BSFG President Peter Holmes made a second presentation in support of the Climate Emergency Petition to Benalla Rural City Council, this time to the Benalla Rural City Planning and Development Committee Meeting on Wednesday 29 September via Zoom.

At the completion of the presentations and discussion, Mayor Councillor Danny Claridge moved an Amended Motion. That:

1. The Petition be noted.
2. That council recognises that climate change is one of the most significant issues that will impact the social, cultural, economic and environmental health and wellbeing of our community and will act accordingly with all policies and programs of the council.
3. That the council further considers its position on climate change during the upcoming review of the Benalla Rural City Climate Change Adaptation Plan 2013-2025.

Seconded Cr Punarji Hewa Gunaratne
​
​Motion Carried

BSFG members and supporters - we are asking you to support the presentation of our Climate Emergency Petition to the Planning and Development Committee meeting of Council on Wednesday 29th September. 

Due to COVID-19 Restrictions the Planning and Development Committee meeting will be held electronically commencing at the completion of the 6pm Council Meeting and will be broadcast live at www.benalla.vic.gov.au  

BSFG and other community leaders will address the Planning and Development Committee via zoom regarding the Climate Emergency Petition. The petition will be item 4 on the agenda of the Planning and Development Committee meeting. You could help by logging in to the livestream (6pm) even if you just keep an eye out and watch the Climate Emergency petition presentation. To log in to the meeting, go to www.benalla.vic.gov.au and on the home page scroll down to “Live stream Council Meetings”.

This will be the culmination of over 18 months of efforts to bring this discussion to a point of definitive action by our community leaders, and your support by  “attending” the meeting online will be very important.

Judy Schwarzman
Secretary, BSFG

"CEO, Mayor and Councillors – thank you for opportunity to talk to you

I represent a group of approximately 80 paid up members, and 400 other community members with whom we are in regular contact. All of us, and many more within this community, share a very real concern about the current and future health of our planet. We recognise that there is irrefutable scientific evidence that human induced climate change is occurring, that the data trends on temperature, rainfall, sea levels, ice-cap melts, and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, are all heading in the wrong direction, and more significantly, the rates of change are not actually slowing down.

We understand that having recognised the problem, we have an urgent responsibility to do all we can to fix it, because we have a responsibility, not just to our present generation, but to all who follow. We are acutely aware that as the Earth continues to warm, many regions will become uninhabitable, our food production systems will completely break down, our health systems will struggle to cope with the increased number of diseases, and the rate of creature extinctions will accelerate. This is not a future I, and all of us here want to leave for our descendants.

The problem with climate change is, that it appears to be happening so slowly, that we don't all quite see the urgency, unlike the coronavirus pandemic. The reality is however, that in Earth years it is happening rapidly, because over the last 200 years, this is the first time there have been so many humans on the planet, and all of our processes have become so industrialised, and dependent on energy consumption - energy largely produced by burning fossil fuels, releasing greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. What we also need to understand, is that there are critical areas on our planet that control the weather, and a number of these places have possibly already reached their climate tipping points, from which it will be extremely difficult to pull back. Eg. the Arctic region is already 3.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times, compared to the average increase across the whole of Earth of 1.2 degrees. Already in the Arctic, permafrost ice has melted, resulting in methane gas escaping into the atmosphere, and this gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The solutions are not simple, but not impossible either. We just need the collective political and community will to achieve what is required. Unfortunately, over the past couple of decades, action has been suppressed by various means, so that now we have reached the point where the solutions need to be implemented so much more urgently, than if we had started 20 years ago.

There are 2 major parts to the solution. Firstly, we must stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (we were able to achieve repair of the ozone layer by virtually eliminating the use of hydrofluorocarbons), and we need to do this much sooner than 2050. Climate Scientists are telling us that on all the current evidence available, we need to do this by 2030, if warming is to be kept below 1.5 to 2 degrees. The second part is that we also need to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, because if we don't, the carbon that we have already put up there will continue to magnify the effects for decades to come.

We believe that the solutions are not just the responsibility of government, but all sectors of our communities must take action. Federal and State governments obviously have a role to play in enacting legislation and policies that facilitate solutions, so that businesses and individuals can then more readily make the changes required. But, we as a community and Local Government have just as important a role to play, in agitating and advocating for change, and in leading by example.

So what are we requesting Council to do? Over the past month, I appreciated the opportunity to chat with most of you about climate change, and to ask you to share your thoughts on Council's role in tackling this problem. All who I talked with acknowledged that climate change is real, but not all agreed that the problem was urgent, or that council could do any more than they perceived it was already doing. Some even suggested that to take all the required actions might send Council broke. Our concern is that not to take the required actions now, will certainly put future generations in this community in a very precarious position, as they struggle with livability, health, and economic issues - all of which will be on a much greater scale of difficulty than we presently face.

We acknowledge that Council has already undertaken a number of measures which reduce the municipality's greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst these are the installation of solar systems on Council properties, residential street lighting upgrades (which are currently saving around $50,000 and 250 tonnes of GHG annually), and Council building lighting upgrades, planning being undertaken to introduce EVs to the Council fleet, planning for cabling to be installed in a new carpark for EV charging points, solar battery off-grid at the landfill facility, and we also acknowledge Council's role in approving planning applications for a number of solar farms in the district, which although assisting with reducing greenhouse gases, cannot be directly counted in our own municipality's reductions. All these actions are excellent, but there are many others that we believe will send an even stronger message to the community, and that will actually convey to the community that there is hope for a better future.

BSFG is not going to present you with a complete list here tonight, as we believe that is a function of a community consultation exercise which we hope can be urgently implemented, not just as part of the Council Plan discussions currently underway, but as a dedicated discussion around the topic of climate change action. We think there are a number of advocacy roles that council can undertake, such as facilitating large battery storage installation adjacent to the solar farms, and encouraging new technology industries to Benalla - industries associated with renewable power production and EV sales and maintenance are 2 that come to mind. Other areas we have identified as possible are the further upgrading to LED lighting in all residential street areas of Benalla and surrounding townships (which again will lead to an additional saving of $50,000 and 250 tonnes of GHG per year), signing up to greenpower electricity plans, identifying suitable EV charging station locations in Benalla, and encouraging suppliers to install them now, advocate for electric buses  on our town bus routes, develop a much more extensive bike lane route around Benalla to encourage more students to ride to school, and residents to ride to the shops, further upgrades of our landfill to possibly introduce a recycle material Tip-shop, and through council's planning department, encourage developers and builders to establish sustainable communities with cooler green open spaces, and higher star rating buildings which will considerably reduce energy consumption. Some of these suggestions will require an initial financial outlay, but in a short period of time will be paid back in savings, as well as far into the future.  

We have come here tonight to respectfully request that Council receives our petition, signed by approximately 600 residents, from all walks of life, across all age groups. These people are not lunatic, scare-mongering Greenies, as some in the media like to portray us - there are farmers, business people, health professionals, shop assistants, students, pensioners, factory workers, educators, and environmentalists all included in this petition. Our request is that Council:

1. Acknowledges that human actions have contributed substantially to the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the warming of the planet, and leading to an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events
2. Declares a Climate Emergency, and that within six months, it implements policies and actions to reduce our community's greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2030.

Peter Holmes
​BSFG President
March 24th 2021"
 

The BSFG Committee is preparing a Climate Emergency petition requesting Benalla Rural City Council Declare a Climate Emergency, joining in excess of 80 in Australia and 1,315 jurisdictions and local governments globally covering 810 million citizens.

The petition is for Benalla Rural City residents to sign and we are seeking assistance from BSFG members to go on a roster to collect signatures and hand out our flyer, initially next week on Tuesday (28th), Thursday (30th), and Friday (31st). Hours would be from 9.00-12.30 and 12.30-4.00 i.e. 2 separate shifts preferably with 2 people on each shift.

Peter Holmes has permission to set up a table and small A-frame outside Bendigo Bank to collect signatures for the CE petition.

We also need to organise the delivery and collection of the card table, chairs and sandwich board on each day – again by roster.

Please contact Peter on 0438 625 6358 to be added to the roster.

It isn't too late to send a message to the Environment Minister Hunt and Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer to reject concerning anti democratic restrictions on environment charities.  Here is the content of the message you can send through to them by signing the online petition organized by Environment Victoria.  This could also be useful should you decide to write to local politicians, petition others.  

"Dear Assistant Treasurer O'Dwyer and Environment Minister Hunt,

I am calling on you to reject outright the recommendations of the Inquiry Report into the Register of Environmental Organisations, which seeks to impose anti-democratic restrictions on environmental advocacy.

With an election around the corner, the Turnbull Government should distance itself from the Abbott Government's ideological attacks on environment and community groups.

Many of our most loved natural places were protected by environmental advocacy. In addition, environmental organisations provide crucial checks and balances on projects that may cause damage to sensitive ecosystems and unique wildlife.

So it’s very concerning that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment, headed by members of the Turnbull Government, has released a report recommending restrictions to environmental advocacy.

Recommendation 5 would require environment organisations to spend 25 percent of donations they receive on ‘environmental remediation work’ such as tree planting. 

As Jason Wood MP points out in his dissenting report, a large number of groups that do important research, education, advocacy and legal work would not meet this 25 percent target.

This is an attempt to silence charities and tie them up in bureaucratic red tape.

Recommendation 6 would penalise or sanction environment groups that ‘that encourage, support, promote, or endorse illegal or unlawful activity’. Again, as Jason Wood MP notes in his dissenting report, if it weren’t for peaceful civil disobedience, many of our most loved natural places would not have been protected. 

From the beginning this Inquiry was ideologically driven, anti-democratic and unfair in its targeting of environment charities. I am calling on you to immediately reject this report and distance your government from the Abbott Government’s ideological attacks on environment and community groups."

You can follow the following link to sign the online petition: 

If you don’t want the government to restrict speaking up for our environment, please tell the Environment Minister and Assistant Treasurer to reject this Abbott-era inquiry report >>