Ed,

Is there really a glimmer of hope that our council recognises there is a climate emergency in the Clarence Valley?

You have to wonder when in ‘The Independent’ (6/11/2019), Cr Williamson, having acknowledged that our Clarence Valley Council has declared a climate emergency, is quoted as saying: “we may or may not be in one.”

This despite the fact that on the very same day 11,000 scientists came out to say that we are facing an unprecedented climate emergency! Is it any wonder that our school children, as young as 5 years old are anxious, anxious about what we and our political luminaries in all three tiers of government in Australia, are not  doing to address this unprecedented climate emergency.

It is becoming blindingly obvious to so many millions of school students all over the world that Mother Nature is having hot flushes with far higher temperatures than normal, ongoing, unseasonal  bush fires and our exceptional ongoing drought. This weather we are having to come to terms with today is now “the new normal.”

Placards at Sydney’s last children’s climate strike, where close to 100,000 people participated, bluntly stated what is so obvious to so many of our anxious children: “The climate is changing, why aren’t you?  “If you were smarter, I’d be in school.”  “If you don’t act like adults, we will.”

If you have grandchildren who are indeed worried about what we adults are doing to their world, you would like to think that our local Council had by now grasped the significance of what the climate emergency is going to mean to developments adjacent to the Clarence River.

Sadly not so, for our Council has ticked off  the approval for the destruction of significant vegetation at an Iluka caravan park adjacent to the Clarence and barely a metre above sea level. And in the first severe flooding event the new cabins could well become a genuine “bottom of the harbour scheme.”

As Einstein so aptly put it: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

No wonder our school children are anxious.

All the best in the future you choose for our trusting school children.

Harry Johnson, Iluka