Dunedin could become the latest city to declare a climate emergency.
Councillors will debate declaring a climate emergency at a meeting of the Dunedin City Council tomorrow.
A report prepared by council senior policy analyst Sean Jacobs will be presented to Dunedin councillors explaining the advantages and disadvantages of declaring an emergency, and Extinction Rebellion Otepoti Dunedin member Jennifer Shulzitski will speak to councillors before they vote.
In his report, Mr Jacobs said the declaration would raise awareness about the impacts of climate change and increase the public's recognition of the extent and speed of the actions needed.
It could also create a greater mobilisation of resources and highlight what was already being done to combat climate change.
Any declaration could reinforce the work the council was already doing. As well as having a goal of Dunedin being net-carbon zero by 2050, the council has allocated $1million to improve its ability to plan for climate change.
The report recommends that, instead of developing a climate emergency plan, the council include elements of any new plan in its existing climate change strategy.
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If the councillors vote to bring this in I trust that Ms Bidrose will ensure that all work required to be undertaken by the council will be deprioritised for at least two years. Just make sure that nobody questions any council staff lest the questioner be accused of harassment and bullying.
In other news, all residents and businesses in the DCC area can expect to see rate increases over the coming years to combat the self-declared climate emergency. These rate increases will not be calculated with the normal rates increases so that the council can claim to be keeping within their self-imposed limits.
The joke train rolls into Dunedin. The only emergency is the gullibility of our elected representatives, or their cynicism in going along with this scare mongering.
Fundamentalists wearing “end is nigh” sandwich boards have always been in our communities. ! Repent or face cataclysm !. It is rare that we let the sandwich board wearers run our towns.
Just a bit of clarification here. From my reading of the agenda for this meeting, the report which asks the elected Council to make a decision on whether or not to declare a climate change emergency comes from a decision of the DCC Chief Executive. So the senior policy analyst may have written it but he was just following the boss's instructions. Extinction Rebellion Otepoti Dunedin member, Jennifer Shulzitski, is indeed speaking to the Council before they vote but so am I and any other Public Forum speakers who happened to put their name down to do so. The fact that Agenda Item 17 Decision 'whether to declare a climate change emergency' happens to be on the agenda for the same meeting is not that significant. If it were, it would look as if Extinction Rebellion Otepoti Dunedin have 'friends at court' and were getting unfair influence with the Council. Any Public Forum speaker can refer to an Agenda Item if they get the timing right. The other speaker at Public Forum this meeting is a representative from Seniors Against Climate Change. Link to the Agenda: https://infocouncil.dunedin.govt.nz/Open/2019/06/CNL_20190625_AGN_1017_A...
"Crisis, what crisis?", ask the dissenters. Unfortunately science doesn't care about the politics and the continued denials are no match for the mounting evidence of major disruption unfolding as we debate.