It’s been said that the greatest challenge for councils like Palerang is to ‘keep our heads above water’ in the troubled times ahead. Financially it may prove to be so, but at 700 metres above sea level we are in a far safer position than coastal shires where rising sea levels are more threatening every day.

Three Palerang councillors and the General Manager recently attended two days of discussion on the perils of climate change at the recent National General Assembly of Local Government in Canberra. Its slightly ironic theme was: ‘Rising to the Challenge’. Many of our fellow shires down by the seaside are caught between the unclear science of retaining walls, shifting sands literally and in terms of government policy; with a fall-back policy of retreat somewhere between planned and panicked.

Palerang council has formed a Climate Change advisory Committee to take advice from all sections of the community, to formulate an action plan and to report back to council with recommendations. The CCC has nine permanent members: three councillors, the General Manager, the Director of Works, the Environ­mental Services Co­ordinator and three community members.

We are holding our first meeting including the recently appointed members on Tuesday November 17 at 10am in the Bungendore council office. Anyone can come along and have a say but if you would like to make a presentation of ideas at a CCC meeting please give me, Paul Cockram as Chair, advance notice and I can include it on the agenda.

One of our first aims is to produce an energy usage audit of the council’s own activities. We have already had discussions with Country Energy about ways to reduce our power bill. Carbon conservation through better energy efficiency is good for the environment and for the ratepayers who, after all, are the ones who’ll benefit in both cases.

Apart from being a responsible member of council I still have my own ideas, unrestricted by the conservatism of public office and certainly not (yet) representative of the majority view, but I’m going to give them to you anyway.

Local government is going to cop a fair bit of pain from the changing climate. This change is happening as a result of excessive emissions of carbon into the atmosphere as a result of industrial activity. The vast majority of this activity occurs in the northern hemisphere. Burning coal to make electricity is a big part of the problem, but unlike oil for transport, it can more easily be phased out and replaced with cleaner sources of energy.

Ipso facto (Latin for join the dots) we can build sandbag walls and agonise over dwindling water supplies but the fact remains that tomorrow’s atmospheric carbon is today sequestered safely under our feet in massive coal seams. It is in our best interests to demand at all levels of government that Australia commits to reducing coal exports. The sooner we start, the gentler will be the employment and investment impacts on coal-dependent communities.

‘Burn less, photosynthesise more’ is the bumper sticker for the twenty-first century.