More and more cities are joining and continuing the fight against climate change. One of these is the Ontarian city of St. Catherine. This year, St. Catherines will be undergoing a climate change risk assessment as part of its involvement in the Global Covenant of Mayors. The Global Covenant of Mayors is an international association of cities and governments that share and promote voluntary action in the continuous fight against climate change. They work towards an emissions-low society that promotes green actions.
The assessment is supposed to help find the biggest climate change risks in St. Catherine and then find solutions for them. The solutions will be implemented in 2018 after discussions about the risks are finalized.
Impact:
St. Catherines is no stranger to the effects of climate change as its citizens have been struggling to keep up with all of its effects year after year. Some of these effects include: the extreme wind storm in 2011 that caused chaos and destroyed over 400 trees with massive power losses. Also, the heavy rainstorms in 2013-2014 that caused massive flooding that declared certain areas as “disaster zones”. In addition, the weather extremes in 2015 when St. Catherine experiences its worst winter that left hundreds of citizens without access to water (as it was frozen) for days or even weeks. Not to mention the 2016 summer drought that led for the first ever fire ban.
The worst is yet to come with city councils predicting more changes to hit them. For example, more rain storms, heavy snow, severe winds, tornadoes, extreme cold and hot weather, drought, land fires, river floods, water-borne disease, air-borne disease, insect infestation…etc. All this is due to the increasing emissions of CO2.
CO2 Culprits:
The city is estimated to be pumping out almost a million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The mains culprits for that much co2 release are on-the-road cars and trucks. They are responsible for 48% of the emissions while things like residential buildings take up 19%. It will be considerably hard to reduce the amount of transportation on the road especially with population growth. However, the city and its citizens are committed to lowering its emissions in the next few years so it isn’t an impossible task.
Is your city apart of the Global Covenant of Mayors? Do you have any cool initiatives in your city that you’d like us to write about? Please let us know in the comments below!
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