DEAR News Of The Area,
I BELIEVE Council can no longer claim to be a climate leader but are now a climate action laggard.
In the last two meetings, Council have deliberately set their intent to scale back climate action commitments from previous terms of Council.
Bellingen Shire Council, on the other hand, is leading the City of Coffs Harbour in meeting its targets, community-led plans and professional networks.
While I accept Council’s two decisions, the City of Coffs Harbour appears eager to rapidly shift responsibility for preventing runaway climate change to our children and no strategic adaptation planning will help prepare us for a high-emissions future, which is the accepted trend.
Instead of maintaining the urgent work needed to avoid worse heatwaves, hail storms or beach erosion, Council is, in my opinion, choosing to pull back on evidence-based economic and environmental best practice.
I would like to see Council prove me wrong.
However, I am concerned an immediate fallout from these decisions will negatively affect our City’s ECO Destination Certification program.
The window for keeping global temperature below 2°C is closing and local government needs to take its responsibility seriously to avoid any associated legal, financial, environmental or reputational risk.
Kind regards,
Cr Jonathan CASSELL,
City of Coffs Harbour.
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