The scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported, "global warming is dangerously close to being out of control, and humans are unequivocally to blame."
Tova Davidson, executive director of Sustainable Waterloo Region, said the report is alarming but not surprising. "These alarms bells have been going off for literally decades, and the longer we wait and the further it goes, the louder those bells get."
"We are now living the consequences of our emissions when the IPCC was starting," said Davidson.
Sustainable Waterloo Region has a community commitment to reduce our greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050. They also have a ten-year action plan which focuses on reducing those emissions by 30 per cent.
"This will require us to work with other levels of government to try to get us to where science tells us we need to be. That is a 50% reduction by 2030," said Davidson. "The plan is ambitious, but it can be done if we all work together."
Sustainable Waterloo Region works with a hundred organizations to measure their impact on their environment and help them reduce that risk. As well as save them money and make their business more prosperous and more sustainable in economic, environmental and social ways.
Locally as well, they have a plan which includes four pillars. Investments in active transportation infrastructure.
"The region is investing in a facility to have electrified buses, the (light-rail transit), which means we are expanding our electrified transit into Cambridge to unify the region," said Davidson.
The second pillar focuses on how we manage our buildings and getting our building off of fossil fuels. Then, there will be a change in how we make and waste all of those pieces thinking of making sure we reduce our emissions through landfills, making it more organic.
The fourth pillar is how do we relate to each other.
"We need to make sure this transition means that those who are less privileged are not significantly impacted than those who are more privileged," said Davidson. "This transition is going be have a hard impact on some people, and we want to make sure we are bringing everybody along to a better quality of life."
"There is a lot that needs to be done when we get to the upper levels of government. If we can make commitments with upper levels of government and they can support through funding through programming enabling green building and better infrastructure for transportation," explained Davidson.
However, Davidson stresses we all have a role to play in this, and "what we do at the home matter, what we do at work matter, and what our government does matters."
