EMERGENCY DECLARATION LETS COUNCIL PREPARE

AUSTRALIA has just had the hottest and driest year on record. The current bushfire crisis is unprecedented. These fires roll on through the hot and very dry environment. Rainforests are so dry they are burning.

The circumstances of these fires align with the predictions made by scientists over the past 20 years. Cutting world carbon emissions to zero by 2050 will not be enough to avoid a 1.5 to 2C temperature rise. Projects that actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere will be necessary. We must proceed to zero emissions with great speed and then start to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

The mayor and councillors who voted against declaring a climate emergency must reconsider their position. The point made by climate deniers is: what difference would it make to declare a climate emergency? The declaration would indicate to all CoGG managers the urgency of the situation. They would have to put climate change and its impact at the centre of their work and planning. As an example, if a climate emergency had been declared officers would have prepared a disaster plan. It would have assessed whether the resources needed to fight fires in our region were available and if not decide what had to be done to increase the resources. If the region was organised to handle large numbers of fire refugees in the event of a major fire. If we in the Barwon region have a fire emergency one feels the CoGG will be caught unprepared.

Peter Berrisford, Drysdale