By Cllr. Bob Noble, Cabinet Portfolio Holder for the Environment, Spelthorne Borough Council
Spelthorne Borough Council, along with many other inter-national, national and local authorities has finally de-clared a climate change emergency, so why should anyone care?
By now, there can be very few people who are not aware we human beings are having a devastating effect on the planet we live on. The likes of Greta Thunberg and Sir David Attenborough have not only tried to educate us and inform us about the damage we have, and are still doing to the planet, they have now reached a point of imploring us to take action, and take action now, immediately, before it is truly too late.
In spite of many non-believers having an opinion that climate change doesn’t really exist and the weather we now experience is merely a passing phase, it is becoming more and more difficult to challenge the fact the temperature of earth’s atmos-phere is steadily increasing, and has been so for many years. Weather conditions, both the hot dry summers, the sudden concerted downpours of tor-rential rain, the dramatic heavy snowfalls and the horrendous fires that have ravaged through parts of Australia and America are indicative of what we will face for many years to come, unless, and only unless we all change our ways.
So, declaring a climate emergency isn’t really what is needed. It’s action that’s needed, concerted ac-tion in a focussed, well planned and determined fashion, that is what will make the difference. Making grandiose statements and then doing noth-ing will not save the planet.
Spelthorne now has an active cross-party Leader-ship Task Group on Climate Change with the sole purpose of reviewing everything the Council does and change what we can to improve our green credentials with the aim to work towards a Bor-ough that is carbon neutral. The task group is also determined to influence each and every Spelthorne resident to actively take steps to reduce their own individual carbon footprint.
The task is immense and some may challenge the concept that we can do anything given we barely have 100,000 residents and the bulk of the total of the planets emissions emanate from countries such as China, the United States and India but the Coun-cillors and Officers of Spelthorne Borough Council are determined to do their bit and hope residents will follow suit to start putting things right.
Given China is the largest contributor to the current emergency maybe we, and they, should take notice of the old Chinese proverb ‘Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.
Your Borough council has already taken a number of steps on the journey – reducing its energy usage by almost 40 per cent in all Council Offices, pur-chasing new electric vehicles and electric bicycles for staff to use, adopting a single-use plastics poli-cy, running paperless Council meetings, imple-menting a sustainable housing strategy (including electrical vehicle charging points for new housing and commercial developments), planted over 1000 trees in the Borough and much, much more.
Over the coming months you will hear a great deal more from your Council and the Climate Change Task Group about how you can help us tackle the climate change emergency and we hope you will join your council by beginning to take a whole range of different steps towards our thousand mile journey to make our borough carbon neutral as soon as practically possible.