Local Climate Change Planning

This week's episode features an update on the status of the County’s Climate Change Planning initiatives with Korey McKay, the County of Haliburton’s Climate Change Co-Ordinator. Climate scientists, UN Climate Reports and Summits, like the recently concluded 26th Conference of the Parties or COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, continue to remind us of the urgency of the climate challenge we face, the need for immediate and deep cuts to carbon emissions and a rapid transition off fossil fuels. In the face of the failure of senior levels of governments to stop, let alone reverse, the rise of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, pressure has been increasing on municipal governments to take a greater role in cutting emissions and putting adaptive measures in place to address current and future impacts of warming already in the pipeline. Haliburton County is warming at greater then twice the global average. Will the Haliburton’s climate planning process make difference? Will it take a fair share of responsibility to address the climate emergency at the scale of the crisis we face?