Climate Emergency Resolution
The rationale for Adoption of a Climate Emergency Resolution:
The past decade has been the hottest in recorded human history. The natural disasters of 2020,
consisting of wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, and the worst pandemic in more than a
century are all symptoms, at least in part, of accelerating global climate change. The meteorological
effects of global climate change have long been evident, but the new coronavirus (covid-19) has
confronted us with a more immediate peril: the eruption of the novel, highly lethal, and at least initially
intractable diseases. The ultimate causes of covid-19 remain controversial, but biologists have long
warned that climate change, combined with habitat disruption (and economic globalization), will
foster the eruption of devastating new pandemics for which we are utterly unprepared. In short,
humanity no longer faces a merely impending climate crisis but an immediate climate emergency
demanding immediate action.
RESOLUTION ADOPTED AT THE LWV NYS CONVENTION 2021:
Whereas, an environmental condition adversely affecting Earth and its inhabitants once referred to as
“climate change” has advanced to become a climate emergency including:
Ocean acidification, damage to marine ecosystems and food sources, and a rise in sea levels resulting
in flooding and the displacement of coastal businesses and residences;
Extreme weather events, including extremes of temperature as well as increasingly devastating storms
and wildfires, causing severe harm to America’s agriculture, forestry, and tourism industries;
Adverse impacts on human health, as well as the introduction of new vectors for infectious disease, and
Species extinctions and related threats to biodiversity, with accompanying grave impacts on food and
water security, economic security, and social-emotional wellbeing, and
Whereas, the world’s leading climate scientists predict that the climate crisis will catastrophically
intensify if prompt public action is not taken through public policy and legislation to curb emissions,
and remove atmospheric CO2 through natural and technological sequestration, and
Whereas, the climate crisis disproportionately afflicts the most vulnerable among us: members of
indigenous nations, people of color, rural and coastal communities, and low-income households in
general—all of whom have fewer resources to cope with the common consequences of climate
change, such as property damage, displacement, job loss, and health problems, and
Whereas, prompt and robust mobilization of civil society acting in concert with all levels of
government to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to avert, or even to mitigate,
the progressive and increasingly catastrophic deterioration of Earth’s environment and with it,
massive societal disruption;
Therefore, be it resolved,
We, as delegates of New York State League of Women Voters’ local Leagues, assembled at the 2021
LWV NYS Convention, call upon the LWV NYS Board and local Leagues to urge state and local
governments to adopt and publicize Declarations of Climate Emergency appropriate to local
conditions and take appropriate action to implement the Declarations of Climate Emergency.
(LWV NYS)
