Belper Declares Climate Emergency And Protests County To Follow Their Lead
On Tuesday 14th May, Belper Town Council declared a Climate Emergency.
Jyoti Wilkinson, Deputy Leader of Belper Town Council said,
Climate change is happening now. Evidence suggests that we have just ten years in which we can slow it down, never mind stopping or reversing the catastrophic effects. In response to this on the 14th May 2019 Belper Town Council declared a Climate Emergency. We will take the lead and commit to reducing both the Council’s and Belper’s carbon footprint . We will kick this off by taking part and promoting the National Clean Air Day on the 20th June with other strategies and Belper’s very own Green New Deal to follow.
The next day, Wednesday 15th May, Transition Belper and members of Belper Town Council protested outside County Hall in Matlock, to urge the County Council to do the same. The County Council did not declare a Climate Emergency.
Conservative-led Derbyshire County Council reworked the Labour proposal. The proposal was to declare a climate emergency and take action towards targets. It was reworked to exclude declaring a climate emergency, exclude dated targets and focus on the lesser targets of the Conservative manifesto for carbon reduction.
Where Derbyshire County Council extolled the virtues of climate change, with Councillor Lewis suggesting we could become a wine superpower, Belper Town Council faced factual reality and committed to reducing the town’s carbon footprint and introducing a “Green New Deal”, the details of which will be available at a later date.
Header photo: Transition Belper members at protest: Layla Marshall, Cherry Anderson, Tony Cooper
So presumably Cllr Lewis is more than happy to bask in Derbyshire’s sun soaked vineyards and make wonderful champagne while half of Lincolnshire becomes part of the North Sea, London in drowned and the River Severn floods Tewkesbury, Gloucester et al every couple of months. Thankfully the Pennine moors will be too far away from the vines for the smoke and ash from the annual fires to affect the grapes.
The water shortages, however, might affect production and as the real world surrounding us wakes up to the need to rid ourselves of fossil fuels distribution costs might rise.
Perhaps he is thinking he and his champagne charlies can ride out their days in a glorious climate denier’s party up the hill in Matlock? One way of making the most of our grapes I suppose.