Protesters To City: Declare Climate Emergency

The planet is facing a man-made climate emergency, and the only proper response is to mobilize as if it were the next world war.

Nearly 20 local climate activists issued that call to arms on Thursday afternoon as they rallied around a new proposed resolution for the city to declare a climate emergency and to dedicate more time, money, and manpower towards immediate environmental change at the local level.

The group of activists and students affiliated with the New Haven Climate Movement gathered at dusk on the court house steps at 121 Elm St. to wave banners, sing protest songs, share statistics and stories of climate destruction, and promote a new emergency climate resolution. They also used a projector to turn the court house’s facade into a temporary projection screen, showing written calls to action in response to the dangers of climate change.

“In World War II,” Project Drawdown organizer Geremy Schulick said, ​“we mobilized extraordinarily quickly.” He said the crisis presented by more frequent and more dangerous forest fires, droughts, hurricanes, and other climate change-related disasters demand an equally urgent and comprehensive response.

“Cities can do a lot,” New Haven Climate Movement organizer Chris Schweitzer said about the reason for targeting New Haven local government at the same time that activists seek national-level change through federal lawsuits and the lobbying of U.S. Congresspeople.

The resolution calls on the city to declare that its citizens ​“face an existential climate emergency that threatens our city, region, state, nation, civilization, the natural world, and humanity,” and then to allocate the resources necessary to mitigate and reverse the concomitant damage.

Click here to read the full resolution. Click here to visit read a petition that the group has created to pressure the city to adopt the resolution.

“Mayor Harp and her team have completed many action steps in solidarity with supporters of this resolution,” city spokesperson Laurence Grotheer said via email, ​“reducing energy consumption and the city’s carbon footprint, promoting alternative fuels, adding pedestrian and bike-friendly features to city streets, filtering and limiting storm water runoff, planting trees, and securing funds for shoreline resiliency projects.

“Absent federal leadership on this vital policy issue these past two years,” he continued, ​“Mayor Harp ensures New Haven’s commitment to provisions of the Paris climate agreement and maintains strong working partnerships with Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative, the city’s Environmental Advisory Council, and other environmental advocacy groups. The mayor hopes she can join the Board of Alders in support of this resolution, should the board consider, act favorably, and adopt its provisions.”

Earlier this year, city government released a plan committing to cut carbon emissions 55 percent by 2030. Click here to read about the plan, which builds on years of green-energy and conservation initiatives.

Local reporter and activist Melinda Tuhus joined Yale public health student Brian Thompson to read the 20 ​“Whereas” conditions that make up the resolution’s rationale for declaring a climate emergency.

“Whereas, it is an act of unspeakable injustice and cruelty,” Tuhus read, ​“to knowingly subject our fellow humans now and into the future to societal disintegration, food and clean water shortages, economic collapse, and early death on an increasingly uninhabitable planet.”

“Whereas,” Thompson responded, ​“in present day, New Haven can rise to the challenge of the greatest crisis in history by organizing politically to catalyze a national and global climate emergency effort, employing local workers in a mobilization effort building and installing renewable energy infrastructure, growing local healthy food, restoring ecosystems, and retrofitting and redesigning our built environment, electric grid and transportation systems.”

The resolution then calls on the city to commit to leading an emergency mobilization effort to end all city greenhouse gas emissions by or before Dec. 31, 2030.

It also calls on the city and the alders to create a new Climate Emergency Mobilization Department within City Hall that would be specifically tasked with implementing climate change mitigation initiatives, such as the dozens of recommendations included in the city’s recently adopted Climate and Sustainability Framework.

The resolution then calls on the city and alders to issue a report within six months of the adoption of the proposed resolution that outlines how it will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New Haven by 2021.

Jayleen Nieves, a 14-year-old freshman at Metropolitan Business Academy, leaned into the below-freezing temperatures to entreat the city to pass the resolution.

“I don’t want people to get hurt by our mistakes,” she said. ​“Climate change is destroying this planet, and some people are choosing to ignore that.”

Schulick asked the group to take a moment of silence for victims of climate change-related disasters in Puerto Rico, California, sinking Pacific island nations, and drought-ridden sections of East Africa.

“This is truly already an emergency for many, many people around the world,” he said.

And yet, he said, New Haveners must not lose hope. He said climate scientists estimate that 2030 will be the year of catastrophic climate-related crisis, so local government like New Haven’s should do everything it can in the next 12 years to keep those projections from becoming a reality.

He said residents should call U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor Toni Harp, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers and other leaders in city government to pressure them to support the emergency climate change resolution.

“What are the costs of inaction?” he asked.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch part of Thursday’s protest.