By Dave Putson
[Before he stood down as a councillor in the London Borough of Bexley, Dave Putson moved a motion on climate change in full council. The motion was considerably delayed by the Tories on the council, but the following is the text of Dave’s speech, eventually made in April last year].
We are now experiencing a climate emergency, and the global consensus is that real action is needed now. Therefore, I am pleased to put forward this motion, calling upon the London Borough of Bexley to declare that it fully recognises the climate emergency and will pledge to tackle it now, wherever we can effect change in our communities.
There was a Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October 2018. The response to this report, and its identification that we had 12 years to address the serious issues, was met with lots of governmental statements of concern from across the world.
However, we are now four years on, we have had a “greenwashing” Cop 26 conference which achieved very little. This displayed all of the usual standard responses, and sadly, as now appears to be the “norm”, actions fail to add up to words and pronouncements.
Our children understand the implications better than we do
A few consistent voices have continually raised the issues, yet nearly every developed world government reverted to their usual concerns about economic growth, and four years on from the IPCC and only token gestures are evident. We even had in the UK sustainability projects cancelled, in spite of, or regardless of the highly documented concerns.
Our children understood the implications of this report more clearly than most adults and have conducted “strikes” on this issue since 2019. The school children climate emergency strikes expressed and identified the chasm that exists between their clear-sighted understanding of the issues and most adults who had cynically nodded agreement and reverted to tried and tested conduct, without truly addressing the implications for future generations who would wish to live on our tiny planet.
Most people will try to convince you they know what global warming is, however, try this definition:
Carbon dioxide emissions measured in gigatonnes
Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.2°Centigrade of global warming above pre-industrial levels, and is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.
In factual terms this means: From 1850 to 2019 there was 2,400 Gigatonnes of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere. (A gigatonne is a billion metric tonnes)
How is that arrived at? Well currently, globally: a thousand tonnes of CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere per every 5 seconds, or twelve thousand every minute, or 720,000 tonnes every hour and over 6 billion tonnes every year.
Nearly nineteen billion tonnes this greenhouse gas has been emitted to the atmosphere since we first submitted this motion for this Council’s consideration in May 2019. Over 22, billion tonnes has been emitted put into the atmosphere since the IPCC in October 2018.
Climate related risks for natural and human systems are higher for global warming of 1.5°C than they are at present, but lower than at 2°C and the risks depend on the magnitude, rate of warming, geographic location, levels of development, vulnerability of the environment and on the choices and implementation of adaptions and mitigation options.
Tens of millions will be displaced – but where to?
With current temperature rises, experts think that this will mean sea levels rising by 16 feet over the next 100 years. Note that in the last century sea levels rose by 7 inches. Some, but not all, cities could or would build sea defences. Countries such as Bangla Desh would be flooded displacing 150 million people, but to where?
Docks on city rivers would be defunct. In such circumstances the business of importing foods or goods would no longer be possible. And to further indicate how temperature rises and artic ice melt in such circumstances would impact everyone, most human food comes from fertile land around coastal areas. Flooding would impact these regions and then our ability to feed ourselves.
We have already seen across Europe the political implications of the mass movements of populations seeking asylum as a consequence of war in the Middle East. That will be like a trickle compared to the potential numbers of people needing to find new homes if we leave the climate emergency to progress without any action whatsoever.
Contractors must have sustainability policies
We In Bexley can act locally to tackle global change, beginning by educating the public, and maintaining high levels of information, about actions that people can take and how each action can have a positive impact for the planet.
We must ensure that we lead the way in ensuring our residents become less wasteful and recycle more. LBB must ensure that all contractors and suppliers are applying truly sustainable environmental policies and strategies.
We must promote and use more renewable and green energy across the borough. We must reject any attempts at “greenwashing” and address the climate emergency with substantive and significant action immediately.
We need to be able to identify all of the areas where LBB can make a significant contribution. We can clearly define where and how these changes can be made and then calculate the actions and costs to achieve these ends.
Once you have identified where and how you can effect change then you can make verbal and written commitments to achieve the goals. We should set ourselves challenging, but achievable targets, over and over again. When people work on projects where they understand the objectives and are given the opportunity to be open to possibilities that can improve our world you can be amazed by the results.
Council must become an active participant
LBB needs to become an active participant in addressing this potential for crisis or for radical change by starting with changes to our attitudes to our water management, to our use of paper, to how we consider implementing transport requirements, not just with electric car charging points but also ensuring that the source of the electricity and the means to create it complies with, and fulfils our policy requirements.
LBB needs to become an active participant in long term planning for sustainable energy efficient social housing. LBB needs to end the use within all of its premises of single use plastic, including setting this as a direction of travel in all schools and public buildings within the confines of the LBB boundaries.
This strand of policy directives can be controlled and orchestrated by an existing Cabinet member and a senior officer holding a clearly defined role in dealing with Climate Change and carbon neutral targets.
[Having a significant majority, the Tories on Bexley council moved amendments to the climate change motion, to a degree that effectively neutered it completely. That is no reason why Labour councillors should not move motions and speak on this important issues in council chambers where they can.]
