In our Own Back Yard

3:05pm Friday 30th November 2007

I’m a bit confused. The new climate change bill was outlined earlier this month in the Queens speech. As a result we now have a legally binding target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050.
Yet, also this month, a report from the University of York and the University of Sussex claimed that the environment has been a low-priority for the government, and that it has failed to heed scientific warnings about climate change, urging them to introduce tough and effective policies.
As an example, the report says that over the last nine years CO2 emissions have risen, the real cost of motoring has gone down, while bus and train fares have gone up. This would appear to be the opposite of the incentive that’s needed.
But what really intrigues me about this particular report is that it says Tony Blair has provided unprecedented leadership on the international stage, while his domestic impact has been limited, and that Gordon Brown seems to have interpreted the Stern Review as emphasising international action, while there is a desperate need for domestic leadership.
So it appears that we are telling everyone else to reduce their energy consumption, while not tackling our own. This is typical of an outward looking approach, what about our back yard?
Looking at the West Midlands as a whole we can see that emissions from both aviation and electricity consumption have gone up in the last ten years, while numbers of people walking and cycling have gone down. This doesn’t look like a trend towards a 60% reduction to me, so how will it be acheived?
Bringing it to a local level, according to the State of Herefordshire Report, almost a quarter of people going to work in Herefordshire travel less than 2 km, this should be good news, but it’s not, because about half of them drive. That’s 8500 people county-wide, mostly alone in their cars, for a journey of about a mile.
Mahatma Ghandi famously said ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ – In this case, that means starting at home. For individuals, businesses, and local government, we must begin by reducing our own impact.

Peter Norton