Climate Change Campaign Update - June 2019

Council meeting
Tomorrow Richard and Beatrice will be meeting with Sheffield Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Streetscene and Climate Emergency, Cllr Lewis Dagnall

Context on the meeting - Lewis requested meeting with Extinction Rebellion and other climate groups. Beatrice is attending the meeting with Richard and will be discussing the Green Commitment for Sheffield which is now 2 years old and see what is progressing. Rachel for the Sheffield Climate Alliance will also be attending. Richard has been speaking with Simon Bowens, FOE rep for the North East about the key messages for the meeting. Group discussed sending out a press relase after the meeting to keep up the pressure.

Cycling
Dexter from Cycle Sheffield shared information about their campaigns for a cycle friendly city through enabled infrastructure. They responded to Sheffield’s transport strategy with the view that the climate change section was rather weak as did other charities but from their responses it has been improved so is now sounding a bit more ambitious on the walking and cycling plans. With transport producing the biggest amount of greenhouse gases there needs to be clear indicators on how they can decrease that.  Sheffield Council does not have the funds to do everything in the transport strategy priorities and the worry is that they will just continue to do road improvements. Sheffield Cycles advice to the council is to look at schemes such as in Nottingham where they have a Parking Levy for businesses for 10 or more car parking spaces at £400 per space. This is then used on sustainable transport. Lewis has said that this can’t work for Sheffield as it has a different distribution of businesses in the centre. We will raise these points  in discussions with the council.

Cycle Sheffield have a great article relating to transport in Sheffield. The link is here.

Picture Source: pixabay.com

HS2
FoE’s position on HS2 is that it is loads of money to spend instead of improving the current rail network.

Trees
Webinar on doubling Tree Cover on the 1st of July –  Amy registered and to feedback to the group.
Richard discussed an idea for a schools student climate confrence. Sara discussed the event for young campaigners happening in Keele soon and will share info with the group.

Picture source: pixabay.com