Brent Barrett’s Home Planet: Let’s make 2023 Palmy’s biggest year yet for climate action

Copenhagen is a city Palmy could learn a lot from. Photo / @travel2copenhagen

OPINION:

As we journey into the 2020s, there’s more local support than ever for a bold response to the climate crisis. This is good to know, because there are now 8 billion of us humans, and we’re heading into the hottest century civilisation has ever faced.

That means we have choices to make about how big the climate crisis becomes, and how we respond as a community. While some progress is made at global climate conferences, we can most easily influence what we do in our personal lives, and our local communities and city.

I read recently that cities create 70 per cent of global emissions. Some cities have made real progress in building thriving, resilient cities while driving down emissions. Bloomberg recently reported that 30 leading cities have made an average 22 per cent reduction in emissions. Copenhagen alone achieved a 61 per cent improvement, while also lifting quality of life and prosperity.

How are these cities achieving these amazing wins? Not by accident. Far from it. They’re organising and taking deliberate, concerted action; action driven primarily by citizens, forcing their politicians and power brokers to act.

This may have you thinking; how might we build our best possible response to the climate crisis here in Palmerston North?

Great question! There is already progress we can celebrate. After many years of emissions growth, we’ve seen emissions largely level over the past five years. That’s fantastic news. The local evidence says emissions growth can be curbed, and shows how we can drive emissions down in future.

Which is what we need to do. Without change, every year as a city we will continue to produce and dump more than 500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere. And that accelerates the breakdown of the climate system. So that has to change.

We need to cut emissions, and tap into the many health, social and economic benefits of doing so. At the same time, we need to build environmental, social and economic resilience to cope with the impacts already in the pipeline. Impacts like major flooding, increased exposure to heat and drought, forced migration, and more severe storms. There are big challenges ahead.

Fortunately, many of the climate actions we can take will be win-win, cutting emissions and building resilience. That’s a huge advantage.

As we look to 2023, I’m inviting you to make a decision. A decision to actively help build community-wide climate action here in Palmerston North, and to keep building until our city becomes a recognised climate action leader.

Climate action has lots of opportunities for people with all sorts of interests and talents: creators, supporters, planners, analysts, organisers, advocates, dreamers, campaigners and connectors, to name a few.

There are huge opportunities for existing networks, groups and businesses to be a positive part of growing our climate action.

For a taster, there are easy actions you can take today, like having your say on the council’s proposal to combat suburban sprawl, and our proposal to improve safety in Featherston St.

There’s also access to local connections through Environment Network Manawatū, Te Pū Harakeke (formerly Community Services Council), Sustainable Business Network and others, ready to link you with like-minded people, spark inspiration, and provide information on how you can get in on the action.

So please, reflect as we go into summer on what role you will play in making our city and community a climate action leader. And please make a commitment to being part of growing positive climate action locally in the year ahead.

We owe it to ourselves and our families and friends to make 2023 Palmy’s biggest year yet for climate action.

Brent Barrett is an environmental advocate, Green city councillor and scientist. The views expressed here are his own.