Recently the leader of Manchester City Council wrote that “we are interested in is practical, deliverable solutions that have support across all our communities to tackle a fundamental issue. We are open to working with anybody who wants to join us in that task.”
Which is great, because so are you, and so is Climate Emergency Manchester. Just to recap, we are publishing this letter, which appeared in today’s Manchester Evening News.
Text as follows –
On Thursday 10th October, to mark the three month anniversary of the City Council’s declaration of a climate emergency declaration, we released a report about what action the council had taken. The report was based on Freedom of Information Act requests, and was titled ‘Dead Tortoise Society.’ It made depressing reading – on almost half of the 23 elements in the declaration, there was no action. On several others there was very slow action. On the question of re-examining the 2038 zero-carbon target in an open and transparent process by the end of the year, the Council seems to have done less than nothing
We are writing another report. We want people’s ideas about what the Council could do – with zero money (since while they have £37m to buy a retail park and turn it into a car park, they have no money for the climate emergency). We are asking what the Council could do between now and Christmas, and then New Year’s Day to April 2020. What would you like to see individual councillors doing?. We also want to know what you (as an individual or as part of an organisation) pledge to do in the same periods.
Send your ideas to us at climateemergencymanchester@gmail.net by Saturday 19th October at 12 noon. The report will be released – and sent to councillors – on Monday 21st October.
Marc Hudson, on behalf of Climate Emergency Manchester