HalifACT 2050 – How Halifax got its climate plan and a goal of carbon neutrality

Source: David Dodge & Kay Rollans · GREEN ENERGY FUTURES · | August 19, 2020

Richard Zurawski is a meteorologist, a TV personality and a man with a plan for Halifax to tackle climate change and become carbon neutral by 2050.

Oh, and Richard Zurawski is also a city councillor in the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia.

Halifax just passed HalifACT 2050 climate change plan that commits the municipality to get to carbon neutrality by 2050.

If you thought fighting climate change was hard, you’d be right. Zurawski also a former federal green party candidate, patiently and methodically led Halifax to climate action over a number of years.

“My modus operandi as a councillor was to begin with the thin edge of the wedge and to ask that a little term be introduced into our evaluation DNA, which was to say that we would make our decisions based on evidence-based decision making,” says Zurawksi.

Council readily accepted this. So Zurawski then suggested they look into climate change.

“If we’re doing evidence-based decision making, then how about looking at all the evidence pointing to climate change, which is probably the worst existential threat that we have on the planet today,” says Zurawski.

Once the evidence was presented Halifax became the second municipality in Canada to declare a climate emergency in January 2019. Vancouver was the first and today more than 500 Canadian jurisdictions have followed suit.