While Greta Thunburg is attempting to create a Green World, XR and GreensCAN are trying to force the pace for a Green Britain, and countless websites and blogs tell us what we can do to change our individual life styles, our local Councils also have the power to achieve a lot.
Of course Greens know that, which is why we are campaigning hard for more Green Councillors. And we have the evidence from real results in Brighton, Bristol and Sheffield amongst others.
But there are so many Councils with no Green Councillors, and the Climate Crisis is not going to wait for us to get them elected!
So has your Council declared a Climate Emergency yet? Probably it has, for many of all political colours have now done so. Has it got a Climate Action Plan? Is the Plan up to the job or does it fall short? Is it ambitious, deliverable, adequately funded, fully engaged with other agencies, businesses and the community? Is the Council itself aiming for Carbon Zero by 2030? Does it acknowledge any responsibility to cut carbon emissions across the whole community?
Even if your council has no Greens, you can get involved. Get a copy of the Climate Emergency Declaration and their Action Plan. Support them publicly if they are doing the right thing: challenge them publicly if they fall short. Use the press and local social media to praise and criticise. Challenge individual councillors to take the Green view. Demand community representation and joint council-community projects to tap into public support.
GreensCAN and should act, and not just campaign and protest.
Thank you for posing this important question Peter.
My County Council is, Dorset. They declared a C&EE in May 2019 (adding the ecological part to the declaration in November 2019 when I requested they do so by asking a question at their FCM). They took over a year to draw up a draft action plan which went to public consultation, closing last month. Their target for the Council is 2040 :-( and for the County is 2050 - which we all know is far from adequate. We created a petition calling for Dorset Council to move their target to 2030.
The local area XR Political Advocacy Group has worked tirelessly with Dorset Council and has now reached out to most of the town and parish councils, offering them tailored non-xr versions of the Heading for Extinction and what to do about it talk that lasts 45mins followed by open discussion. They now also use a new name, DorsetCAN, to be more inclusive as the XR brand prevents some from wanting to associate. They hold a council support drop in session which gets great uptake with 65 Cllrs on average attending, within which they share ideas for gaining carbon neutrality. They are also all working on getting their Councils to support the CEE Bill. And we are running People's Assemblies for the County Plan and we ran PA's for the consultation of the council's climate emergency action strategy.
Dorset has a lot of Tory MPs.. but we are working hard on them!!
It is great to see that 300/407 (74%) councils in UK have declared a C&EE. The first step to fixing a problem is to