City acts to limit impact of climate change

IF ever there was a call to action, it’s the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report.

It makes it very clear: climate change is happening, and it’s rapid and intensifying. We only have to look to the Northern hemisphere where they’re sweltering through record heat waves and experiencing extreme fires, or recall the 2019/20 bushfire season in Australia to see this.

It’s easy to get weighed down by the report, given the grim outlook and the inadequate pace of change from governments around the world to date. A growing number of people experience significant worry, even anxiety, related to climate change, and as the mother of toddlers I also have fears for the future. This latest update is especially hard to digest while we’re experiencing struggles with the pandemic – it’s almost too much to deal with right now.

But the report does provide a glimmer of hope – we still have time to limit the impacts of climate change. Not much time mind you. Even if we do everything possible right now, many changes like continued sea level rise are locked in, and it will take another 20-30 years for temperatures to stabilise.

Whenever we feel overwhelmed, it’s important to focus on what we can practically do within our sphere of influence. And there is a lot we can do as individuals and by working together. In my role as a councillor, rather than thinking about the global challenge, I find it easier to focus on what we can achieve here in Greater Geelong.

The city recently released its Draft Climate Change Response Plan for community feedback. It presents a path to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 as a council (the organisation’s emissions make up about one per cent of the total from the municipality), and 2035 as a community (the other 99 per cent). These once may have seemed like bold targets, but in light of the IPCC Report, it is exactly what we have to do. The strategies we need must target the source of our community’s emissions: electricity 60 per cent; transport 21 per cent; gas 15 per cent; waste three per cent; and agriculture one per cent.

For example, we need to support the community to switch away from fossil fuels (like gas and coal generated electricity) to renewable sources of electricity. The city has recently switched to 100 per cent renewable electricity sources for its operations, cutting emissions and saving ratepayers money, and will be reviewing gas infrastructure with the aim of converting it to electricity. We must support electric vehicles for private and public transport, and create infrastructure to enable more cycling and walking.

The city is in the process of moving its light fleet vehicles and some machinery to zero-emissions power sources. We also need to get food waste out of landfill (a potent source of greenhouse emissions) by encouraging composting and continuing our work to establish a food organics processing facility.

Since many aspects of climate change are already locked in, Geelong also needs to be ready for this. Some assessments predict that by 2050, Geelong’s climate will become more like that of Shepparton. We can expect more frequent extreme weather events, such as droughts, bushfires, heavy rain, storms and in particular, heatwaves.

Our Climate Change Response Plan also looks at how we can prepare. Being climate ready means considering this when designing infrastructure (like stormwater systems, roads, and buildings). Our planning system needs to incorporate these factors into regulations around new developments. We need to preserve and enhance existing green space and urban tree canopies, and seek to increase this as much as possible (tree canopies can reduce temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Celsius, and they have many additional effects like drawing down carbon and improving wellbeing).

These are just some of the steps that are needed to respond to climate change locally. I believe we can do it, by working in partnership with the community, businesses, governments and other organisations. In fact, if we can take anything from the pandemic, it’s shown that we are capable of rapid and major changes that we never thought were possible.

Everyone has a role to play, every action counts. But unlike many aspects of the response to the pandemic, the changes required to address climate change actually offer opportunities for positive outcomes for us all – economic, social and environmental.

So let’s do what we have to do and make a difference while we’ve still got the chance.

Cr Sarah Mansfield,
Brownbill Ward