More needs to be done to achieve carbon neutrality – Basingstoke Gazette

Greener Basingstoke's Climate and Ecological Town Hall Meeting was a wake-up call for Basingstoke and Deane.

The excuse offered was laughable: that it had “become politicised by one political party”.

I know of members of at least two political parties who are involved in the organisation, and the issue of saving our planet should transcend party politics.

But the real reason is something else entirely: Basingstoke and Deane is not on track to meet its pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

As seconder of the council motion that committed us to that target in 2019, I always knew it was ambitious. But we are in a dire position: temperatures have already risen at least 1.1C, and the COP26 commitment to a limit of 1.5C is already slipping out of reach.

That is why we must all redouble our efforts to reach the target: through more zero emissions vehicles, use of public and active transport, better insulation, solar panels, home batteries, home generation, replacing boilers with heat pumps, etc.

But with the Cost of Living Emergency, people can't afford to splash out on these things, they need government help, which they're not getting enough of.

Instead, the government wants to go in the opposite direction, by starting fracking, and letting the fossil fuel firms bank their unexpected vast profits without any windfall tax, unlike our neighbours in the EU.

Paying vast bills for fossil fuels is a form of debt bondage. We should be looking to free our people from it by reducing their dependency on fuels which are contributing to the destruction of our planet.

This will only come about by a change of government. At the Labour Party Conference, fantastic proposals were announced for green energy, a new economy with well-paid jobs to facilitate the transition to a greener world, with Britain leading the way.

In the meantime, our Conservative council has just decided to pay an extra £193k out of our green budget for carbon offsetting, in an attempt to fudge its 2025 “Carbon neutral council” target. This is just greenwashing: the reduction in emissions to net zero has to be real. We should really change our council, too, while we're at it.

Cllr Andrew McCormick
Labour, Brighton Hill
Leader, Basingstoke and Deane Labour Group