Last year was the third consecutive that broke global heat records; last month was far warmer than normal in Ontario; and February has seen unbelievable temperatures in the Canadian high arctic and other parts of the globe. But climate change is absent from the city’s draft operating budget except where it turns down two small funding requests.
Twice so far this month, temperatures in the high arctic have spiked to 30 Celsius degrees above normal, accelerating a trend in the last decade that has seen a 900 percent increase in the melting of glaciers on Canada’s northern-most island chain. With a fifth of the world’s ice located in Canada, the country has become the third largest contributor to sea level rise.
The US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is now projecting that global sea level could climb by 2.5 metres this century – far above the less than one metre forecast in the 2014 report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
Extreme temperatures are also being recorded on the other side of the globe where suburbs of Sydney, Australia faced heat this month that climbed over 47C – a full five degrees higher than anything ever recorded in February.
NOAA released data last week that January was the third hottest on record, a conclusion confirmed by NASA. Accompanying mapping showed average temperatures across Ontario and nearly all of Canada except the coasts were about four Celsius hotter than the base period of 1951 to 1980.
Hamilton’s 2017 budget’s only direct mention of the word “climate” is in an extensive list of “major challenges” facing the public health department that includes “climate change impacts / storm events”. Public Health is the section of the city bureaucracy charged with providing an assessment of climate risks and appropriate city responses that was requested three and a half years ago but still hasn’t been delivered.
The “non-recommended” section of the budget includes two items with indirect references to climate. One seeks $40,000 for “clean and green” work to implement the city’s new 25-year vision called Our Future Hamilton that has replaced the Vision 2020 sustainability plan.
“There is currently no resource to implement the Community Vision,” states the denied budget request. “If the enhancement request is not approved, it will very likely impact the reputation of the City of Hamilton in the eyes of residents and community partners as a lot of community engagement and public feedback had gone into Our Future Hamilton work [and] residents and community partners want to see the City start moving some of these community ideas and aspirations forward.”
The same section of “not recommended” budget items turns down $125,000 for the street lighting program that promises to reduce consultant costs by expanding city staff to four from the current three. Conversion of street lighting to LEDs is a major initiative of the program and the funding request aims to explore “off-grid options, control systems [and] technology opportunities” to reduce energy use.
Although not formally identified as climate-related, this year’s promised funding boost for the HSR is in jeopardy as city council tries to limit tax increases to below the rate of inflation. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario and one of the two largest across the country along with the oil and gas sector.
The latter sector – the fastest growing source of emissions in the country – has local links in an Enbridge oil pipeline expansion that spans 35 kilometres of rural Hamilton that was approved last month by the National Energy Board. It is part of a 143 kilometre export pipe from Hamilton to Seneca, New York that is approved to carry heavy crude from the Alberta tar sands.
With the exception of Matthew Green, city councillors have not opposed the project. Council did seek to have the old pipe removed, but that request was ignored by the NEB which accepted Enbridge’s promise to decommission it instead and permanently maintain responsibility for the pipe.