The council, led by Mayor Seema Abdullah, recently rose above the noice and clamour of the present COVID-19 dilemma to declare a climate emergency.
Councillors were conflicted and divided about the idea of declaring the climate emergency while the city was already wrestling the prevailing health emergency.
Cr Abdullah didn’t blink, she held her gaze and used her casting vote to see the emergency declared.
The city has now joined 84 of its contemporaries around Australia and nearly 1500 other jurisdictions around the world which have acknowledged and formally declared the climate emergency.
So what happens now?
Well, initially not much I suspect, but it will change, quickly I hope, as this declaration ripples through the organisation changing every decision from those made by chief executive officer Peter Harriott through to the extremes of the workforce.
Shepparton is well placed already, having done a lot of work in relation to both the sourcing and use of energy, its tree planting program, and in recent months the purchase of two all-electric cars to begin the electrification of its vehicular fleet.
Some councillors were opposed to the idea of a climate emergency while residents were already wrestling with the present COVID-19 emergency.
However, it was only late last month the famed American author and public intellectual, Noam Chomsky, said we would recover from the coronavirus, but had little confidence that the world would escape nuclear war or global warming.
He was concerned that Donald Trump and his minions were racing the United States towards the abyss, suggesting that any country with similar values would not be far behind.
Interestingly, Australia’s Health Minister, Greg Hunt, said, while trying to encourage people to stay home over Easter, “The virus does not take holidays”.
Similarly, nature never rests either and so while it is reasonable to be distracted by COVID-19, the climate emergency has not politely stood aside for the moment, rather it is steadily worsening.
So now the council has declared a climate emergency, it should, as it has done, set its sights on the city being dependent only on renewable energy by 2030.
Climate Councillor Professor Will Steffen last week said Canberra set just such a goal in 2011 and had now achieved it, something he said would now be much easier as renewables were cheaper and more economical in every sense.
He suggested that pressure from local governments throughout Australia would demand that state and federal governments reshape the electricity infrastructure.
And last week, the head of the University of Melbourne-based non-partisan Grattan Institute, John Daley, said the COVID-19 crisis had clearly demonstrated that the “impossible was possible”.
Encouraged by Prof Steffen and hearing from John Daley that the impossible is clearly possible, Greater Shepparton City Council just needs residents to get on board, make the impossible possible, and help build the action that will soften this climate emergency.
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