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Motion on Agenda:

By Councillor Burgess – Climate Emergency 2030
“Council;
1) Notes the recent United Nations IPCC report advising that climate-changing pollution must be very significantly reduced over the next 11 years to 2030, in order to prevent global average temperatures increasing beyond 1.5 degrees C and to reduce irreversible, catastrophic impacts of climate change;
2) Notes that other local authorities, including Bristol, Scarborough and the London Assembly, have responded to the UN report by declaring a Climate Emergency and setting targets and action plans in-line with the reduction of climate-changing pollution necessary;
3) Notes the draft Climate Bill going through the Scottish Parliament that will require local authorities to act in accordance with increased targets for reducing climate-changing pollution by at least 90% by 2050 and also the pressure to increase this target to zero carbon by 2050;
4) Further notes the first conclusion from the recent Sustainability Audit by of Professor Andy Kerr of the ECCI that:
‘The City of Edinburgh Council has an unprecedented opportunity to set Edinburgh on a course that will deliver rapid improvements in social and economic wellbeing for its citizens, as well as meeting stretching climate and environmental targets. This would put Edinburgh at the forefront of global cities’.
5) Therefore calls for a report to the Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee, within one cycle, on a Climate Emergency 2030 target for Edinburgh in-line with the latest UN IPCC advice on remaining within a global average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, including a detailed assessment of annual emissions from 1990 to date, interim targets consistent with the 1.5 degree limit, and an action plan setting out how this can be achieved.”