Tamworth group calls for action not apathy from council over climate change

While the group praised council for many of its sustainability efforts, including switching to LED street lighting, installing solar energy on many council-owned facilities and improving waste management, it said more needs to be done.

"What we would like is more of a focus on the actual issue of climate change, which is more than just sustainability," said group member Sharon Draper.

"We were concerned that in none of the operations plans are the words 'climate change' actually used, so we want council to take more leadership on this to help educate the Tamworth community."

She said it was worrying that in the climate change panel on council's website, there are a number of links but none of them are actually to council documents, rather reports from the likes of the UN and CSIRO.

Ms Draper said studies show local impacts of climate change include less snow, more rainfall in autumn but less in winter and an increase in hot days and cold nights.

More drastic weather and natural disaster events will ultimately become very costly, she said, due to more maintenance, additional infrastructure and higher insurance costs being required.

Tamworth Regional Council mayor Col Murray had a different point of view though, stating taking significant action on climate change at a local level would cost a lot for little impact overall.

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"Council has an unusual business and it's not as clear cut to arrive at some of those aspirational targets, certainly council could do that but it would come at quite a significant cost to the community right up front," he said.

"And that's what council is quite wary of, I think the members of the community last [Tuesday] night were more concerned that the wording around climate change wasn't as highlighted as much as they would have liked.

"While our sustainability reports certainly describe where council's ambition and aspiration lies in regards to addressing the impact of climate change, that's a process we believe will take some time.

"We're not quite ready yet to make any hard commitments for 2030. Council has some really exciting plans but we need to have those plans developed a little further before we can pin down an aspirational target."

But Ms Draper said apathy is an ally of climate change inaction, and anything viable that can be done, should be done.

Something she believes should be taking place is more discussions with the community to see what could be achieved without having a negative impact on them.

She said that is a power that only local government really has, as the higher levels of government look at things more broadly.

"Involve local business owners and farmers, we're just worried there hasn't been enough conversation with the Tamworth business community about decarbonisation, or reducing carbon emissions," she said.

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