Hawkesbury Council agrees to declare a climate emergency

Year 12 Colo High School students William Potter and Sophie Williams, both 17 years old, presented their case on the night, and Councillors Danielle Wheeler and Mary Lyons-Buckett submitted a notice of motion which passed with only two councillors voting against it.

The students said increased bushfires, droughts and floods were just some of the ways climate change threatened to affect the Hawkesbury.

They presented to council a range of actions that could be taken on a local level including banding with other councils to promote action at state and federal levels, creating public vehicle charging points to promote electric vehicle use, planting up to 10,000 trees, providing more green bins for food and garden waste, creating more community vegetable gardens, and promoting ‘meat-free Mondays’ at school canteens.

Council agreed to recognise that we are in a state of climate emergency that requires urgent action by all levels of government, and that human-induced climate change represents one of the greatest threats to humanity.

Council also agreed to participate in a Climate Emergency Workshop to examine how it can address the climate emergency, and come up with a range of options for action.

William said the result was “very exciting, but it is only the first step in the local government taking action on climate change”.

Hawkesbury Council joins 10 other Australian councils to declare a climate emergency, along with over 350 around the world from the UK, USA, Canada and Switzerland, according to the Climate Emergency Declaration website.

William and Sophie, along with Clrs Wheeler and Lyons-Buckett, joined up to 100 Hawkesbury students at the School Strike 4 Climate Action in Sydney on Friday, the purpose of which was to demand the government takes policy action on climate change to protect the futures of young people in Australia.

The group was supported by around ten adult community members, some of these from the StopAdani Hawkesbury action group.