A group of Mount Alexander Shire residents with serious concerns about a lack of urgency by government at all levels in addressing climate change is calling on the shire council to declare a climate change emergency.
The newly formed Mount Alexander Climate Emergency Team is urging council to take a stand and join the 36 other councils across the country that have made a climate change emergency declaration.
The local petition calls for council to: declare a climate emergency; commit to a target of 100 per cent renewable energy for council operations by 2025; and commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions for the community by 2030.
MACET member Malcolm Robins said the group had serious concerns about the existential threat to civilisation and the natural world that we all face as the consequence of uncontrolled human-induced global warming.
With support from Greenpeace the group initiated the petition about three weeks ago via a web page and, in conjunction with local climate action group ‘Central Victorian Climate Action’, via a stall at the July Castlemaine Artists Market.
The groups have continued to hold stalls at each subsequent Saturday at Wesley Hill Market to collect signatures for the petition and to also increase community awareness of the forthcoming September 20 school children-led ‘Strike 4 Climate’.
The petition is gaining momentum.
“Our campaign has already obtained nearly 400 signatures and we plan to continue the stall at Wesley Hill at least until the school strike,” Mr Robins said.
“We will also be participating in Maldon’s ‘Car free Carnivale for Climate Action’ on September 22.”
“The failure of the Australian federal government to introduce effective policies to address this threat despite successive governments having been well aware of it has led us to conclude that to minimise this existential threat we need to mobilise our community, individual by individual, to demand from local government real solutions that aren’t just ambitions on paper contained in periodically updated policy statements.
“We also need to urge our government to agree to invest sufficient resources to achieve the most important time-critical outcomes to maximise the probability of preserving an inhabitable, biodiverse and sustainable natural environment for our children, grandchildren and future generations of life on earth.”
The group aim to submit the petition to council later this year.
