“We decided tonight that we have made a commitment to take action on climate change, and that commitment will need to be accompanied by service plans and budgets.”
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The city council on Tuesday night approved a climate strategy to meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
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In a 9-6 vote, the council agreed to adopt the plan, which replaces a 2018 plan and has an investment price tag of $87 billion through 2050, though city managers have insisted city taxpayers They won’t pay your entire bill.
Councilmembers Sonya Sharp, Richard Pootmans, Dan McLean, Sean Chu, Jennifer Wyness and Andre Chabot voted against the sweeping measure that gained momentum after the council declared a climate emergency last fall.
“We decided tonight that we made a commitment to take action on climate change, and that commitment will need to be accompanied by service plans and budgets,” Mayor Jyoti Gondek said after the vote.
One of the supporters of the Calgary Climate Strategy: Pathways to 2050, Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal said it was a decision driven by deep emotional understanding and concern for the younger generation.
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“As I was leaving my house, my 12-year-old son came up to me and said, ‘Dad, for my sake and that of my generation, please vote Yes because you owe us because we’re running out of time.’
“We have already fallen behind in our fight for net zero and we don’t want to fall behind anymore.”
Proponents of the strategy and the city bureaucrats who drafted it point to the costly and devastating 2013 flood and 2020 hail storm that scientists say were made worse by the impacts of man-made climate change.
City managers have said the cost of climate impacts continues to grow and they estimate this could rise to as much as $8 billion annually by 2080 if climate change goes unchecked.
The strategy contains general guiding principles and direction to reach net zero, a mitigation plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and an adaptation plan to build climate resilience in Calgary communities. The plan would require a cumulative investment of about $87 billion by 2050, which is equivalent to about $3.1 billion annually.
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The strategy states that the City of Calgary cannot fund this on its own, but will need investment and resources from the federal and provincial governments, and the private sector.
“The $87 billion question was asked and answered multiple times today, that was just the administration’s way of showing that significant investment is needed for Calgary as a whole,” Gondek said.
“This is not money that is required only by the city of Calgary.”
But Ward 1 Count. Sonya Sharp noted that city managers cannot say how much of the $87 billion will be collected by local taxpayers and said many questions remain about how the goals of the strategy will be met.
“Our solution is simply to set more aggressive goals and also find tangible solutions, or how we’re going to meet those goals,” Sharp said.
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“So this is where I find this strategy very difficult and to pin down my reasoning for supporting something like this.”
The strategy incorporates too many uncertainties and Calgarians can’t be blamed for viewing it skeptically, Ward 6 Coun said. Richard Potmans.
“If the public isn’t in love, they’re not excited about the excitement of having their own self-generated net zero house (that’s a challenge),” Pootmans said.
“That’s a fantasy right now because the obvious costs, even with incentive programs, are still very high.”
Ward 2 County Jennifer Wyness questioned whether the strategy is political window dressing and questioned how much progress was made on the 2018 plan that set an 80% emissions reduction goal by 2050.
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“I am really challenged by what is being presented because Calgarians and Albertans are asking for a more specific plan that we can understand,” he said, noting that the plan cites experiences from other Canadian cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
“We’re just catching up with their own failures … we have a tremendous opportunity to learn from other people’s failures and I don’t see that in this,” Wyness said.
Before the vote, around 100 environmental activists gathered outside City Hall to demand that lawmakers approve the strategy.
The city council deserves credit for passing the measure, but it has yet to prove itself, most immediately by dealing with a decision to allow more suburban neighborhoods that would run counter to climate goals, said Dr. Noel Keough, co-founder of the Sustainable Calgary Society.
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“Those who voted in favor of the climate strategy have no rational choice but to reject the approval of even more car-dependent suburbs on the edges of the city that, according to the city’s own calculations, will increase carbon emissions when the Strategy Climate requires 40 percent. decline,” Keough said.
“The Council will have to demonstrate its commitment to climate action with a radical reorientation of historical spending priorities in setting the four-year budget in November.”
The Council and Calgarians have an obligation to do their part to address a crisis that will ripple across the globe for decades to come, Ward 7 Coun said. Terry Wong.
“I’m just starting from the perspective of the response that we all have as Calgarians to do our part, to improve our climate to improve our environment. And to improve the lives of generations,” she said.
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And Wong said the climate strategy is not meant to immediately deliver budgets and details on how its goals will be met.
“The work itself is a bit more urgent, but at the same time it recognizes that this is a strategic framework from which action plans, budgets, outcome measures, audits will emerge,” he said.
“This is not a plan in which you are drawing budgets, nor are you taking specific actions.”
Wong’s amendment to the council-approved motion calls for future public participation and independent audits of the strategy’s progress to ensure transparency.
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
