December 18, 2019 — On the evening of Dec. 2, the Brunswick Town Council joined Bar Harbor, South Portland, and Portland in declaring a state of climate emergency. Compared to the climate rally that followed on Dec. 6, this was a quiet affair — but a resounding one nonetheless. With unanimous approval, council members passed a resolution drafted by members of Bowdoin Climate Action, naming the urgency of the climate crisis and committing Brunswick to developing an action plan to potentially eliminate carbon emissions by 2030.
At first, such municipal action might seem nominal or unnecessary. Why bother to come out with a statement or engage with a massive, global issue on the scale of local government?
As it turns out, Maine’s towns are hardly the first to make the move. As early as December of 2016, the city of Darebin, Australia, a Melbourne suburb, declared a state of climate emergency. Since then, more than 1,200 local governments in 25 countries have followed suit, translating to nearly 800 million people globally represented by governments that have declared a climate emergency. Eight hundred million — that’s a lot, and it’s a number that will only continue to grow.
Let’s face it: in a time of crisis, where 2019 marks the end of the warmest decade on record and the number of billion-dollar climate disasters each year continues to rise, our federal government has effectively chosen to ignore this. We have no choice but to build power from the bottom up, tackling the climate crisis from our hometowns and city halls. A municipal climate emergency declaration isn’t an empty statement — it’s a bright red flag on the map. Enough of these, and state governments would be hard put to ignore the demands of their constituents.