When Donald Trump abandoned American climate action, many US cities countered by accelerating their local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and adapt to the extreme weather events it causes. As unprecedented temperatures and fires afflict much of the northern half of the planet and impose increasing costs on local governments, can Hamilton respond in a similar way to Ontario’s elimination of the cap and trade climate initiative and all its beneficial programs?
Last month’s provincial de-funding of the Hamilton-Burlington-Mohawk College joint climate management plan is not the only hit. Other climate-friendly programs being financially jeopardized include: expanded bike lanes, upgrades to social housing, school retrofits and Hamilton’s share of a $100 million municipal grant program. Individual residents have also been hit by the elimination of home energy subsidies. And the chances of Queen’s Park rather than local taxpayers paying for infrastructure hit by extreme weather events have clearly diminished.
Councillors are awaiting a staff report that could help residents manage the costs of insulation, windows and other home energy conservation steps. Proposed by Environment Hamilton, this would provide residents with low-interest loans and allow repayment via property taxes that would likely be more than offset by energy cost savings. The loan would travel with the house and impose no net cost on the city or its taxpayers.
Councillors have also recently moved to set up a reserve fund for local climate damages. This was proposed by Chad Collins as a way of spreading out the increasing costs of extreme weather to taxpayers, but a suggestion by Aidan Johnson pointed to a potentially more appropriate and much richer source of funding.
Collins noted that “each year the city and its citizens are affected by climate related challenges, including flood, erosion, extreme heat, ice storms, higher lake levels (and storm surges)” and that “transportation, telecommunication services, energy and water infrastructure [are all] at risk in the face of more intense extreme weather events driven by a changing climate.”
Johnson, a lawyer, suggested “one way for us to find money to put into this reserve is to contemplate the possibility of legal action against the oil and gas giants whose corporate activity is responsible for a significant part of the erosion of our infrastructure tied to climate change.”
Such legal actions have been launched by cities like New York, San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado. Johnson referenced media reports and said he has discussed it with the city legal department.
“Oil and gas giants have profited from climate change,” he noted. “There is a legal argument to be made there about their obligation to fix the infrastructure that has been eroded as a result of their activity.”
Along similar lines, New York and other municipalities are ending all financial investments in the fossil fuel sector as part of a world-wide divestment movement that has already denied over $6 trillion to the wealthy companies responsible for extracting, transporting and processing oil, coal and natural gas. They were joined by the entire country of Ireland last month. July also saw Toronto city council directing its staff to look at “responsible investment best practices, excluding fossil fuels from the portfolio, and actively investing in clean energy and climate solutions.”
Hamilton could also look to climate initiatives in other Ontario cities which scored higher than Hamilton in a report card issued last month by the Urban Climate Alliance. That coalition of citizen environmental groups compared five municipalities on twenty-two measures and found Hamilton is only using seven. For example it was the only city missing “a communications strategy that sets out details regarding how plan progress will be formally reported on both to elected officials and to the broader community.”
The nearly $2 billion raised during the 18 months of the cancelled cap and trade program was legislatively required to only be used for measures that are “reasonably likely to reduce, or support the reduction of, greenhouse gas emissions.” That included $100 million “to support emissions-reductions projects for municipalities.”
The now unfunded Wynne government allocation plan also set aside $377 million for the Green Ontario Fund to provide grants to homeowners for high-efficiency windows and other home improvements. And it directed grants of $200 million “to retrofit buildings across 72 school boards”, $93 million “to enhance commuter cycling corridors”, $85 million for a “social housing apartment improvement program”, and $64 million for a “hospital energy efficiency program”.