Shropshire Green Party Councillor takes action on climate change

5 December 2018

Green Party Councillor Julian Dean has tabled a motion to Shropshire 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 Julian Dean to Shropshire Council:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently made clear the scale of the emergency facing us all. It is clear that current action to reduce emissions is inadequate both globally and in the UK, and if unchecked will result in a catastrophic 3 degrees of global warming.

The UK Government is yet to put forward plans for partnerships with local councils to achieve the Paris climate goals, although emissions reduction efforts at the local level could help the UK government achieve and exceed its existing National Determined Contribution.

In the lieu of a central government lead this Council agrees to:

• Require all report risk assessments to include Carbon Emission Appraisals, including presenting alternative approaches which reduce emissions wherever possible.
• Establish a Task and Finish Group of members, to run for a full year, with the remit to recommend actions and challenging targets across the Council’s activities.
• Task a director-level 'Carbon Champion' officer with responsibility for promoting the reduction, as rapidly as possible, of carbon emissions resulting from the Council’s activities.
• Produce and publish our own Climate Action Plan in order to facilitate the most rapid emissions cuts possible.
• Establish a local Climate Action Partnership to draw in support from business, the wider public sector, the voluntary sector and the wider community.

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