Sedona AZ (October 26, 2017) – On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the Sedona City Council took up the most important issue that they or any other previous council has ever discussed. No, it wasn’t traffic congestion. Not even close. In fact, you could add together the importance of every issue the city has faced, from the revised sign code that got approved that same evening all the way back to the city’s incorporation nearly 30 years earlier, and you wouldn’t begin to approach the importance of this one single issue.
Yet the council chambers were not overflowing with huge crowds demanding to speak on the issue. And the staff presentation and council discussion proceeded with little or no significant disagreement.
So, what was this critically important issue? And why did it apparently generate so little interest or controversy?
The issue is easily described by the exact wording of the agenda item: “Discussion/possible direction regarding ideas and concepts for environmental sustainability.” In short, the issue was the survival of the planet. You can’t get much more important than that.
Why the issue didn’t generate much attention or drama, however, is a lot more complicated. Here are some possible explanations:
- It’s not considered an immediate threat. Long-term, gradually developing problems are not easy to focus on, no matter how important they may be. When we’re peeved about the traffic congestion right in front of us at this very moment, is the rate of ice melt in the Arctic over the next decade a top priority?
- It’s not considered relevant. Sedona doesn’t actually have a sustainability problem, does it? At an elevation of 4500 feet, do we really need to worry about sea-level rise?
- It’s not our problem. Our city government can’t solve any environmental sustainability issues, can it? Shouldn’t we be spending our time and money on local problems we can actually fix?
- It’s way too big and complicated. What exactly does environmental sustainability cover, anyway? If it’s global warming and recycling and renewable energy and animal agriculture and carbon tax and heaven knows what else, who would even know where to begin?
Any one of these reasons—and more—could easily be offered as an excuse to give environmental sustainability a perpetually low priority for attention, to expect someone else to work on it, even to ignore it altogether. But just as surely as we are part of the environment that must be sustained, we must be part of the effort to sustain it.
This is the year when we make no more excuses and step up to do our part. Your council authorized enough funding for this fiscal year to get us started. Your city manager and his staff have proposed guiding principles and first steps for an organized, efficient process. And we’re surrounded by experts and other resources ready to chip in.
All we need now is your voice. Insist that your council recognize the threats to environmental sustainability as imminent and that they address them now. Insist that they accept the relevance of the problem to Sedona as equal to that of every other place on earth. Insist that they use their tools of ordinance, proclamation, intergovernmental agreement, and good old-fashioned cooperation to effect and influence meaningful change. Insist that they ignore the size and difficulty of the effort required and simply act in the most efficient and effective manner on whatever they can. Insist, in short, that they lead.
The opinions expressed above are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Sedona City Council or any other organization.
4 Comments
So now City Hall thinks it can save the planet? Actually it is no longer true that the ice is melting threatening the rise of the oceans. The ice is not expanding. Jon, you are citing old science and propaganda by those like AL Gore who are making hundreds of millions from this fraud. If City Hall is concerned about the environment then why have you and other Council members voted to give the Chamber of Commerce an extra ONE MILLION DOLLARS a year to advertise for more tourists. That extra spending is unnecessary anyway as Sedona is well known. So is it not hypocritical to say the residents of Sedona should be doing their share to save the environment when the City wants more people tearing up hiking trails, stacking rocks everywhere, even right in Oak Creek destroying the habitat of tiny wildlife creatures and at times affecting the natural flow of the creek .Not to mention they are breaking Federal law in doing so. More tourists means more money to spend unnecessarily. I could cite many examples but, won’t at this time. Joan Shannon
JON, I used the incorrect word in my comments. I meant to say “the ice IS expanding, not melting”. Joan Shannon
How about addressing chemtrails. the city of Nevada City, Ca, issued a proclamation as being opposed to flyover spraying of their visitors and populace. and they are going at it with law suits……..there is a fine place to spend the money and ……advertise as a city who is awake to this global climate issue. thank you
Hats off to Jon and a short reply to having Sedona ‘save the planet’. When firefighters in the tens of thousands in California are out battling terrible fires, we can of course mock them as wanting to save the planet. Actually they are doing their job at enormous risk and sacrifice. I would hope local politicians, conservative or liberal, can step up too like those firefighters. Climate change will not go away because people are ordered not to talk about it. In fact worse, dismissal makes the coming sacrifice larger and makes government bigger, more prevalent, and more dominant much akin to government during a time of war. Let us start with action and not mockery. A first big step would be for local governments such as Sedona’s to adopt a genuine, strong climate action plan, which are popping up like mushrooms across the US.