Town youth point to a world on fire

The town would do well to heed the emergency call.

The climate events this week illustrate the urgency behind the Climate Emergency Resolution that the Greenwich Environmental Advocacy Group (GEAG) brought to the Board of Selectmen on June 23. The world is witness to a planet on fire. Record high temperatures at dangerous levels are wreaking havoc everywhere, causing severe drought, unprecedented melting of polar ice, rising sea levels and flooding. Also death.

This is not just a normal weather pattern. It reflects an accelerating trend in global warming and climate change that threatens our very survival. According to an August 2021 report from the Geneva-based International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), extreme heatwaves that in the past occurred once every 10 years are now occurring at 2.8 times that rate. Climate scientists warn that we, the inhabitants of this planet, must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and phase them out altogether by 2050, if we are to avoid catastrophe.

The GEAG Resolution, carefully drafted by Greenwich young people over the past year, offers an example of what it means to “think globally, and act locally.” In this resolution, the drafters invoke the existential global threat, and call upon our local government to incorporate this sense of urgency and planetary awareness into future local planning.

“As an elected Town leader, I want to give all credit to the Resolution’s drafters, and at the same time heed their request that I fulfill my public responsibilities,” Greenwich selectman Janet Stone McGuigan said in an email. “It is right to give our youth a voice in their future, and wrong to place the burden of fixing the problems created by past generations on their shoulders.”

McGuigan, who is also co-chair of the Greenwich Sustainability Committee, called the Resolution “impressive work.” The Sustainability Committee, whose other co-chair is Greenwich Director of Environmental Affairs Pat Sesto, has endorsed the resolution.

On July 14, the resolution came before the Board of Selectmen for a second reading. Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo expressed concerns about some of the wording, and the board postponed action to allow time for GEAG to meet with town leaders in a good faith effort to address concerns about the wording.

The Resolution begins with a series of “WHEREAS” clauses, all of which are statements of fact. One set of such factual statements is among those about which Camillo has expressed concern: “WHEREAS, black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, as well as low-income communities, minority communities in particular, in the United States and around the world have suffered the gravest consequences of the extractive economy since its inception and also suffer first and most acutely from climate disruption and environmental hazards, including air, water, and land pollution; and WHEREAS, higher levels of global warming lead to greater constraints on societies and climate change increases the threat of poverty and food insecurity…”

While the consequences of climate change affect all life on the planet, it would be shameful to eliminate this wording. That would be to whitewash, or sweep under the rug, the inequities that are a fact of this life and the disproportionate impact climate change has on certain communities.

Another concern that has been expressed about the wording is the very use of the word “emergency.” But if this isn’t an emergency, what is? This is an immediate life and death situation as expressed in another of the “WHEREAS” clauses: “WHEREAS, in March 2022, IPCC climate scientists said, ‘the scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future’...”

McGuigan notes that some of the Resolution drafters have graduated from high school and will soon be off to new adventures elsewhere. “I think it’s only fair that the Board of Selectmen take this up for a vote no later than the end of the summer,” she said. “These young community members should see their effort to its conclusion.”

Hopefully, these young people will persuade town leaders to heed this call for an emergency response. The window of opportunity to avert disaster is almost closed.