Warwickshire Climate Alliance
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Climate and Nature Bill
Warwickshire Climate Alliance has written to the other local MPs – Jodie Gosling, John Slinger, Rachel Taylor, Matt Western, and Sir Jeremy Wright – to urge them both to support the Bill and, importantly, to pledge to be in Parliament to vote for it on January 24th. Please, if you are one of these MPs’ constituents, take the time to write to them to urge them to back the Bill. You can use the Zero Hour website to do this.
Current Actions and Issues
Letter to MPs on the Climate and Nature Bill
We are delighted to see that the Climate and Nature Bill will now advance to a Second Reading in the House of Commons on January 24th, having been picked to do so by the new MP for the South Cotswolds constituency, Dr Roz Savage. As a Warwickshire MP, we would like to ask you to join 227 MPs and Peers across the political parties in pledging your support for the Bill, and to ensure that you are available to vote in favour of it on January 24th.
Like the 2008 Climate Change Act, the CAN Bill is non-party political. It links the climate and nature crises to give us the best chance of limiting emissions to 1.5°C, if that is still possible, and to reverse (rather than merely halt) the decline of nature. It would improve on existing legislation, including the Climate Change Act and the Environment Act, in several key ways:
It would unambiguously require the phasing out of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, ending the culture of delay and greenwashing promoted by the fossil fuel industry and their allies in the media.
By linking the climate crisis and the decline of natural biodiversity, the Bill ensures decarbonisation will not take place at the expense of the natural environment.
By requiring visible reversal of the decline of nature by 2030, it opens opportunities for carbon sequestration from the restoration of woodlands and hedgerows, rivers, peatlands and wetlands.
The Bill would mandate a just transition, by ensuring financial support and retraining for workers in fossil fuel and other affected industries.
In order to secure as broad a social consent as possible for a green transition that will impact the lives of everyone, the Bill would ensure involvement of ordinary people in planning the transition through a Climate and Nature Assembly.
It will ensure emissions reductions at home are not achieved by simply offshoring them, by requiring that the UK take action to reduce its carbon emissions and ecological impacts overseas, as existing legislation does not. Carbon emissions will harm the life chances of future generations wherever they are released. We cannot solve the problem with an ‘island mentality’.
You can learn more about the Bill, and find lists of supporting politicians and organisations here. The Bill itself can be read here.
We believe this is a vital opportunity to ensure that we are doing everything we can to try to limit global heating. As the planet heats beyond 1.5°C over pre-industrial temperatures, scientists consider it ‘likely’ we will trigger irreversible transformations, such as the undermining of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and the transition of the Amazon rainforest to grassland. These transformations will have a devastating impact on human societies and the natural world. According to the latest State of the Climate Report, written by leading climate scientists, “Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions. That would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability, possibly even partial societal collapse.”
Since entering government, both Keir Starmer and his Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have spoken of the existential threat of climate change in speeches to the UN. At the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, the UK joined other nations in adopting a Declaration for Future Generations, in recognition of the impact our inaction will have on future generations. Passing the Climate and Nature Bill would help restore hope to the young, demonstrate world leadership, and uphold these commitments we have made to the United Nations and the world.
Please commit to supporting the Climate and Nature Bill and to turning up to vote for it at its Second Reading on the 24th January.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Pension Fund Divestment
Response to WCC Sustainable Futures
Sewage Pollution on the River Avon
Cemex
Beechwood Farm Battery Energy
Please read the open letter below, and if at the end you would like add your name to the list of signatories, write to info@warwickshireclimatealliance.org (the list is now closed but we would still like to hear from you.)
Open Letter to Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council
Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council's joint Climate Change Conference, due to take place at Warwick University on March 11th, seems to be shrouded in secrecy and exclusivity. Attendance is by invitation only, and many people who would like to attend, from a range of organisations in Coventry and Warwickshire, have had their requests to attend rejected.
They include people with nationally acknowledged expertise on some of the key issues, and others with long experience in leadership roles, working locally on the development of renewable energy resources. Even those who do have invitations have received almost no information about the event, and no indication of the kind of participation that will be possible.
Climate Emergency UK recently published a national survey of the climate emergency plans of UK local councils. Warwickshire County Council scored 25%, well below the average of 40% for county councils and placing it in the bottom third. Coventry City Council scored 0% -- it doesn't even have a climate emergency plan. So the two local authorities are hardly on top of the situation.
Not being on top of the situation is of course one of the the most striking feature of the climate crisis. For decades the world has failed to heed the warnings of scientists, which have grown more and more desperate, as witness the recent IPCC reports. Climate related disasters are coming thick and fast, with temperature records broken every year, and astonishing extremes of temperature and rainfall occurring in all parts of the world. For local government to behave, as Coventry and Warwickshire are doing, as if everything was under control and they knew best how to proceed, is a terrible error both at the practical level of planning and understanding, and at the level of public engagement.
Unfortunately it seems that the organisers are not interested in the participation of the civil society groups and individuals who are actively working on climate change. We believe that this will jeopardise the success of the conference and of the two councils' work going forward.
Meaningful progress in tackling climate change will only come when all of society is galvanised to respond. That is why so many civil society groups are taking action and pressuring politicians to take the difficult and potentially unpopular decisions that are needed if we are to avert disaster. The evidence is all too clear that they have not been, and still are not taking these decisions. To shut civil society groups out runs the risk of perpetuating this historic failure.
Ultimately, the success of any climate action plan will be highly dependent on the involvement and contribution of the public. Civil society groups provide a vital link by acting as a conduit through which politicians can share and debate their ideas with the wider public in order to facilitate their support and action.
We all need all the help we can get, to solve this deeply intractable problem. Public engagement, openness and the willingness to listen, to explain, and to question, are essential. It may be too late now for the March 11th conference to widen the range of its invitees, but it is essential for all our futures that the two councils start to listen to and communicate with the public.
A good first step would be to organise a People's Assembly on Climate Change, as have done many local councils around the UK, including Warwick District Council. We call on Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council to take this step and begin the real work of facing up to the climate crisis.
Yours Sincerely
David Mond, Warwickshire Climate Alliance,
Stephen Norrie, Stratford Climate Action,
Tony McNally, Climate Change Solutions Ltd,
Hazel Underwood, Clean Air Warwickshire,
Jane Nellist, President, Coventry TUC
Juliet Nickels, Action21
David Ridley, Coventry Green New Deal
Sir Andrew Watson, Chair, Warwickshire CPRE
Chris Crean, West Midlands Friends of the Earth
Janet Palmer, Stratford Friends of the Earth
Bob Sherman, Low Carbon Warwickshire Network
George Martin, Chair, Building Performance Network
Jacky Lawrence, Low Carbon Warwickshire Network
Paul Davies, Chairman, Finham Parish Council
Nickie Charles, Extinction Rebellion Warwick District
Merle Gering, Keep Our Green Belt Green
Ann Patterson, Coordinator, Coventry Green Party
Rachel Gering-Hasthorpe, Extinction Rebellion Coventry
Ann Wilson, Coventry Tree Wardens Network
Peter Walters, Chair, Coventry Society
Ian Stevenson, Westwood Heath Residents Association
Carrie Pailthorpe, Transition Town Rugby
Philip Brown, Organiser, Coventry Climate Action Network
Jeannie Le Mesurier, ACORN
Haydn Chick, No Bypass in Spon End
Ken Grainger, Coventry Green New Deal
Ann Evans, Keresley Residents
Jane Garner, Spon End Residents
Martina Irwin, Save Our Wild Environment
Joe Rukin, Stop HS2
Robyn McSharry, Zero Carbon Coventry
Rebecca Stevenston, Coventry Green Party
Tony Conway, Coventry and Warwickshire People's Assembly
Carol Rutter
Claire Knowles
Terry Sandison