Climate drops off city agenda
Napa County, California, on August 18, 2020. CREDIT: Noah Berger / AP
A record Atlantic hurricane season plus unprecedented fires on the west coast, in the Amazon basin and north of the Arctic Circle, have intensified the warnings of global climate change. But a year and a half after Hamilton declared a climate emergency and nine months after promises to ensure a climate lens would be applied to city decisions, there is almost no evidence of implementation.
The west coast climate fires in California alone have now burned nearly 3.5 million acres (50% more than any previous year) and over 6000 structures with the fire season far from over. That’s barely a quarter of what has been lost in the Amazon this year (also a record). Siberia is also enduring record heat and incineration as did Australia in December and January.
This year’s evidence of the climate crisis includes a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, the calving earlier this month of a Greenland iceberg the size of Hamilton, and a prediction that one billion people will be forced to migrate by mid-century. Global average temperatures have ranked highest or second highest in every month this year, and an investment group worth S47 Trillion is demanding a carbon cutting commitment from the world’s major polluters.
But in Hamilton a review of dozens of staff reports for over twenty major meeting agendas in August and September turns up just two that say anything at all about climate – and both those just in passing.
It was pretty much impossible to not mention climate where it did appear. One report was on the $31 million repair bill for sections of the waterfront trail damaged by high water levels which made passing reference to “improving both the trail and shoreline’s resiliency to future climate impacts”. Climate could have also been cited but wasn’t when Councillor Wilson pushed through a motion for compassionate city grants to those subjected to the August 3 home flooding storm.
The second report that mentioned climate change was in a modified housing and homelessness action plan. The update was required because of new provincial rules put in place in early 2018 by the Wynne government well before city council decided Hamilton is confronted with a climate emergency. Those new rules demanded inclusion of a section on climate change which points to predictions of “an average temperature increase of 3-5C for the Greater Toronto Area over the next 35-40 years.”
The report reminds us that City Housing Hamilton is taking some substantial emission reduction measures, albeit primarily with provincial monies. The Wynne government provided over seven million dollars for building retrofits in city-owned housing. Staff estimate once completed this will cut emissions by more than 1.2 million kilograms of carbon dioxide per year.
Especially noteworthy is the absence of climate considerations in any of the planning committee reports endorsing a half dozen development proposals, or in any of those recommending large grants to help builders cleanup past pollution on their lands.
The only time the word “climate” even appeared in the planning division reports was in references to “the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change” – the name of the former provincial ministry before the Ford government eliminated the climate change part. That was in a report recommending approval of a new road in Ancaster which has been repeatedly delayed because of the threat it poses to endangered wildlife habitat.
Find this article on the CATCH website here, along with the full archive of CATCH articles.
