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What just happened? Last evening the CVRD voted to join hundreds of local governments across the country in acknowledging the climate emergency. This is good.

But unlike other local governments, it punted the conversation about acting on that statement to a process with no timelines and no clear sense of products – voting instead to send the conversation to the CVRD’s strategic planning process. This is concerning.

The CVRD has taken a step towards acknowledging the climate emergency and identifying options for accelerating its climate action.

On Wednesday a delegation visited the CVRD Regional Services Committee to ask for more climate action and to present a petition of over 1,800 local citizens asking for the same.

The famously acrimonious councilors of the City of Toronto recently took a vote on whether to pass a climate emergency. They passed it unanimously, even with the conservatives on council. They usually never agree on anything.

Perhaps it was just past due. After all, hundreds of local governments across Canada have now declared climate emergencies as a starting point in accelerating their climate action. Seemingly every week there’s a new scientific report underlining how dire the situation is and how quickly we need to act. We are all collectively very late to the party.