Today’s MEN carries a letter from Chloe Jeffries of the Core Group of Climate Emergency Manchester. Chloe will be addressing the Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee on 9th February, on the topic of the Council creating a seventh scrutiny committee, dedicated to climate policy implementation. If you want to find out more, please email us on contact@climateemergencymanchester.net – we could use your help in the lobbying effort between now and then…
Your brief news article “Long, hot 2020” (M.E.N. 15 January) was a timely reminder that Covid is not the only crisis we face. It pointed to analysis by the World Meteorological Organisation that last year tied with 2016 as the warmest on record, and that the world is now already 1.3 degrees warmer than before the Industrial Revolution. More warming is to come, with enormous disruption to ecosystems, agriculture and much more.
On the same day, your reporter Niall Griffiths wrote about a proposal, to be discussed by Manchester City Council’s Executive next week, to spend money to reduce carbon emissions at the Aquatic Centre. It would be great if the Executive would also think beyond these (much needed) infrastructural decisions to the more general questions of how to scale up, and scrutinise, climate action across all 32 wards of the city. In the last two years alone, the city used up a quarter of its carbon budget for the entire 21st century.
On Tuesday February 9th the Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee will discuss our petition for the creation of a seventh scrutiny committee, dedicated to climate policy and its implementation. We will be putting the case that the decision needs to go to a vote in Full Council, since the 94 councillors currently in post all voted to declare a climate emergency, back in July 2019.
Dr Chloe Jeffries
Climate Emergency Manchester