“How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”
Greta Thunberg at the UN Summit in New York
Bearing in mind that we need actions more than words to fight climate change, I’m surprised to see this story on the Redditch climate emergency:
It says:
REDDITCH Borough Council, which is aiming to position itself as ‘ahead of the curve’ on green issues has finished towards in the bottom of a league table of climate friendly local authorities.
Drawn up by the pressure group Friends of the Earth, each council was assessed in different categories including renewable energy, public transport, lift-sharing, energy efficiency at home, waste recycling, and tree cover to find an overall winner.
We in the Conservative administration of Redditch Borough Council have never been sent any table by Friends of the Earth, but we have seen a Green Party one that actually ranks Redditch quite well:
https://westmidlands.greenparty.org.uk/council-climate-league-table/
| Council | Score (out of 11) | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Worcester | 7 | 1st |
| Malvern Hills | 6 | 2nd |
| Cannock Chase | 5 | Joint 3rd |
| Redditch | 5 | Joint 3rd |
Also, in the Friends of the Earth methodology there is a fault in calculating tree coverage, which they themselves admit:
Tree cover – this was calculated using GIS mapping to overlay local authority areas over the National Forest Inventory , and from that calculating woodland in each local authority area. The NFI is known to under-report tree cover in urban areas, so Friends of the Earth is carrying out further research to provide a more accurate estimate, which we will publish later this year.
With around 4m trees in Redditch, we have a very high level of tree cover, but it’s not properly reflected in this table – so yet again Redditch is not getting the proper recognition it deserves.
The Council’s climate change panel has been tasked with setting a target date for carbon zero as part of a Climate Action Plan – which is something Friends of the Earth are calling for, so I do not accept the newspaper’s characterisation that we have “failed” to set a date when actually we are working to come up with a date that’s ambitious and realistic, and we are carrying out what Friends of the Earth has asked us to do.
I personally hope that date is well ahead of 2050, and I even hope we can beat 2030, which the work of the panel will be able to establish rather than plucking a date out of thin air to pander to media headlines.
There is a real danger that councils will start to operate their climate emergencies based on headlines and perception, rather than doing things that are effective but perhaps not as glamorous. We cannot steal yet more childhoods by warm words and newspaper headlines. The time for action is now – and Redditch Borough Council is embarked on evidence-led action that will make a difference, not aiming for what will win a quick headline.
Finally, I don’t buy that “21 places from the bottom” counts as ‘near bottom’ – bottom 5 would be ‘near bottom’ – if anything we are actually mid-table, which is still not good enough, but let’s not make out we’re ‘near bottom’ when actually we’re not.
- See more posts about Redditch Climate Emergency.
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