Climate emergency declaration

• 1. Introduction

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  Climate emergency declarations began in a suburb of Melbourne. On the 5th of December 2016, Trent McCarthy, an Australian Greens Councillor at the City of Darebin, put forward a motion unlike any before it. His city council voted to declare a climate emergency. No government anywhere in the world had done this.

  Within six years, more than 2,100 local governments in 39 countries would follow. Populations covered by those jurisdictions amounted to over one billion citizens.

  What does it mean for a government to declare an emergency over a crisis that unfolds across generations? How did a motion by a suburban Australian council become a reflex replicated in parliaments around the world? And do these declarations produce real change, or do they risk becoming urgent words without urgent action?

  Darebin's declaration was followed by Hoboken in New Jersey and Berkeley, California.

• 2. The Language of Urgency

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  A 'Climate-Emergency-Rally' was held in Melbourne in June 2009, years before any government officially adopted the phrase. The term had been in activist use long before it entered the language of politics.

  By 2019, the phrase had entered a different register. Oxford Dictionary chose climate emergency as its word of the year for 2019, defining it as 'a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it.' Usage of the phrase soared more than 10,000% between September 2018 and September 2019.

  On the 4th of December 2018, the Club of Rome presented their 'Climate Emergency Plan,' which included 10 high-priority measures to limit global warming. The rise of movements like Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate carried the term from protest banners into legislative chambers.

  A United Nations Development Programme survey across 50 countries found that 64% of 1.2 million respondents believe climate change is a global emergency. The word emergency was chosen deliberately by advocates. It assigns priority to the issue. Advocates describe the goal as creating a mindset of urgency for a problem that unfolds over decades.

  Multiple European cities that declared a climate emergency are also members of the Klima-Bundnis, German for climate alliance. This network obliges its members to lower CO2 emissions by 10% every five years.

• 3. From Melbourne to Westminster

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  In 2018, Carla Denyer, a UK Green Party politician then sitting on Bristol City Council, heard about these developments. She took the lead in bringing a climate emergency motion to the council. Bristol's declaration was the first of its kind in Europe. A UK newspaper called Denyer's motion 'the historic first motion,' which by July 2019 had been 'copied by more than 400 local authorities and parliaments.'

  On the 28th of April 2019, Scotland declared a climate emergency at the SNP conference. The following day, the Welsh Government made its own declaration. Wales's parliament, the Senedd, passed the declaration on the 1st of May 2019. The UK Parliament followed later that afternoon.

  In June 2019, Trent McCarthy of Darebin organized two online link-ups. They brought together councillors and parliamentarians from Australia and around the world to connect climate emergency governments. Following a motion at the National General Assembly of Local Government, McCarthy announced the formation of Climate Emergency Australia. Scotland's Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act passed on the 25th of September 2019, giving legal form to that spring's parliamentary declaration.

• 4. A Global Chorus

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  Pope Francis declared a climate emergency in June 2019. He called for a 'radical energy transition' away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. He urged leaders to 'hear the increasingly desperate cries of the earth and its poor.' Francis argued against 'the continued search for new fossil fuel reserves' and stated that 'fossil fuels should remain underground.'

  On the 10th of July 2019, networks of more than 7,000 higher and further education institutions from six continents declared a climate emergency. They agreed to a three-point plan to address the crisis through their work with students. Some of those statements were criticized for not including specific measures.

  On the 28th of November 2019, the European Parliament declared a climate emergency, representing 28 member states at that time.

  In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's majority Labour government declared a climate emergency on the 2nd of December 2020. Her government invited the Greens to participate in a cooperation agreement and worked with Climate Minister James Shaw on the declaration.

  In September 2021, Mauritius declared a state of climate emergency through its Interministerial Council on Climate Change. The recommendation came from Dr. Zaheer Allam of the National Youth Environment Council, announced by Environment Minister Kavy Ramano.

  As of September 2022, at least 15 countries had declared a state of climate emergency. The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, urged all remaining countries to declare climate emergencies until carbon neutrality is reached.

• 5. Science and Medicine

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  On the 5th of November 2019, the journal BioScience published an article endorsed by more than 11,000 scientists from 153 nations. The text stated plainly that 'planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.' It warned that the world's people face 'untold suffering due to the climate crisis' unless major transformations to global society occur.

  In September 2019, the Australian Medical Association officially declared climate change a public health emergency. The AMA listed projected harms: higher mortality and morbidity from heat stress, injury and death from increasingly severe weather events, and spread of vector-borne diseases. The association also cited food insecurity from declining agricultural outputs and a higher incidence of mental ill-health. The AMA called on the Australian government to adopt a carbon budget, reduce emissions, and transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

  On the 28th of July 2021, BioScience published a second article on the subject. By that point, more than 2,800 additional scientists had signed the original climate emergency declaration. The number of jurisdictions that had formally declared or recognized a climate emergency had reached 1,990 across 34 countries.

• 6. An Uneasy Reckoning

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  Gills and Morgan (2020) described the overall pattern as a 'successful failure.' International climate initiatives had produced symbolic commitments without delivering emissions reductions at the scale required by climate science. Global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise despite the spread of emergency language. Declarations can also generate feelings of hopelessness that discourage practical action, a condition researchers call eco-anxiety. Gills and Morgan observed that society is not yet acting as if it faces an imminent crisis, which can contribute to public disengagement.

  Calls for a 'World War II-style climate mobilization' are among the emergency framings critics say risk legitimising extreme, centralised control. Scholars also warn that framing climate change as an emergency can concentrate power in executive institutions, potentially bypassing democratic checks and balances. Emergency rhetoric has been cited as justification for restricting free speech and the right to protest. Legal experts raise concerns about the long-term precedent that emergency powers may set for governments to bypass democratic procedures in future crises. Rights advocates have flagged particular concerns about human rights abuses among marginalised populations, including indigenous groups and climate refugees.

  In October 2019, an official petition to the Australian Parliament calling for a climate emergency declaration received more than 400,000 signatories. It became the single most popular online parliamentary petition in Australia's history. That same month, the Morrison Government rejected the motion. Support had come from the Australian Labor Party, the Greens, and independent members Zali Steggall, Helen Haines, and Andrew Wilkie. In 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared a climate emergency in the Pacific after meeting with regional leaders in Fiji at the Pacific Islands Forum.