Title
Ann Arbor Climate Emergency Resolution - Resolution Endorsing the Declaration of a Climate Emergency to Restore a Safe Climate (Oct 2019)
Body
WHEREAS, human activities have warmed the Earth enough to end the 12,000-year period of climate stability that allowed agriculture and human civilization to develop;
WHEREAS, global warming has already set in motion disastrous changes to the Earth system, including accelerating ice mass loss from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets and the thawing of the borders of the vast Arctic permafrost, which holds twice as much stored carbon as the entire atmosphere;
WHEREAS, NASA scientists have concluded that the complete collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet alone could raise sea levels 23 feet, creating several billion climate refugees and a “global-scale catastrophe”;
WHEREAS, the Global Carbon Project has estimated worldwide carbon emissions increased 2.7% in 2018, in addition to the 1.6% increase in 2017;
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that limiting warming to 1.5º Celsius above pre-industrial levels is necessary to avoid the worse impacts, including widespread heat-related morbidity and mortality;
WHEREAS, the economy’s overshoot of ecological limits and, increasingly, climate change, are driving the sixth mass extinction of species;
WHEREAS, climate-fueled droughts, famines, and diseases have already killed millions of people in the Global South, and displaced millions more;
WHEREAS, indigenous and low-income communities and communities of color in the United States and abroad have suffered the gravest consequences of the extractive economy;
WHEREAS, it is an act of unspeakable injustice and cruelty to knowingly subject our fellow humans now and into the future to societal disintegration, food and clean water shortages, economic collapse, and early death on an increasingly uninhabitable planet;
WHEREAS, justice requires that those countries and sectors that have contributed most to this global climate and ecological cataclysm foot a commensurate financial burden in reversing it and protecting those most impacted from the lethal impacts underway;
WHEREAS, Ann Arbor has already seen a significant rise in precipitation that will put increasing stress on our infrastructure;
WHEREAS, Ann Arbor can rise to the challenge by organizing politically to catalyze a national and global climate emergency effort, greatly reducing local demand for energy and employing local workers in a mobilization effort building and installing renewable energy infrastructure, growing local food, restoring ecosystems, and retrofitting and redesigning our built environment, electric grid, and transportation systems.
BE IT RESOLVED, that Ann Arbor declares that we face an existential climate emergency that threatens our city, region, state, nation, civilization, the natural world, and humanity;
RESOLVED, that Ann Arbor officially commits to leading an emergency mobilization effort that, with appropriate financial and regulatory assistance from state and federal authorities, ends city-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by or before December 31, 2025 and immediately initiates an effort to safely draw down carbon from the atmosphere;
RESOLVED, that Ann Arbor authorizes city staff and community members to draft a Climate Mobilization Action Plan that describes the necessary steps to meet these goals, includes a detailed timeline, quantifies costs, identifies funding sources and specifies accountability measures, and that Ann Arbor adopts a plan in time for the 2020-2021 budget cycle.
RESOLVED, that Ann Arbor commits to educating our citizens about the climate emergency and the broader ecological crisis, engaging their participation and working tirelessly to mobilize at the local, state, national, and global levels to protect our citizens as well as all the people and species of the world.