By Staff
April 22, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
Everyone is now on board the climate change train – except for those south of us who are still arguing that climate change is part of the fake news business.
On Tuesday, April 23rd at 6:30pm city council will debate and pass a motion to declare that the city is declaring a Climate Emergency in Burlington. This in a city that is part way through a pilot private tree bylaw in one part of the city.
In a recent article in the New York Times magazine I read a paragraph that put climate change in hard to grasp black and white – we have 11 years to reverse the rate at which we are warming the earth. To make it even worse – Canada has been warning its territory at a rate twice as fast as most other countries.
Burlington Green said in a statement that: “Declaring a climate emergency sends the signal that Burlington will take a stand on climate action, and acts as a beacon for our Council’s decision-making through a climate action lens.”
Hamilton declared a climate emergency last week.
The council debate will be interesting – how many members of this council are driving electric cars?
How much money is this city going to spend during its term of office to cut down drastically on the Co2 emissions?
How many police cars are electric?
How many school buses are electric?
Will every vehicle in the city fleet, include Burlington Hydro in that, be electric within 18 months?
What hope is there when we read that Alberta and Ontario are fighting the federal carbon tax plans.
Voice your Support and urge council to get beyond the talk talk stage.
Hi Pepper. Did you receive my response to Phillip Wooster? I submitted it 2 days ago. Thnsk you.
Alfred. Your statement tells us everything we need to know about you. Time for you to go fishing and leave the future to those who will have to live in it.
Steve: You are way off base. They are making great progress. In 2017 China cancelled or closed down 103 coal fired plants. In the three years between 2017 and 2020, they will spend USD $360 Billion (~$500 Billion CAD) on renewable energy. This year (2019), they will build 1 million all-electric cars. That number will ramp up each year to reach 5 million all-electric cars a year by 2025. By the way, on a per capita basis Canadians are the largest emitters of CO2 on the planet. We are higher than the US, Australia or any other industrialized country in the world. Do your research.
Really Roman? A report from the BBC indicated that China was increasing its coal fired plants by 25%. This was in September, 2018. BTW, what is the specific source of your “data”?
This motion coming to Council is strictly “symbolic”. The last thing we need from this Council is another symbolic gesture. As Joe Gaetan indicated if this council is not prepared to put funds into initiatives to make changes why bother?
Perhaps the money going to get people into parks should have been used for this?
If somehow we could reduce, today, 100 percent carbon production from Canada it would have almost zero affect on the planet. While Canada falls on its sword, China, and India, two of the biggest polluters on the planet, are doing very little to combat climate change. Oh I know, China announces it will stop a few coal fired plants, all the while going full speed ahead on ten times that number to be built. The world needs to switch to nuclear until the problem of unreliable solar and wind is perfected.
The rate at which Burlington is identifying, removing and replacing Ash trees with Emerald Ash Borer does not fit with climate emergency thinking. It takes a year or two to identify an Ash tree with the insects that kill the trees along with a year to mark the trees with a green X. Added to this time is the year or more to remove all of the branches while the trunk remains standing for another year or so until it is removed. But the Stump remains in the ground and not removed for another year or more. Resulting in approximately 5+ years or more from identification till complete removal. Then we still have to wait to see how long before another replacement tree is planted. If it is such an emergency then why the excessive wait to install another CO2 processing device (tree)?
On Alfeed’s comment: Amazing – I think he actually believes what he wrote
While most forward thinking cities have banned diesel, Burlington Transit are still buying diesel buses?!
https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Burlington_Transit
Can anyone explain why there is climate change occuring on planets were there are no humans? Or how we had 5 ice ages before man was on earth.? I also noticed that the northern Canada tree line has not moved significantly. If we believe the doomsday folks and the Arctic ice is melting. Should the trees not be growing further North. Inconvenient truths that can’t be explained by the climate clowns. Population of earth is over 8 million and rising. Famine and disease will get us well before this biggest fraud ever invented by man does. Canada has 320 Billion trees, 9 thousand per person. Or 9% of the worlds forests. Burlington has approx. 4 million trees. I think we are doing fine. We are solutions were there is no problem. The person that coined the phrase ” a sucker is born every day” must have known the power of social media ahead of his time.
Sorry – this is just one melted iceberg short of absurd. It smacks of one rookie Councillor trying to find “the right brand” and ride it to greener pastures. Far better to focus on the things that the City can reasonably do to curb its energy consumption, increase its green space and provide a cohesive rainwater management plan. This has the acrid stench of political opportunism.
In response to the Climate Emergency declaration, apparently The Mayor of Guelph believed the city should be focusing on policies that deal with climate change, rather than declaring an emergency around it. And I agree, actions speak louder than words.
COB and especially council should be prepared to put its money where its mouth resides, in its budget in its Official Plan, in its purchasing behaviors and so on. One proof of council members commitment to the Emergency will in their personal actions like replacing their vehicles with all electric or hybrid vehicles. Chicken Little had been convinced the sky was falling and whipped the farmyard into mass hysteria, the moral of that fable was, not to be a “Chicken”, but to have courage. In an Emergency, courage, strong, unequivocal and immediate action is required, nothing less is acceptable, failing to do so will jeopardize the mission and will do more harm than good.
The Leeds condo I live in is wrapping up a plan that started 3 years ago to replace all common area lighting with led lights. The latest phase involved replacing over 200 fixtures. No need to respond to an Emergency, it just made sense.
On the positive side – the new council has approved more transit service which is the best way to reduce car use and GHG emissions.