city official came to discuss what the city was doing to improve the environment, Orcutt said. The attendees at that meeting broke into various groups, each focusing on a different aspect of the environment. Thursday’s meeting was arranged by one of those new groups.

“In 20 years, a generation from now, it’ll be a radically different place,” Mead said. “I would hope that it would be a better place for everyone, but I don’t know – When I was born there were 2 billion people on the earth and there are now over 6 billion people on the earth. It’s a different world.”

The meeting began with Orcutt explaining the evidence for and possible effects of global warming. Orcutt said 2005 was the hottest year in terms of average earth temperature since temperature was first recorded in 1880, and he said six of the hottest years have occurred in the last eight years. Two possible effects of this warming are species extinction and the melting of glaciers.

“There is an ecological bomb ticking,” Orcutt said. “We need to know what we’re up against.”

The second part of the meeting consisted of attendees breaking into sub-groups, which focused on a variety of aspects from communicating a plan to city leaders to showing residents how they can help the environment in their everyday lives. Group members can work on whatever area they are most interested in. The next meeting will occur on May 25.

“The way we operate, (the group) goes (in the direction of) where people want to put their energy,” Orcutt said. “What gets done depends on what people are interested in. It’s just a method of organizing people to work on whatever they want to do.”

Reach Annie Martin at [email protected].