Climate Emergency speech by Jane Brophy to Trafford Council

Councillor Jane Brophy's Climate Emergency speech at 1 hours 34 minutes:

Scientists have been warning us for decades that Climate Change is the greatest threat to humanity for thousands of years.

The continuing emission of greenhouse gases and resulting global warming overshadows every other political issue.

Local authorities are well-placed to tackle this global emergency of climate change.

Here in Trafford we need to take every possible measure to urgently reduce greenhouse house gas emissions to save our local area and help protect our planet."

Ten years ago, the Climate Change Act was a radical piece of legislation - made more radical by Lib Dem input.

For the first time, it set meaningful and achievable targets to help us decarbonise. It's a model that has been adopted all over the world and it has been a great success.

And in Government, Liberal Democrats ensured Britain met the early targets from the Act, and kept future targets ambitious.
The biggest Lib Dem successes came on renewables and European co-operation

We more than trebled investment in renewable electricity. We turned Britain's off-shore wind industry into the world leader, with policies that have helped reduce dramatically the cost of green power.

And with an EU Green Growth Group, we led and won an ambitious EU-wide agreement on new climate change targets for 2030 - that was key in itself and vital to securing an ambitious global climate change deal in Paris in 2015.

But that domestic and international climate progress is being squandered by the Conservatives.

Since 2015, the Tories have gone backwards in so many policy areas - from scrapping our Zero Carbon Homes regulation to selling off the Green Investment Bank. And internationally, Brexit will undermine our influence at the EU and UN.

From slashing support for solar power, to banning on-shore wind, from red-lighting tidal power by stopping a tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay to their fixation on fracking, their priorities are just wrong.

Yet last month, the UN released a dire report on climate change and its impacts.

We only have twelve years left to radically alter our impact on the planet to limit climate change dangers of extreme weather, drought, floods and poverty.

Councillor Jane Brophy