A student climate strike in Hamilton is set for Friday at 2 pm outside City Hall. Please try to support it, but let the students take the lead. The next Hamilton 350 meeting is on Wednesday, April 17 at 7 pm at the offices of Environment Hamilton. Many of you have contacted your city councillor and/or the mayor to support their declaration of a climate emergency. If you haven’t yet acted, there is still time to act. Please let Scott know what you have done at [email protected]. We know these messages are having a positive effect. If you have already acted, continue to try to build a relationship with one or more of our local councillors. Some of us had a good meeting today with city staff at their invitation to provide our ideas for implementation of the climate emergency resolution. We’ll have a full report at the next 350 meeting. Climate Change Town Hall on Sunday, April 14 at 2 pm in Dundas Baptist Church at 201 Governor's Road with Dr Dianne Saxe, just fired Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. Film screening of *Directly Affected* by Hamiltonian Zack Embree on Saturday, April 27 -- the meet-and-greet with the director starts at 7pm and the film starts at 7:30pm at East Plains United Church, 375 Plains Road East, Burlington. A talk by J. Romm, the author of Climate Change: What Everybody Needs to Know on Saturday, May 4th at 7pm at East Plains United Church, 375 Plains Road East, Burlington. Also see below for Extinction Rebellion plans for Hamilton over the next ten days: XR International Rebellion starts on April 15th and we are keen to see how this unfolds on a global scale, across the 45 countries where Extinction Rebellion has significant presence. We hope you will join the actions in Hamilton, where the following has been planned so far; On April 15th we kick off the week by meeting up in front of city hall at 4PM to hand over a thank you card to our mayor and city council for declaring a climate emergency and to remind them of the joined effort that lies ahead to deal with our climate crisis. After that, at roughly 5PM we will take our banners and flags for a friendly and fun walk around the block, with a stop including a die in and singing by Jackson Square. Please come out for this family friendly event, to spread the message of climate emergency and need for action across our amazing city. Costumes, signs and music are components that are more than welcome! Consider dressing up as the thing you are afraid of loosing (bees, bugs, polar bears, flowers, etc.) or those who are part of the problem ( big oil, politicians, TD bank, etc). Let your imagination flow! The more noticeable the better! Hope to see as many as you as possible join this event and meet your community. If you are interested in participating in the die in or choire part, please respond to this email to coordinate further. Meeting on Saturday 13th for event coordination and info. Wentworth room at Hamilton Central Library Time: 10am-1pm. April 13th-22nd; Artists for Climate Action (AFCA) Coordinated by our incredible Neil Woodley, this is a phenomenal art show with more than 40 uber-talented artist, all gathered at The Spice Factory. Please make sure you go there at least once! Free admission and open every day until 5pm. April 15th-19th; The Talk Headed for Extinction and What to Do About It -The Talk, is given every day of the week at noon at the Spice Factory. Come by in your lunch hour and bring friends and colleagues! April 20th; Four Bridges: Banner Drop and Climate March Our sisters and brothers in Toronto are having this event on the Saturday 20th, 2pm-5pm Please consider coming out to support them as well. For more details https://www.facebook.com/events/331844997677100/ If you would like to carpool or join us on the train on the day, respond to this email as well and we will coordinate. We need to continue to build on the achievement of getting the city to declare a climate emergency. The mayor’s motion approved 10-0 at the Board of Health on March 18 sparked a 70 minute discussion at the city council meeting last Wednesday night and still won a 16-0 approval. There also continuing media coverage of the declaration including commentary today by Spectator columnist Andrew Dreschel. Emails and phone calls to the mayor and councillors from 350 and XR supporters, as well as the presence of climate supporters at the council meeting certainly drove much of the debate on Wednesday night. That shows your interventions counted, and that more emails and calls to councillors will help even more. If you haven’t acted – do so now! If you have – continue to communicate with and build a direct relationship with one or more of our local elected officials. This is just the beginning! Much of the council commentary was defensive – loudly proclaiming that the city has been doing lots on climate change for a long time. That illustrated one of the widespread confusions among some councillors. Most of that “action” has been responding to the effects of climate change; very little has been done to try and prevent it by reducing local emissions. We need to keep speaking to that confusion where it appears to exist. And we need to keep praising those councillors who seem to understand and strongly support city action to reduce emissions at least in line with the IPCC recommendations. There is also a rump of councillors at this point who appear determined to prevent the city from spending any money to fight climate change, and perhaps even one or two who aren’t sure what climate change is. But the resolution is approved, and questions directed to city staff at the meeting indicate they are thinking about what implementation will require, and that it will affect the city budget. Video of Wednesday night’s meeting is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKpamZ5tYWA. The climate debate starts 50 minutes into the meeting and goes to just past the two hour mark. Here are the start times for each. Check out what your councillor said. Also listen to the comments of staff half way through, and the mayor’s summary comments. What should we do next? Eisenberger 50:00 Ferguson: 54:45 Danko 55:30 Nann 1:00:00 Whitehead 1:03:25 Collins: 1:06:00 Partridge 1:10:20 Wilson 1:14:00 Vanderbeek 1:16:05 Clark 1:18:05 Farr: 1:23:10 Merulla 1:28:00 Staff Mike Zegarac 1:34:25 Staff Paul Johnson 1:28:15 Pearson: 143:25 Pauls 1:45:10 Whitehead 1:47:25 Jackson 1:50:50 Eisenberger 1:53:40 Merulla 1:58:05 Vote 2:01:00 Ontario Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe (just fired by Doug Ford) and a very good communicator on climate change (bring your friends) is the guest of Environment Hamilton on Monday, April 8 at 7 pm in the Hamilton room of the Central Library (55 York Boulevard) XR Hamilton encourages you to support their delegation this coming Thursday night (April 4) to the Hamilton Conservation Authority board - 838 Mineral Springs Rd, Ancaster 7-8 pm. Regular monthly meeting, public welcome. Ian Graham presenting on Climate Change early in the agenda. Purpose is to enlist active support from HCA for the City's Declaration of Climate Emergency. |
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