Mayor de Blasio to give speech on climate change at Vatican

Mayor Bill de Blasio will be traveling to Rome next week where he will give a speech about climate change at the Vatican sponsored “Modern Slavery and Climate Change: the Commitment of the Cities” conference.

The mayor will be joining 65 mayors from around the world at the conference. It will be the mayor’s second trip to Italy since taking office.

Mayor de Blasio will be speaking about “OneNYC” a city iniative that “represents a unified vision for a sustainable, resilient, and equitable city, and charts the path for collectively achieving this goal.”

“Pope Francis has been one of the world’s most powerful voices on fighting income inequality, and Mayor de Blasio shares the Pope’s belief that addressing climate change is essential to that fight–because it disproportionately affects the poor,” Monica Klein, a representative of the mayor’s office wrote in a statement. “The Mayor’s 80×50 pledge and his OneNYC plan both focus on lifting up low-income New Yorkers as we combat climate change, because the Mayor knows that environmental and economic sustainability must go hand in hand.”

The cost of the trip –about $12,600 — will be covered by New York City.

Matt Lee is a Web producer for Metro New York. He writes about almost everything and anything. Talk to him (or yell at him) on Twitter so he doesn’t feel lonely@mattlee2669.