Fiscal Note
No appropriation required.
Title
Affirming the City of Madison’s support of the County Climate Coalition, the Paris Climate Accord, environmental sustainability and the City's leadership in environmental sustainability and combating climate change.
Body
WHEREAS, consensus exists among the world’s leading climate scientists that we face a major global climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas emissions, with rising sea levels and melting ice sheets creating increasingly unpredictable and unhealthy living environments as we approach a dangerous threshold of global warming; and,
WHEREAS, documented impacts of global warming include but are not limited to increased occurrences of extreme weather events, significant impacts to human health and safety, destruction of ecosystems, and reduced economic productivity; and,
WHEREAS, all but two countries in the world signed the Paris Accord, committing to enact programs to limit global temperature increase to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an expectation that this goal would be reduced to one and a half degrees in the future; and,
WHEREAS, the United States ratified the Paris Accord on September 3, 2016 and committed to its own target of reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025; and,
WHEREAS, on June 1, 2017, President Trump began the process to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord; and,
WHEREAS, states and local governments are leading the effort to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions; reducing petroleum use in cars and trucks; increasing electricity derived from renewable sources; increasing the energy efficiency savings achieved at existing buildings and making heating fuels cleaner; reducing the release of methane, black carbon, and other short-lived climate pollutants; managing farm and rangelands, forests, and wetlands so they can store carbon; and periodically updating the state’s climate adaptation strategy; and,
WH...
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