Tell Metro Vancouver: keep climate action in the budget!

Write to Metro Vancouver board members – tell them to keep climate in the budget!

You can use the template letter written here or edit it as you see fit. Editing it and using your own voice to make it authentically yours is highly preferable and encouraged!

Email a Decision Maker form template

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Your Personalized Letter (your contact information will be added at the bottom)

Dear Metro Vancouver Board members,  As a constituent and resident of the Metro Vancouver area, I am writing in regards to the upcoming special board workshop scheduled for February 21st to talk about budget cuts. I am alarmed to hear that there are a number of critical programs that are being considered for funding cuts or even removal from Metro Vancouver’s scope.   Namely, the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, regional climate policy coordination, zero waste collaboration initiatives, and even air quality monitoring are all being considered for budget cuts or removal. There are fears that even the Metro Vancouver Climate 2050 plan, which would help residents not only reduce our emissions but save on our energy and transportation costs, will be ruled “out of scope” and abandoned.   Climate change is not an extraneous issue. It is an emergency that we need to take seriously at all levels of government.   It is already impacting our communities and costing us tremendously. Climate disasters in 2021 alone cost us $16 billion dollars and each year we are faced with new and increasing costs from this crisis. Whether from flooding, wildfires, heat fatalities or smoke inhalation, climate change is putting a massive strain on our health and emergency services, as well as ballooning our infrastructure costs.   We need to have a coordinated effort across the Lower Mainland to both mitigate the climate crisis and adapt our communities to it. That is the role of Metro Vancouver and it is not only within your scope to do so – it is your responsibility to do so.   Cutting climate action out and clean air measures out of your scope at a time when we are facing unprecedented costs and threats from climate change is an expensive mistake. It will cost us far more not to act, and many of the measures in your climate plans are meant to not only save our communities money but also our residents.   Investing in building decarbonization and affordable public transportation will save all of us money. Investing in air quality monitoring systems and other clean air initiatives, including building electrification measures that remove toxic fossil gas from our homes, will help save our hospitals money. Ensuring a coordinated building decarbonization program across the Metro Vancouver region will save builders money as it helps fix the patchwork of regulations that currently exist between municipalities.   I urge you to not only protect the current climate programs that we have but to go even further and accelerate the 2050 plan. We can’t afford to wait. We need to invest in a climate resilient Metro Vancouver today, so that we can save ourselves financially and physically tomorrow.   This means speeding up the adoption of the Zero Carbon Step Code across all jurisdictions and investing in rapid building decarbonization across the region so that households can save money on our energy bills. This means prioritizing investments into affordable public transportation so that we can save money on our daily commutes. This means rejecting the false arguments that climate change isn’t within the scope of this body – this body that serves to coordinate important actions that impact all of us across this region.   I implore you to please stop the rollback of climate action and instead speed it up. In the interests of saving money for both households and our municipalities, please accelerate climate action and make it a priority in this upcoming budget.

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Tell Metro Vancouver: keep climate action in the budget!

At an upcoming “special” meeting on February 21, right-wing populists on the board of Metro Vancouver are trying to scrap climate action from the budget.

They claim to want to cut overall spending, but what will the true costs be?

Don’t let them get away with this! Send a message to Metro Van’s directors asking them to keep their climate plan in place.

ACT QUICKLY to send a letter and get your friends and family in the area to do the same.

They may even try to get rid of Metro Vancouver’s Climate 2050 plan, a plan that would help us save money by supporting energy efficient homes and better public transit.

Short-sighted politicians claim they’re using “common sense” when they cut climate budgets. They still don’t understand that investing in climate action actually SAVES people and cities money.

We can’t afford to stop investing in climate action!