“Need to act fast” says report the council has sat on for 6 months. #ClimateEmergency

On Thursday 14th October the currently empty ritual of “scrutiny” continues. The all-Labour scrutiny committee will discuss four reports, one on waste (see here) and three which purport to be about the climate emergency (the first two really are not). Crucially, at no point in the 196 pages of the agenda pack does it state “in the last three years the city has burned 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, leaving only 9 million tonnes for the next 80 years if Manchester wants to stay within its carbon budget.” There is no report on this failure, or how to get on track. Just… silence. As if pretending a problem doesn’t exist will make it go away. So, regardless of what gets said of these following three reports, the fundamental victory for those who want to see no meaningful action on climate change is complete…
The third of the three reports is “Large Scale Renewable Energy Generation Feasibility Summary Study.”

The tl:dr is this – The Council paid for this report, which said “you wanna act, you gotta get moving now.” The Council then sat on the report for six months. It may or may not buy into some existing renewables infrastructure elsewhere, because it doesn’t want Airport City to be greener. The end.

Read on for a bellow(-of-)pain-by-bellow(-of-pain) account of what is missing .

The report (how much was spent?) was ready by April.

but it took two months for the Senior Management Team to have a look, and another 3 for the Leader and the Executive Member to have a look. Great sense of urgency guys.

Thank goodness climate isn’t an emergency or anything…

I wonder if any of the above people winced at all when they read this –

“The Council would need to be prepared to move at speed”… yes, well, why change the habits of a lifetime?

Btw, the report rules out planting the renewables locally.

and here is a bit more about that land.

Will anyone at Scrutiny get up on their hindlegs and ask this question?

If you think the Council is underperforming on climate change, and that the Labour Group is incapable of changing that, then, well, our email is contact@climateemergencymanchester.net

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