Why a motion would be the perfect litmus test for HRM’s council in a climate emergency When former HRM councillor Richard Zurawski made a pitch for regional staff to explore banning drive-thrus in Halifax back in 2018, he was hoping for a different future from what we see today. At the time, the Timberlea-Beechville-Clayton Park-Wedgewood councillor and Green Party hopeful told his Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee peers he was “deeply distressed” about Halifax’s climate future: A leaked UN climate panel report warned the world was on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2040—a threshold after which a Pandora’s box of environmental consequences, from severe droughts to flash floods to longer hurricane seasons, became likelier…