Oswestry Green Party Councillor takes action on climate change

4 December 2018

Green Party Councillor Olly Rose has tabled a motion to Oswestry Town Council to take active steps to reduce carbon emissions.

The Green Party is taking action on climate change by encouraging local councils to show leadership in reducing their own carbon emissions and helping their communities to do likewise. To help prevent the catastrophic effects likely to result from runaway climate change.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in October this year spoke about the urgent need for climate action. The Paris Agreement called for governments to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees. He said: "We are way off target The commitments made so far by Parties to the Paris Agreement represent just one-third of what is needed."

We risk irreversible catastrophe if we don’t act more quickly as 1 degree warming has already occurred.

This is the text of the motion submitted by Councillor Olly Rose to Oswestry Town Council:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report in October 2018 on the subject of "Global Warming of 1.5°C". The report is an international effort to summarise the current scientific consensus on how society might limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, as well as the likely consequences of this and greater levels of warming occuring. The report makes clear the huge scale of the emergency facing us all. In order to limit warming to 1.5°C it will be necessary to halve global carbon emissions by 2030 and to achieve near-zero net emissions by 2050.

To facilitate the reduction of carbon emissions, Oswestry Council resolves to:

1. Commit to becoming a carbon-neutral organisation by 2030. Create a carbon audit and action plan for achieving this aim by the end of 2019. In order to facilitate this a working group will be set up.
2. Where relevant include carbon emissions implications in officers reports.
3. Seek ways to facilitate and encourage our community in reducing direct and indirect CO2 emissions and to become resilient to changes caused by the changing climate. We will take active steps where possible to encourage:
   • More sustainable transport
   • Reductions in energy use in homes, businesses and elsewhere
   • Use and development of renewable energy sources
   • Production, sale and consumption of locally sourced food
   • Reduction in consumption of animal products
   • Any other methods of achieving the aims above

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