Submitted by Brown Pulliam
As a petitioner for, and one of the authors of Article 18 of the warrant for the March 25/26 Annual Town Meeting relating to the threat of global warming, a number of people have asked me why I chose to inflict this article on the town meeting rather than just ask the Selectmen to carry out its intent?
For reasons, explained in the body of Article 18 (If you did not receive a copy in the mail, use this link: https://www.bedfordma.gov/sites/bedfordma/files/news/2019_atm_warrant.pdf.) I was concerned that our elected and appointed state and national “leaders” have as yet failed to ramp up measures against global warming that would be commensurate with the magnitude and urgency of that threat. I felt the most forceful way to express this concern would be by way of a petition voted by a representative body of town citizens, with a further advantage that this approach would generate much more discussion about global warming among citizens of the town than were it simply presented as a statement by the Selectmen.
While I had no reason to doubt that the Selectmen would agree with the sentiments of article 18, I could envision their reluctance to impose an added item of business on the town meeting that could indeed have been implemented directly by themselves. Since I had devised this project after the New Year, the first opportunity I would have had to ask the Selectmen to place the Article in the warrant would have been at their meeting of 14 January. If they had refused to add the article, I would have been left with no time to collect the ten signatures needed to force it into the warrant because that Monday was also the deadline for inserting petitioner articles.
Such dilemmas, as this lack of time to follow a series of prescribed procedures, are major problems when dealing with global warming. The time we have left only allows for launching many projects in parallel, thus requiring each to be done to tight standards and time schedules to achieve ultimate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions sufficient to completely halt the rise in global climate temperature.
The slide deck that explains Article 18 has been posted online, along with the other voters will see during Annual Town Meeting. Click this link to view the Article 18 slides.
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