Sarah Nicmanis, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Cambridge, speaking to the Environment and Community Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 21st March with reference to the Petition requesting that Cambridge City Council publically supports the Climate and Ecology Bill.
I speak as the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Cambridge City and on behalf of our local party Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party. Last month we released a petition calling for Cambridge City Council to declare its public support for the Climate and Ecology Bill, as of today re-named the Climate and Nature Bill. This Bill was introduced to Parliament by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas in 2020, and today was introduced again, as a cross-party bill by Alex Sobel, MP.
Our petition was signed by 86 people and quickly exceeded the 50 signatories that are required to bring it before this committee. We thank all those individuals who signed and showed their support for this initiative. Copies of the wording of the petition have been distributed around the chamber for you to refer to in the debate that follows my speech.
We ask that the representatives of our city who sit on Cambridge City Council declare their support for the Bill openly, and publicly in the local media. Cambridgeshire County Council has signed up to the Bill. The City Council is noticeable by its absence from the list of almost 350 local authorities that are in support. Cambridge is renowned worldwide for its expertise in climate and environmental science. By actively endorsing this bill, we reaffirm our city’s commitment to global leadership in sustainability and will inspire others to follow suit. With the Bill going before Parliament again, it is more urgent than ever that it gets full support across the country.
On Tuesday this week, the World Meteorological Organization sounded a ‘red alert’ to the world, having released a report confirming that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a clear margin, with records “once again broken, and in some cases smashed” for key indicators such as greenhouse gas pollution, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. In Cambridgeshire, we are seeing the dramatic effects of recent extreme weather events: intense rainfall partnered with hotter and drier summers are making roads unsafe for the public to use; agriculture has been badly hit by flooded fields; and chalk streams dried up during last years’ drought. As local residents and business owners, we are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather and climate events, as their frequency continues to rise.
The cross-party Climate and Nature Bill would require the UK to develop and achieve a new, more dynamic, necessarily urgent environmental strategy to: firstly, reduce greenhouse gases in line with the 1.5 degrees required under the UK’s Paris Agreement obligations;
- secondly, instate a measured path to recovery by 2030;
- thirdly, put nature, upon which our very existence depends;
- fourthly, end fossil fuel production and imports as rapidly as possible; and
- finally, provide for re-training for those currently employed by the fossil fuel industries.
We also request the Council to write to our MP Daniel Zeichner asking him to publicly support the Bill, along with the 130 or so other MPs who have already done so. And it’s not just councils and MPs who are behind the Bill: 881 organisations, politicians and scientists from all over the UK and across 12 political parties, as well as 42,000 members of the public who back it.
We urge Cambridge City Council to join other councils in solidarity, publicly support the Bill, and genuinely show that they and the City are true leaders in fighting climate change.
