When I arrived at the Surrey County Council meeting this morning, I found a colourful protest outside County Hall. Extinction Rebellion was protesting about the Council’s failure to act fast enough after declaring a Climate Emergency in July (this was at the second time of asking – the Council rejected my Climate Emergency motion in March).
Continue reading Climate emergency: calls for action at Surrey County Council
The Surrey Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is calling on candidates for Surrey’s 11 parliamentary seats to endorse its ‘Manifesto for Surrey’, ten demands which it says are “essential policies for the protection of Surrey’s countryside, towns and villages”. You can read the manifesto here: http://www.cpresurrey.org.uk/2019/03/local-council-candidates-urged-to-back-cpres-manifesto-for-surrey/
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is encouraging its supporters to write to candidates asking our views on nuclear issues. This is how I am replying.
Firstly: If elected, would you support cancelling the replacement of Trident?
Yes I would. This is the right thing to do. Trident does not make the world safer and we need to divert the money spent on it to better uses, including the NHS and climate jobs.
Standing for election always means a huge number of emails, letters and tweets to answer!
Replying to all these takes a lot of time, but it’s interesting to learn what concerns people, and be challenged to think about so many different and important areas. I will share some of my replies on the most popular topics here over the next two weeks.
I have been selected as the Green Party candidate for Reigate constituency in the General Election next month.
I have served as an active councillor in Redhill since 2010 and am a chartered civil engineer and environmentalist. I will fight to protect our Green Belt and Surrey countryside, for fairer rail and bus fares and for planning rules requiring zero carbon and truly affordable homes.
What does it mean to embrace Hope whilst so many are clamouring to tell us what or who to hate? Standing up for what we believe in requires us to take sides and make choices.
I spent my final day in Katowice at the Towards a New Climate Conference, in a former coal mine shaft, now art gallery on the edge of town.
Continue reading Climate Conference Blog 4 – Towards a New Climate
This is surely the largest conference I have ever been too. The food court took over the ground floor of a sports arena. Registration requires a warehouse. And alongside the main events (which seemed to be a lot of statements by different government ministers from around the world)
Continue reading Climate Conference Blog 3 – Is this really the way we will change the world?
Today was a day-off in the climate conference, before the politicians join in the negotiations tomorrow.
We started the day seeing the message ‘combating climate change – Taiwan can help’ plastered on the side of a tram.
We arrived this morning in Katowice where the 24th ‘conference of the parties’ (annual international climate talks) is taking place. We are currently halfway through the fortnight of talks – the first week with officials in discussion between different countries before the politicians arrive for the second week.
Continue reading Climate Conference Blog 1. Redhill-Katowice