The Climate Election, Post 2 of 5: Labour

November 22, 2019climateactionprestonLeave a comment

Here’s Labour’s 2019 manifesto.

The Foreword mentions that this is a “climate election” among other things, and goes on to state:

We will kick-start a Green Industrial Revolution to tackle the climate emergency by shifting to renewable energy, investing in rail and electric cars, and making housing energy efficient, to reduce fuel poverty and excess winter deaths.
We will create a million climate jobs in every region and nation of the UK – good, skilled jobs that will bring prosperity back to parts of our country neglected for too long.

The manifesto then has 14 pages-worth of information about how they will tackle climate change related issues (it’s 107 pages long in total). I’ve taken the headings and introductory paragraph from each section, but please read the full yourself if you think you’d like to vote for them.

Economy and Energy: This election is about the crisis of living standards and the climate and environmental emergency. Whether we are ready or not, we stand on the brink of unstoppable change.

Sub headings for this section are:

Investment
Levelling up across the country
Energy
Ownership
Industry and innovation
Skills

Transport: Labour will build a sustainable, affordable, accessible and integrated transport system, founded on the principle that transport is an essential public service

Environment: A Labour government’s Green Industrial Revolution is complemented by our Plan for Nature. Our commitments to ecosystem repair and environmental protections work hand in hand with sustainable jobs and industries, and social justice.

Sub headings:

A healthy environment
Nature restoration
Land
Food
Waste and recycling

Sir Mark Hendrick: Preston candidate for Labour (and current MP)

So what would a vote for Labour look like in Preston? Well Preston is a “safe Labour seat”. Labour got 24,210 votes in the 2017 general election. The next most popular party was the Conservatives with 8,487 votes. It’s highly unlikely that the numbers will change enough to knock Labour out of the top spot. A vote for Labour in Preston increases Mark Hendrick’s mandate and provides evidence of his strong public support.

Please Note

Climate Action Preston is an apolitical group. We don’t favour any one political party over another. That’s why I’ll be looking in the same way at all the available manifestos of the parties represented by Preston candidates over the next couple of weeks. I’m not going to tell you how to vote because that has to be an individual decision, but please consider the climate when you do vote. That could mean deciding on your candidate, and then emailing/tweeting them to say something like this:

“I think I want to vote for you on the 12th December, but first I want to know what you intend to do about climate change if you are elected to represent me.”

If you do tweet, we’d love to be tagged: @PrestonAction #PrestonClimateElection

The Climate Election, Post 1 of 5: Greens

November 21, 2019November 22, 2019climateactionprestonLeave a comment

With a general election looming, we have a valuable opportunity to engage our politicians in the debate about climate change. Brexit is usually the top news story when it comes to politics, but climate change is a much bigger deal. Climate change affects everyone on the planet – people, animals and plant life. If we don’t act quickly and drastically to keep the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees, the consequences will be catastrophic and outside our control. As individuals there’s a lot we can do, but our political leaders are the ones with the most power to make big, impactful changes. It’s essential that they act on climate change first and foremost.

In the Preston constituency, we have five candidates standing for election:

Mark Hendrick is the current MP and will be standing again for Labour
Michele Scott for the Conservatives
Michael Welton for the Greens
Neil Darby for the Lib Dems
Rob Sherratt for the Brexit Party

You can find their contact details by entering a Preston postcode here.

Up until December the 12th, Climate Action Preston will be in touch with all five candidates, demanding to know what they intend to do about climate change if they are elected.

Preston is a “safe Labour seat”, meaning that based on the last general election in 2017, it’s fairly easy to predict that Labour will win the vote in this constituency. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother to engage with local politics. Whoever is elected is going to represent us, the people of Preston, whenever they vote in Parliament. We want them all to know that we expect to see climate change at the top of their political agendas.

Climate Action Preston will be doing this in a number of ways:

We’re currently in the process of organising a climate change hustings. I’ll share the details as soon as they’re confirmed. I’ll be looking for questions to be submitted by the public in advance.
We’ll be asking each candidate to sign up to Friends of the Earth’s climate change pledge. You can use your social media power to do the same. Keep an eye on our twitter account if you want to see exactly what we mean.
In this blog I’ll be exploring each political party’s manifesto to investigate their policies relating to climate change. You can subscribe to be kept up to date with the latest posts.

At the time of writing, only the Green Party have released a manifesto, so I’m starting with them.

Their foreword states:

Above all, the climate and environmental emergency rages from the Amazon to the Arctic. The science is clear – the next ten years are probably the most important in our history.

Then the first section of their executive summary:

To tackle the Climate Emergency, and deliver social justice, we propose:
The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal will invest in our shared future, funding improvements in:
Energy: including the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy.
Housing: including the provision of better insulation for all homes that need it, the delivery of major heating upgrades for 1 million homes a year and the creation of 100,000 new energy efficient council homes a year.
Transport: including the delivery of a public and sustainable transport revolution, which will allow people to travel cheaply and safely on new trains, buses, cycleways and footpaths.
Industry: including support for businesses to decarbonise and the provision of training to give people skills to access millions of new green jobs.
Food, Farming & Forestry: including the planting of 700 million trees and support for healthy and sustainable food and farming systems.
Incomes: including the creation of a Universal Basic Income, paid to all UK residents to tackle poverty and give financial security to everyone.
New green homes, new green transport and new green jobs will get us on track to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and provide new opportunities for everyone to live happier and more secure lives. This will be a combined investment of over £100 billion a year in the Green New Deal, with an additional investment in Universal Basic Income.

The manifesto then goes on to use 20 pages (not including pages of images) to break down exactly what they would do for each of these points.

I would like to point out that the manifest is 92 pages long in total – climate policies are only a part of the party’s plans, but they feature heavily and have priority.

Michael Welton: The Green Party candidate for Preston

So what would a vote for the Green Party look like in Preston? Well it would almost certainly not result in a Green MP for Preston, because as I mentioned above, we’re a “safe Labour seat”. But votes for other parties are still counted up and added to local and national statistics. A vote for a party like the Greens send a message to whoever does become our MP that there are people in Preston who care about Green Party policy, which includes a lot on climate change.

Please Note

“I think I want to vote for you on the 12th December, but first I want to know what you intend to do about climate change if you are elected to represent me.”

If you do tweet, we’d love to be tagged: @PrestonAction #PrestonClimateElection

A (Very) Brief Look at Climate Change

November 2, 2019climateactionprestonLeave a comment

Climate change is a massive issue with a lot of contributing factors. It’s not a simple and easy matter to understand. Luckily, there’s plenty of information out there to help us get our heads round it.

I’ve known the basics for some time now: we release too much carbon dioxide into the air which traps heat from the sun in our atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect (read more here).

7 August 2011 So... why should you care about the study of ... — Image from Polar Trek

But I’m just starting to get into the nitty gritty of what really happens as a result of all these nasty emissions.

The increasing global temperature is very dangerous. It’s melting ice caps which creates a rising sea level and disrupts ocean currents creating havoc for marine life (read more here). Then ocean acidification also harms living things in our seas.

Ocean Acidification - Deep Maps: West Cork Coastal Cultures — Image from EPA

Rising temperatures mean more water evaporates into the air and the warmer air means clouds act differently, causing more heavy rain and snowfall which is already leading to increased flooding as well as ruining soil quality (because of the water evaporating out of the soil) and slowing plant growth which is bad for crops we use for food. For more on this go here. We’ll also see more droughts and hurricanes.

Unfortunately, it’s the poorest people in the world who will be worst affected by climate change, despite the fact that they contribute the least towards it. Developing countries aren’t as well-prepared to combat the effects of climate change and millions of the world’s poorest are already being displaced because of droughts, other extreme weather and rising sea levels encroaching on their land.

Climate Refugees: No International Definition, Recognition ... — Climate Refugees: image from NPR

A whole lot of wildlife is threatened by climate change and some species have already died out. If we value biodiversity and the rich natural world then we need to protect it. Temperatures are rising too quickly for many species to adapt and their habitats are changing too rapidly. Read about some of the impacts of climate change on animals here.

It’s scary. Really scary. But we have the power and the solutions to turn this around as long as we act urgently.

Preston City Council declared a climate emergency back in April 2019 but is the term ’emergency’ being taken seriously?

If you can, please join Climate Action Preston to work together towards a green future for Preston. If you’re not able to join us, consider what you can do as an individual to reduce your carbon footprint. The two most effective measures the average person can take involve looking at their travel and their diet and I’ll be discussing these actions in the next post.

Calling All Prestonians

October 31, 2019April 21, 2020climateactionprestonLeave a comment

Be the Change

Be the change you want to see in the world.
— Gandhi.

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish school girl, has inspired millions across the world to protest against climate change. But she argues that it shouldn’t be her striking from school, it should be the adults taking action; the world leaders making drastic changes to their policies and practices .

As a mother of young children, I worry that in a few years time her words could be echoed by my children as they become aware of the extent of the climate crisis and challenge me about my own actions. I don’t want to be part of the problem; I want to be part of the solution. I want to protect my children’s futures. So many of the daily choices I make will either tackle climate change or contribute to it. Suddenly the choice to take a stand against climate change and work to protect my planet seems a far more important parental decision than which is right primary school or when to go back to work.

Climate change is already affecting people across the world. People are already dying as a result of the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere. I’m no expert in the science, but there are plenty of people who are experts and they are imploring us to take urgent action on a really big scale to address the problem. As an individual, it can feel as though my actions won’t even begin to make a difference in the face of such an extreme situation. But everything I do makes a difference for better or for worse. And the more I talk about my actions, the more other people will be encouraged to make changes of their own, or to share their own Eco Warrior success stories. Individuals quickly become communities who become nations. Eventually, the world is going to have to work together to fight for our survival and the sooner individuals catch on to this, the better.

I’m just one person, but Climate Action Preston is my way of reaching out to others who want to make a positive difference. Soon we’ll be a community fighting for tomorrow.

Will you join me?