Today, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham launches his Green Summit at The Lowry in Salford (Salford Star not invited!), and campaign groups are pushing for him to go further and speedier in a bid to sort out the horrific pollution and climate horrors that are engulfing the city and beyond.
The Summit will be presented with the Draft 5 Year Environment Plan that sets out how Greater Manchester will start to reduce climate change emissions to meet the target of becoming 'carbon-neutral' by 2038 - but the Greater Manchester Climate Action Network (GM-CAN) believes that the Draft 5-Year Environment Plan fails to deliver, as it will use up our 'carbon budget' twice over.
"Greater Manchester needs to do more, and do it faster" states GM-CAN "To stay within the carbon budget, rapid, deep emissions reductions of 15% per year are needed, which means halving carbon emissions over the five years of the plan."
GM-CAN members are calling for Burnham and the ten Greater Manchester council leaders, including Salford City Mayor, Paul Dennett, to "declare a climate emergency and take bolder actions to tackle our climate-wrecking emissions more rapidly".
"We applaud our Mayor and council leaders for setting a science-based budget for how much carbon we can afford to emit...but the five-year Environment Plan blows the budget twice over, putting us on a path to climate chaos" says Ali Abbas from Manchester Friends of the Earth "To keep the climate safe for our families and for future generations, we need politicians and business leaders to do more, faster."
The sentiments are echoed by Mark Burton from Steady State Manchester, who says: "To stay within our carbon budget, we need to halve carbon emissions in the next five years. But the plan fails to take decisive action, covering its timidity with vagueness. We expect more."
And the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, which invests in fossil fuels and fracking (see previous Salford Star article – click here) comes under fire yet again...
"This year we've already seen our moors on fire, summer temperatures in February and devastating floods caused by cyclones in Mozambique and the American Midwest" says Maggie Walker from Fossil Free Greater Manchester "It's totally unacceptable that our local pension fund is still investing billions in coal, oil and gas companies when climate change is already happening.
"If our leaders are serious about this, they should tell the GM Pension Fund to move out of the dirty fossil fuels of the past and invest instead in the clean renewable energy of the future" she adds.
GM-CAN is calling for the following actions to be taken over the next three months...
* Declare a Climate Emergency and appoint a Climate Emergency Commissioner with the responsibility and resources to deliver rapid carbon reductions.
* Accelerate the actions in the 5-year plan to deliver in line with the Tyndall carbon budget, and act now to deliver a 15% reduction this year.
* Instruct the GM Pension Fund to sell all holdings in companies involved in the exploration, extraction, refining and distribution of fossil fuels within two years, starting with the most polluting (coal, tar sands and fracking).
GM-CAN is also calling for urgent action from the UK Government to help Greater Manchester to meet its targets, including an end to fossil fuel extraction, faster action to phase out polluting cars, and scrapping plans for HS2, road-building and airport expansion.
To read the Draft 5-Year Environment Plan – see here https://www.gmcameetings.co.uk/download/meetings/id/4352/06_5_year_environment_plan
To find out more details on the Green Summit – click here
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