GREAT JOB on Waco Sustainability Board Revision COMMENTS
From Alan Northcutt:
The response to our call for members to comment on the Waco City Council Sustainable Resource Practices Advisory Board revision, ORD-2020-792, was fantastic. In our last email I pointed out the extreme weaknesses of the revision, especially the lack of any GHG emissions target (or even mention), meeting only 4 times per year rather than monthly, and lack of affiliation with the Sierra Club Ready for 100 program. The proposed revision was vague and did not even mention the terms climate change or global warming. And of course a member of our organization should be on this board, as we are the only civic organization addressing the climate crisis.
It was fantastic to hear the comments of seven Friends of the Climate read into the record. I want to thank each of you for your efforts, especially during this troubling time:
So where do we stand? We know that beginning in early 2018 we pushed the City to start work on decarbonization. But now it seems that they refuse to pick up the pace and end the climate silence. As several of us said: if you can't use the term climate change, you can't defeat it.
I assume the 2nd reading will happen in a couple of weeks and I will consider a strategy for us and be in touch. Kelly Palmer before the election told me she was concerned about the climate crisis. I don't know when her term starts, but I am now reaching out to her to see if we can get some help from her seat on the Council. But whether we see the immediate action we demand on this, we know our comments enter their consciousness and will yield eventual progress. Science and reality will be victorious.
It was fantastic to hear the comments of seven Friends of the Climate read into the record. I want to thank each of you for your efforts, especially during this troubling time:
- Skip Londos
- Matt Helton (sorry if misspelled, difficult to understand the reader)
- Jack Bowers
- Harrison Ward
- David Achterhof
- William Matta
I was very proud that our organization did speak out on this most vital of issues. The individual comments were similar to the points I outlined above, with wording unique for each member. So what was the Council's response? There was NO discussion and the revision passed UNANIMOUSLY on first reading. I find that pretty amazing & I am feeling more and more like the citizen comment requirement is viewed only as a formality by the Council. I have been commenting almost every session on climate issues and the Council has never not passed an item unanimously, and there is almost never any discussion.
So where do we stand? We know that beginning in early 2018 we pushed the City to start work on decarbonization. But now it seems that they refuse to pick up the pace and end the climate silence. As several of us said: if you can't use the term climate change, you can't defeat it.
I assume the 2nd reading will happen in a couple of weeks and I will consider a strategy for us and be in touch. Kelly Palmer before the election told me she was concerned about the climate crisis. I don't know when her term starts, but I am now reaching out to her to see if we can get some help from her seat on the Council. But whether we see the immediate action we demand on this, we know our comments enter their consciousness and will yield eventual progress. Science and reality will be victorious.
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