On December 7, 2019, the Environmental Caucus collected 43 more signatures at the Pacifica Art and Music Festival on our Climate Emergency Mobilization Project petition requesting local governments to develop climate emergency programs. As soon as we feel we have enough signatures on our petition to demonstrate the overarching concern of the citizens of Josephine County, we will take those signatures to the Josephine County Commissioners, the Grants Pass City Council, and the Cave Junction City Council and ask them each to develop a climate emergency program, using the resources and regulatory authority available to them, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their jurisdiction as low as possible with a goal of reaching zero emissions in 10 years or less. This is a worldwide program. Countries, states, provinces, counties, cities, and other governmental entities across the globe have already developed their own environmental emergency programs and are working diligently to comply with them. We want our respective governments in Josephine County to do the same.
Join me and thank Vanessa Ogier, Gene Mount, Lynda Spangler, Joe Stodola, and Kathy Svendsen for giving up a large chunk of their Saturday to collect signatures on this cold, rainy day. We were all dressed warmly, in a large tent with a central bonfire, surrounded by a great group of people. All in all, it was a lot of fun, even though most of the people at the festival didn’t make it out to the tent, resulting in the paltry number of signatures. Most of those that did come to the tent were very enthusiastic about signing the petition. They see climate change as a very real, very serious problem and they want our local governments to act now. Very encouraging! We will be doing this several more times in 2020. We would love to have your help collecting signatures for this very important project. Rick Flora