COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR RESOLUTION NO. 210967

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RESOLUTION - Declaring a climate and ecological emergency threatening Kansas City and surrounding communities; encouraging participation in the development and implementation of the City's Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan; directing the City Manager to review subsidy programs and include such programming in FY22-23; requiring future relevant plans and policies address ways to lessen the climate emergency; prioritizing solutions that limit greenhouse gas emissions; and including climate protection and resiliency goals in the City's 2022 state and federal legislative priorities.

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WHEREAS, climate change impacts that once seemed gradual are now clearly accelerating; it is no longer possible to incrementally adapt our status quo; and

WHEREAS, world leaders have recognized the urgent need to combat climate change by signing the Paris Agreement, to keep global warming "well below 2?C above pre-industrial levels" and to "pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5?C"; and

WHEREAS, the loss of life and damage caused by current global warming demonstrates that the Earth is already too hot for safety and has resulted in the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, floods, sea level rise, disease, drought, and extreme weather; and

WHEREAS, systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic crises are intensified by climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, and use of fossil fuels. These impacts disproportionately affect indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, depopulated rural communities, individuals and families earning low-income, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (frontline and vulnerable communities); and

WHEREAS, the scope and scale of action necessary to stabilize the climate and achieve ecological balance will require unprecedented levels of public awa...

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