Calgary has scrapped its climate emergency declaration, now one of only a handful of global cities to do so.

Councillors voted 10 to 5 in favour of rescinding the declaration on the evening of day two of the Regular Meeting of Calgary city council on May 27. Couns. Andrew Yule, DJ Kelly, Nathan Schmidt, Raj Dhaliwal and Myke Atkinson voted against rescinding the declaration.

The motion, brought forward by Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston, and Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot read that the Climate Emergency Declaration was primarily symbolic in nature.

It was brought forward in 2021 as one of the first major items for the last Calgary city council by former mayor Jyoti Gondek.

Coun. Johnston said that the city climate plan has already done good work for the city, particularly around flood mitigation.

“Whereas a symbolic gesture has done absolutely nothing for us,” he said.

According to the City of Calgary’s climate emergency declaration web page (which will probably end soon), more than 2,000 jurisdictions and local governments around the world have made climate emergency declarations.

“A declaration of Climate Emergency is a resolution passed by a governing body such as a city council,” the website reads.

“It puts the local government on record in support of emergency action to respond to climate change and recognizes the pace and scale of action needed.”

Coun. Andre Chabot previously told LWC that using the word emergency has a specific connotation in municipal governance.

“Just the word emergency in itself implies that the city then will do everything in its power to eliminate the cause,” he told LWC.

“And whereas I think we should be focused more on mitigation, adaptation, not elimination, and emergency-wise, elimination, and that’s the biggest issue I have with this, because we’re not going to be able to eliminate climate change no matter what we do in a city.”

Mayor Farkas called it a ‘performative’ climate declaration

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that when you look at some of the other local states of emergency the City of Calgary has called – the 2013 flood and the Bearspaw water main breaks – they eventually lifted those states of emergency.

He said the same thing applies to “the more performative climate emergency declaration.”

“I don’t think it’s prudent just to exist in a permanent state of emergency, so I’m inclined to rescind that decision and to lift that emergency declaration, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t take the environment seriously,” Mayor Farkas said.

“It just means that we continue with the more practical actions rather than the performative gestures that end up being more about performance than actual substance.”

Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson said that climate change is one of the most important issues of our times.

“While I recognize how some of my colleagues are concerned that the declaration actually doesn’t bring about the changes that are needed, I also worry that we as a council have not necessarily been making the kinds of actions and strides that we need to,” he said.

He noted the attempt in the last Calgary city budget deliberations to gut the City’s climate unit.

“These kinds of actions are not putting us forward as a climate-forward city,” Atkinson said.

“So, I think that it’s actually really important to sort of make sure that we are not the first municipality to rescind our climate declaration, because that I think sends a pretty poor message to other folks outside of the city.”

Going forward, the motion calls for an end to all references of the Climate Emergency Declaration, climate emergency in all official city documents, strategies, plans, reports, communications, website and public materials.

It also called for no future reports, policies or initiatives to cite or rely upon the rescinded declaration as justification or authority.