A movement has quietly been taking shape around the world among city councils declaring a climate emergency, with several towns and cities in Ontario and Canada signing up.
“Climate emergency” demonstration in Quebec. Source
Vancouver city council made the declaration January 17, and Halifax on January 29, and Richmond, BC March 19. In Ontario, Kingston claimed first spot on the list according to a March 5 story in the Kingston Whig-Standard, but Hamilton joined the list shortly after, and Guelph is lining up as this story is being prepared. According to the site climateemergencydeclaration.org, as of February 2019, more than 300 municipalities throughout Québec, representing more than 70 per cent of the provincial population have endorsed a Déclaration d’Urgence Climatique.
The movement seems to have been originated by a site hosted in Australia, theclimatemobilization.org, which as of March 21 lists 10 cities in the US as having joined, including Los Angeles; 20 in the UK, including London; and 8 in Australia.
The move is largely symbolic, made to acknowledge publicly the growing and increasingly urgent scientific consensus over the severity of effects to be expected from a global temperature increase that now seems all but certain to pass the 1.5 degree C mark set as a target maximum under the recent Paris Accord. However, it does not mean that practical action won’t follow. A CBC story March 18 said that, pending a final city council vote, Hamilton has vowed to treat climate change as an existential crisis. It will establish a task force across numerous departments and try to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Trillium District Councillor Robert Kiley, who put forward the motion in Kingston, said climate change is a threat to social, economic and environmental stability: “We need to act. That is undeniably the message around the horseshoe tonight,” he said. “If we pass this and do not act for five, 10 years, none of us deserve to be re-elected.”
“The rational response to an emergency is to act like it is an emergency,” Kingston Climate Hub co-founder Colleen Gareau added.