Politicians in Yukon vote unanimously to declare climate emergency

Environment Minister Pauline Frost told the house the Yukon government recognizes climate change has hit the territory hard.

Councillors in Whitehorse voted last month to declare a climate emergency, while the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in the northwestern corner of Yukon, made a similar declaration in May, the first community north of the Arctic Circle to do so.

Frost says individuals, governments and nations must all act to halt climate change.

“The actions governments, including ours, need to take have impacts. Actions will call on our government to change the way it does business,” Frost said in the legislature.

The Yukon government website says climate change has a greater and faster impact on the North than other parts of the world.

It says Yukon’s average temperature has increased by 2 C over the last half century and winter temperatures have increased by 4 C, which the statement says is two times the rate of change in southern Canada.

The effect of weather extremes such as flooding and fires or melting sea ice and permafrost, have damaged roads and infrastructure, limited access to certain foods and challenged traditional activities of Yukon’s First Nations as wildlife patterns shift, says the statement. (CKRW)

This report from The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2019

Tim Kucharuk, CKRW, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Politicians in Yukon vote unanimously to declare climate emergency

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