Working Group on Climate Action

Offer incentives to businesses for being eco-friendly/restaurants who offer meat-free menu items.

Use business licensing of drive throughs and gasoline retailers to require EV charging infrastructure.

Businesses wanting to provide drive through or sell petroleum fuels should provide an EV charger.

Ban single use plastics, reduce bus fare, plant more trees, build up instead of urban sprawl.

You can’t create a sustainable city if you make public transit inaccessible for a lot of people. Additionally, with urban sprawl (ie building of houses east and west of Kingston), this means more people will be driving creating more emissions. If we don’t build up (ie apartment buildings in the downtown core, affordable housing etc.), we are purposefully creating more greenhouse gases. I also don’t understand why the city can’t ban single use plastics so that corporations like Loblaws can’t use plastic bags.

Zero Emissions Now

To reach zero GHG emissions within 20 years, incremental approaches are insufficient and ineffective. Negative cost solutions abound when life-cycle accounting is applied. All new construction should meet zero emissions standards e.g. https://www.cagbc.org/zerocarbon. Existing facilities should be required to provide retrofit plans integrated with capital and maintenance expenditures to be implanted within 20 years that meet zero emissions. Use Community Improvement provisions of the Planning Act to enforce and incent compliance. "Well defined problems lead to breakthrough solution" Harvard Business Review. Council's priority should be to acquire a deeper understanding of what is required to achieve the IPCC pathway to staying below a 1.5 C rise within 30 years, then develop a strategic plan to achieve the goal. Curtailing methane emissions is a prerequisite and priority. North American natural gas supplies, primarily produced by fracking, accounts for most of recent global methane rate increases. Phase-out of natural gas demand, primarily buildings, electricity, and industrial processes, is by far the most important objective. https://theenergymix.com/2018/11/08/asleep-at-the-switch-canadas-pathway-to-1-5c-means-phasing-out-natural-gas/

Justification of additional street lights

The city should only add new traffic lights if ALL 5 conditions of the mot are met. Justification 1 – Minimum Vehicle Volumes · Justification 2 - Delay to Cross Traffic · Justification 3 - Collision Experience · Justification 4 – Combination Experience · Justification 5 – Pedestrian Experience