No chance of a zero carbon Cambridge

This is a report on the meeting of full council last night, October 20th.

There were some very disappointing discussions:

• Failure of the administration to take any responsibility for the cruelty reflected in the consultation about to start about moorings on the Cam. Coinciding eerily with a range of eviction notices, wrongly labelling boaters on Riverside as 'illegal', and threatening to jack prices up to market rates. The option of auctioning mooring licenses has been scrapped, but the aim still seems to be to get the same effect.
• Denial of a proposal to seek permission to use Proportional Representation for local elections under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, which would increase democratic participation and reduce the number of wasted votes. We were told that Labour felt the nation had decided about PR by voting No on the AV referendum in 2011 (not actually a PR voting system) and preferred top-down decisions from the Tories to grass roots decisions anyway.
• Rejection of a call to move from having an 'aspiration' to become zero carbon by 2050 to having a plan for it.

To understand the discussion about climate change and rapid decarbonisation, the reader will benefit from looking at the wording of the motion, an amendment from Labour, and officers' comments on the motion. (found in item 7 and then item 11 of the agenda)

http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=116&MId=3052&Ver=4

I have a transcript of my own speech, but not the others. I expect that recordings of them will be provided by Antony Carpen who filmed much of it. On the night I actually skipped parts of my speech, realising that I needed to come in at under 10 minutes in order provide speaking time for Councillor Gehring who had kindly offered to second the motion.

"We sit here to discuss climate change a year after the motion which promised to divest Cambridge from fossil fuels, a worthy if symbolic decision. Since then, the focus of the media and the government has been largely on Brexit, although Climate Change has not stopped even though many have stopped talking about it. The debates for the American presidential contest have not mentioned it, alarmingly.

And we have a new report from the Committee on Climate Change one week ago, new record temperatures as usual, and a new executive councillor who I have a high regard for and who I know is an environmental campaigner himself. Labour have themselves stated that they would ban fracking in the UK, a promising step. So after discussing this at Strategy and Resources scrutiny committee in March (see http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=159&MId=2875&Ver=4) I now seek to escalate it to this chamber for reconsideration and new ideas.

This amendment is effectively deleting the motion. So I need to convince Labour councillors to vote against their amendment. I'll assume they're free thinking individuals, who value the public good more than a frankly unconvincing sense of party unity. I'll try to argue that there is a public good from this motion.

I am in no way saying that the existing strategy is bad. It is extremely good, and together with the progress which is mentioned in the amendment, Labour and the officers involved should be proud.

But I think it's clear that we need to do more, and also there are some problems and inconsistencies in the strategy which bear consideration. I'll start there. I'm sure I will make some mistakes, and there will be some things that I was no aware the Labour group had already done, so I ask your forbearance. I wish that someone was doing what I'm trying to do, better than I'm able to, but I feel clear that someone has to do it.

Firstly, the report sets an aspiration to become zero carbon by 2050, but blames changes of policy by national government for limiting the options that the city has. Yes, I'm aware that the government has limited to power of councils to reduce emissions, as well as several harmful decisions on a national level.

The Committee on Climate Change reported one week ago that UK climate targets are not aimed at limiting global termperatures to as low a level in the Paris Agreement. They say that we need to get more serious about meeting current targets first, and then think about setting new targets. So fine, we need the government to give us more powers, which is something this motion was moving to do. The amendment will remove this, presuming that climate change is less important than any of the various things we have written to the government about in the last couple years.

What else? Well, the strategy claims that the city council will play a leadership role on climate change. Not a national role, or a global role on leadership, heavens forbid, even though Cambridge is one of the most wealthy, growing, respected, prospering, privileged cities in the world. Table 1 of the strategy shows that we are not even in the top half of the countries largest cities for CO2 emissions per capita, and our strategy shows only an aspiration of meeting the minimum legal requirements under the Paris agreement. Nationally and globally, we're not leading, we're dragging our feet.

But locally, leadership is important as well. The strategy says that we "call upon these stakeholders to collaborate with us to exploit opportunities and resources, in order to maximise our collective impact on greenhouse gas emissions from Cambridge.". I have been trying to find people who have actually been invited to work with the council to do this, and haven't been having much joy so far. The estates departments of the universities have been involved in difficult design issues and efficient power generation, which is work they we doing anyway. Perhaps six months hasn't long enough to send out other emails. Or perhaps this paragraph languishing at the end of the strategy document in a corner of the council website IS literally the invitation to work together.

The motion I have tabled is calling for a vigorous exercise of pro-active collaboration and engagement. Of course we can only reach zero carbon by involving people in behaviour change and difficult considerations of the future. Let's do it! That's leadership. I think the council are very shy about leading locally on climate change, because it's politically difficult. What if each party in this room issued a joint statement that we need the cooperation of residents to radically reduce CO2? There won't be a political hit if we share responsibility. And really leadership means taking difficult decisions as well as easy ones.

I also want to say that sustainability is about more than just climate change. The elements of this motion which talk about sustainability are about trying to link other issues such as resource shortages, air quality, soil depletion, inequality, fair trade, prejudice, illness, conflict and growth. The challenges to socialism and the welfare state come from all angles, and it is necessary to plan for the future and work with partners to protect the safety of future generations. Failing to plan is planning to fail. I would like an officer to providing leadership on these themes and ensuring that processes like the City Deal and the devolution deal do not fall into latent traps of unsustainability.

Finally the issue of our targets comes up. We don't really have targets. We have an aspiration, we need a plan. The biggest contradiction in the strategy is that we acknowledge what the science is telling us about climate change, and then propose to go about business as usual with no fundamental changes. We'll shave a bit off here, a bit there, but our way of life will remain in a bubble at the centre. Sooner or later, the Western way of life will change entirely. I don't know if it will be because we wait for climate change to make this happen. I don't know if we will voluntarily change it. God knows there are plenty of other scenarios that keep me awake at night, the escalation of nuclear weapons on the Russian border, antimicrobial resistance, the rise of the right, or true artificial intelligence.

But we seem to want to keep bumbling along, and nobody mention the climate. Keep putting your recycling out, meat-free Monday, hybrid cars, but nothing deeper.

I think the trend towards extreme racism and nationalism in the UK is part of a strategy for neglecting the climate further. It's no surprise that so many Brexit campaigners are also climate change deniers. Climate change is killing people now, threatens to destroy Africa before other continents, and is a major driver in the refugee crisis. Even if we find a working scalable implementation for Carbon Capture and Storage by the later half of the century it will be too late for billions of people. Theresa May's statement: "If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere" is a terrifying portent of a world where climate chaos, borders and localised mitigation conspire to devastate races from the Earth. It's not by accident that Black Lives Matter closed down London Airport last month in protest.

Radical carbon emissions and global leadership are one of the few ways in which we can show solidarity with the EU citizens and the world citizens who are wondering why the UK is now against them.

So this motion is for the safety of Cambridge people in one or two generations time, and for the survival of many others right now. The Paris agreement has this incredibly important concept of equity. Developing nations have to put social and economic development and the eradication of poverty first. It behooves the richest parts of the richest countries to transition first. Does that sound at all like it might be your responsibility, in your power, in this very moment? The world is watching, although it might look like only ten or so people. I move this motion."

The main points from Labour were

• A motion to full council isn't the way to get this kind of thing done
• Some of things they are already doing are good
• The (single) climate change officer doesn't have time to do some of these things
• Officers' comments advise against the motion
• One of them thought that some of my recent comments about sea levels rising were funny
• They want to stick to their existing plan, rather than change it
• They don't want to set more ambitious targets when they can't reach the current targets

I tried to refute some of these points, but there are times in full council when you get a sense that the writing is on the wall, and no argument will sway the administration.

But I'm wondering what the right route is to get these things done after responding to the consultation on the draft version of the strategy, pleading with the previous executive councillor at the scrutiny committee, and exchanging dozens of emails with officers while waiting weeks for replies.

Some of the things they are already doing are absolute good and wonderful, there are some incredible carbon savings being made within the council's estate and the switch to renewable electricity is tremendous, something I have been pushing for all year. As I said, Labour should be proud of these steps.

But one officer working on climate change isn't enough. The medium term financial strategy report said that the council's money was earning next to no interest in the bank, and would work harder if they were investing it, and that staff were one of the best investments they were making. The officer is working hard, but has taken months to get the strategy online, and after several more months doesn't seem to have managed to make any contact with any of the expert research and community groups working on climate change. She needs more support.

I think that on a personal level, investing in your body and your health is one of the best investments you can make. It is something you are always going to rely on, it is your home for your entire lifetime. Similarly, on a societal level, investing in your planet and your environment is one of the best investments you can make. It is somewhere that you and your children, and your grandchildren, are going to have to spend their time. The medium term financial strategy is allocating £20m in investment for commercial property, but they won't invest £25k in support staff for the future of people and the planet. An additional staff member might even be able to pay for their salary by winning grant applications for decarbonisation projects.

There seems to be this strange coyness about the strategy as a whole, demonstrated by the amendment:

• They need more powers from the government to reduce carbon, but won't ask for them
• They need more money to reduce carbon, but won't apply for it
• They need more staff to do the work that is needed to reduce carbon, but won't pay for it
• They need more volunteers to work with them to engage the public, but won't ask for them

Is this shyness, complacency or pride? I am confounded.

Some of the officers' comments on my proposals are helpful new information for me, and some are inaccurate in my opinion.

The suggestion to apply for the European Green Capital Award was of course in the year after Brexit as stated, in 2017, not in the current year with two weeks time left to submit. That would be silly. By becoming the European Green Capital in 2020, in the year when the Kyoto agreement concludes and the Paris agreement takes effect, we would be able to take a lead on the global stage as well as attracting investment for innovation and green jobs.

The points about the proposed consultation and the proposed festival of sustainability conflict directly with the climate change strategy. The strategy says that the council will play a local role in leadership, whereas it seems as if they are actually giving out a little bit of cash to let other groups do it. It is under-funded, but even if it was better funded it still isn't leadership if you're getting someone else to do it at arms length.

The points about carbon budgeting, carbon accounting, extra staffing, and adding additional trees on top of the current plan are a plain matter of opinion, they could clearly be done but if officers don't want to then it will only happen with more political will.

The news that we are looking closely at working with the Robin Hood energy company is very positive. Although it is not based on renewables, and uses a dirty incinerator, local energy is important for sustainability as well as climate change. The feed-in tariff for solar has dwindled to a point where it's only a good investment if you're going to use it, which is why local energy companies based on renewables is the right idea at the right time. There won't be a report to Strategy and Resources committee about doing this though, the amendment says it's not worth looking at.

And the news that we might try again to find ways of doing clean energy switching schemes again is happy news to me.

The officers report includes an additional proposal at the end, not in my motion, which sounds like an interesting idea:

"To hold a referendum on climate change, to determine whether UK citizens and their dependents want to remain living on the planet or leave it."

I am not asking for the current plan to be destroyed, but to provide detail in the parts where there are vagaries. and to form a plan instead of an apology embellished with pictures and numbers. Climate science as well as the Paris agreement require us to reach zero carbon by 2050 to have any chance of staying under 2 degrees of global temperature rise, and I think that in a toss-up between the flexibility of the policy and the flexibility of the laws of physics, it is the policy which ought to budge.

I don't believe we will ever become a zero carbon city now, not because of a shortage of powers or money, but because of another resource shortage, which is courage. Cambridge is one of the most famous and respected cities around the world, famous for knowledge, beauty, wealth and heart. If we don't step up to the challenge of urgent decarbonisation, how can we expect anyone else to? The Paris agreement requires hope and ambition from cities as well as nations, how can we expect the goals of the Paris agreement to be taken seriously if they are derided by an amendment as "unrealistic targets"? Survival shouldn't be labelled an unrealistic target, it is the alternative which should be recognised as an unrealistic delusion.