City council adopted St. Albert’s first ever targets for greenhouse gas emissions but environmentalists are criticizing the effort as weak.
Council voted 6-1 to reduce the city corporation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent below 2008 levels by 2020. Council adopted a lower target of six per cent for emissions from the community.
However, rather than accepting the targets outright, Mayor Nolan Crouse successfully amended the wording so council passed a motion to “consider” the targets rather than “approve” them.
Environmental activist Elke Blodgett didn’t like it.
“It really does not impose any kind of obligation,” she said. “I’m considering going to the grocery store today. I might not go. What does it matter? It’s such a weak word to use.”
Crouse said he had to “soften up” the original motion or risk having council vote against it. During deliberations, Coun. Malcolm Parker wondered about the cost of adopting the targets and the absence of a detailed plan for reaching them. Meanwhile, Coun. Cam MacKay tried to have the motion tabled then postponed.
“I could tell there was a lot of discomfort so this was a good compromise, I felt, for the moment,” Crouse said of his wording change.
City staff will compile an action plan that will show what the targets mean, he said, which is necessary for council to understand what impact the policy will have.
“I wanted it to be something where we were forward-thinking and visionary … but people didn’t know what they were really approving,” Crouse said.
MacKay tried unsuccessfully to table the motion, meaning it would be set aside indefinitely and revived only if someone on council chose to resurrect it. That bid failed, prompting him to suggest postponement until February. That bid also failed.
MacKay was concerned St. Albert would be at a disadvantage for attracting businesses if it had these targets when other municipalities in the region don’t.
“This will make St. Albert very uncompetitive,” he said.
He also felt it would be better to wait until after the climate conference currently happening in Cancun, Mexico wraps up in case a decision there could impact the city.
“This is obviously not an issue we can solve on our own. It requires a lot of co-ordination,” he said.
Several councillors said it’s time for the city to move forward.
“This gives us a vision where we can move as a corporation,” said Coun. Len Bracko. “It also encourages our residents to start taking action as individuals.”
Coun. Wes Brodhead agreed.
“It’s a leadership move on our part,” he said.
The city’s environmental master plan recommended that the target for community emissions be set at 10 per cent below 2008 levels but Coun. Cathy Heron pushed for a target of six per cent.
Her argument was that it’s easier to aim low and then aim for improvement rather than setting a high target that gets missed.
Six per cent is too low of a target, said environmentalist Dave Burkhart, but he was more concerned that 2008 was chosen as the benchmark year, since climate change scientists use 1990 levels as their standard benchmark.
“Weak targets are certainly not the answer,” he said.
Burkhart also countered MacKay’s rationale that it’s up to world leaders to take the lead on climate change, a notion that died when last year’s climate change conference in Copenhagen didn’t generate an agreement, he said.
“The failure at Copenhagen was a wake up call that we can’t leave it to senior governments to do anything significant about reigning in climate change,” Burkhart said.
“That puts the onus even more I think on the individual and the municipal levels.”
