14.3.24 Climate Change Select Committee

Dear friends

Last night's 'Public Forum', on the Climate Change Committee agenda, was the first time we had the most councillors contributing to the nearest thing we had to a discussion.  FANTASTIC!  I think that Dudley Council is the only one of the region's seven councils that has such an item on the agenda of some council committees.  WELL DONE DUDLEY!

Chairman Cllr Pete quite properly told me off.  Cllr Natalie put me right over car parking charges.  Excellent.  Cllr Dave B mentioned the Stourbridge Shuttle and what Suzanne Webb wants.  Cllrs Chris B and Hilary thought keeping the tram on the railway, now it is on it, would be best.

Why I think climate change is all embracing across every Council activity:

1. Accepting that the planet's climates are changing for the worse means acting urgently on every aspect of life (and death)!
2. It means including every policy area and cllrs checking, questionning and challenging every shibboleth and every conventional wisdom of how things are done or, even, should be done.
3. Tackling climate means more than renewable and clean energy.
4. It means more than buying an electric car.
5. Adapting and mitigating our policies and personal behaviour means absolutely everything and cannot be confined to one or  two committees only.
6. Parliament's own Climate Change Committee (their climate policy advice body) on the day before our meeting, issued their own school report verdict on HMG.  They said, the government's effort "falls far short of what is needed."
   
    The nation’s Climate Change Committee
     
7. Fighting your own 2020 declared Climate Emergency means getting sensible transport, the right transport priorities and not wasting hundreds of millions in both price and weight of greenhouse gas emissions on our own regional equivalent of the HS2 folly.
8. It means housing of the right kind in the right places, eg: forgotten High Plateau and its purpose developed 22,000 sq m.
9. It means trying to minimise the destruction of Nature in one of the most Nature depleted countries in the world.
10. It means protecting Public Open Space.
11. It means finishing the Black Country Forest at Merry Hill and working on the owners to do so.
12. Responding to the climate emergency means low incomes helped before car users.
13. Means working towards FREE concessionary travel for all in the region, rather than expanding free car parking.
14. Means cutting back on our own car mileage and trying bus and/or bike.

And so it goes on ... with your own ideas!