Another World Environment Day has come and gone with
Local Governments around the nation joining with their communities to mark the day with a variety of activities and, in many cases, launching new and innovative programs. For a number of years, our June edition has featured Environmental Management to coincide with World Environment Day, and once again this edition has a raft of excellent examples of councils taking local action all year round to address the major global threat of climate change.
Speaking at Local Government Managers Australia’s recent National Congress, scientist and environmentalist, Dr Tim Flannery, left few delegates in any doubt that climate change is the most pressing issue facing our planet. He said there are two critical stages in relation to climate change – the tipping point, where action can still be taken, and the point of no return, where it is impossible to go back.
He said we have already passed the tipping point and are just 20 to 25 years away from the point of no return.
“In the 1970s the north polar ice caps began melting,” he said. “By 2005, the rate of melt had increased fourfold, and this northern melting season, which has only just begun, is already catastrophic.”
He said that by September this year, half of the remaining ice in the Arctic will be lost, having huge implications for our entire climate system (see article on page 18).
Rising sea levels, increased extreme weather events, more severe and prolonged droughts, agricultural areas no longer viable, world food shortages, environmental refugees, loss of biodiversity, the list of dire consequences facing our world as we now know it continues.
Reducing carbon emissions is paramount to avoid reaching that point of no return and many councils around the world have set themselves a target to be carbon neutral well in advance of their national government.
Head of London’s Climate Change Agency, Allan Jones, (see article on page 22 on the City of London’s sustainable renewable energy program) put the current situation succinctly when he said, “While national governments are still talking about it, cities can get on and do it.”
Local Governments are best placed, there at the coalface (no pun intended), to ensure that more and more of their residents and local businesses start treating every day as ‘world environment day’ and shaping their day to day activities around this.
