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Economist claims Nottingham City’s climate protection strategy is too little, too late

Gulliver | 09.10.2006 08:52

Today Nottingham city council will be debating the climate protection strategy for Nottingham. The current strategy fails to meet the urgent need for real action to combat climate change according to economist Brian Davey.

Here is a summary of Brian’s critique of the Council’s strategy.

A) Measured against the latest scientific thinking on the nature of the climate crisis the proposals of Nottingham City are too little too late.

B) Although there are many proposals, some of them quite good, the big
spending departments in the city - education, leisure and community and
social services - appear to be dragging their feet - the proposals as they
effect social services and leisure and community are weakest of all.

C) Many of the policies do not appear to have been thought through and there
is little evidence that the city is aware of the complexities and
complications - e.g. the proposals to extend the Nottingham in Bloom
initiative into arrangements for bio-fuel.

D) Even the most dramatic policy proposals - carbon neutrality in 10 years
for the council as an organisation - is too slow and it is not clear that the
city realises what this would entail as carbon neutrality is not explained.
Carbon neutrality has many implications in regard to carbon offsetting
arrangements that need to be explored. The issues are more complex than meets
the eye.

E) The idea that planting trees absorbs CO2 and hence is a climate crisis
mitigation measure is one of the ideas that is used uncritically. Planting
trees is a good idea but the climate issues are more complex.

F) Energy efficiency improvements will be overwhelmed by growth and the
city's growth orientation will undermine its energy and carbon reduction
achievements. This contradict the the promotion of the city as a regional
shopping paradise and the policies for a 24 hour city (both of which will
generate plenty of greenhouse gases). The recent building boom in the city
has and will lead to increased emissions - even if future ew developments
have some energy efficiency and embedded renewable energy features.

G)There is a mistaken emphasis on large organisations, on high technology and
high science based solutions - the key solutions are those involving low and
intermediate technologies. A strategy to ecologically restructure the city
would provide many manual and skilled manual jobs - the employment that the
city has lacked for 30 years as a result of the decline of its manufacturing
industry. This would help resolve the city's social crisis on its sink
estates.

H) Many holistic community level projects involved, for example, in urban
cultvation have made a start in a community level response to climate change
- their role is not acknowledged or recognised in these policy proposals -
nor their importance in simultaneously helping deal with the social and
health crises in the city. This is a particular failing here in the social
services inability to recognise the importance of these projects.

I) The city council appears to have no recognition of the interconnection
between the climate crisis and oil and gas depletion - a gas crisis in the
North Sea in the last year has only been partially 'averted' by more electric
power generation using coal supplies - this pushes up carbon emissions - and
carbon prices on the European Unions Emissions Trading System - leading to
increased electricity prices. Depletion in oil and gas pushes up energy
prices in their own right.

J) The city (and social services in particular) appear not to recognise that
adjustment to the climate crisis (and to oil and gas depletion) will put huge
burdens on the city's most vulnerable people - for example in rising fuel
prices. It proposes no policies that would anticipate and help the vulnerable
people in the city cope.

K) The city council claims that it is proud and ambitious in its policies.
These policies are not ambitious enough - though many individuals involved
with the city may have caused to be proud of what they have done about the
climate crisis, the city as a corporate organisation does not.

K) It has 5 years to set things right.

The Councils strategy document can be seen at:-
 http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/agenda.asp?1642

The full critique document is attached as a pdf.

Brian Davey
Feasta
www.feasta.org

Gulliver

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Consultation my ....

11.10.2006 07:22

Full council meeting
Full council meeting

Video link with US politicians
Video link with US politicians

Zero 2100: 'Climate Protection Strategy' printed on non recycled paper
Zero 2100: 'Climate Protection Strategy' printed on non recycled paper

I went to the debate and some of the full council meeting. There were 5 speakers who spoke and I understood it was a consultation. We as the audience could ask 2 questions after each speaker and at the end of the morning the floor was opened up for debate. After some questions, Micheal Edwards, the Deputy Leader of the City Council was very belittling towards some people. When I got the microphone and asked if the council could commit to only using recycled paper for their leaflets from now on, I got no clear response. In fact Mr. Edwards was being rather rude, which resulted in various people pointing out to the meeting that Mr. Edwards seemed to have the wrong attitude. I stood up again and asked without microphone whether I could get a straight answer, but no. Some shouted: 'How can we trust you with the big things if we can't trust you with the smaller ones'. Nottingham as a city signed the Nottingham Decleration on Climate Change over 6 years ago and they still don't use recycled paper. They are with 16.000 people working for them one of the biggest employers in the city. Their inaction to change such a minor thing within their own organisation shows to me that they are not committed to solving this problem the way they should go about it. Me and many others attending the meeting felt frustrated at the way we were treated. After the meeting I spoke with various councillors from both the Lib Dems and Tory who weren't surprised to find Mr. Edwards pissing off an entire public meeting again. He had done so previously at the Broadway Cinema. Anyways, hopefully the next meeting can be even more public and more people might attend.

Debate observer


Background information

11.10.2006 12:13

 http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/agenda.asp?1642

This link brings you to the full agenda of the meetings with all the backgrounds information. Proposals, minutes as well as the climate protection strategy. Have look.

Links