We need a new era of fossil free politics. Our pension funds should divest from fossil fuels, our ministers should reject the advances of fossil fuel lobbyists, and our councils and mayors should be supported to transition to a zero carbon economy.
Jenny works with campaigners and industry to promote a more radical policy agenda on climate change.
On 5th March Biofuelwatch and the Stop Burning Trees Coalition held an emergency demo outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in response to the Government’s proposal to offer billions more in new ‘transitional’ subsidies for unabated wood biomass burning. This goes back on previously government policy to stop all subsidies for unabated biomass burning in 2027. The only two power stations eligible for these subsidies are Drax (the UK’s biggest carbon emitter) and Lynemouth. These subsidies have no clear end date in sight, so if approved, could lock us into decades more of forest destruction, pollution of communities and carbon emissions. We called on DESNZ to scrap these plans to keep funding tree burning, and invest in genuine renewables and climate action.
My Question to the Government yesterday:
To ask His Majesty’s Government what additional measures they are planning in response to the news that the Met Office believes that 2023 was the second hottest year on record. Continue reading “Met Office: 2023 Temperatures”
After 13 years of Tory Britain, you can spend three years in prison for erecting a climate crisis banner while sexual predators are quietly fast-tracked for release to help with prison overcrowding.
We all know who is not facing jail time: the water company CEOs who fleeced customers for billions of pounds, filled our rivers with sewage and are now asking for our bills to go up so they can take even more of our money; the Conservative Party members who benefited from the billions handed out via the PPE fast-track scheme and numerous other scams; the Tory donors from the oil and gas industry who have had their payback through tax breaks, new licences and delays in the net-zero policy. Those are climate criminals who are costing us a fortune now and costing future taxpayers billions to clean up the mess and mitigate the damage caused by flooding, wildfires, food shortages and other climate catastrophes. Continue reading “The start of a new Parliamentary session”
I initiated a debate to ask HMG how much of the Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund they have awarded in contracts to companies involved in the oil and gas industry and if they would promise not to award it to those companies and their Minister said I was living in a ‘fantasy green world’
Jenny yesterday introduced Natalie’s aviation amendment to the Levelling Up Bill: the amendment proposed a review to examine the costs and benefits of planned expansion of the UK air transport sector and was based on a report from the New Economics Foundation entitled Losing Altitude: The Economics of Air Transport in Great Britain Continue reading “Aviation”
The Government are so awful on the issue of climate change, on both mitigation and adaptation; they are absolutely incompetent, if the Government do only one thing, they really have to just stop oil Continue reading “Just Stop Oil”
This Government are eco-stupid. Part of their problem is an inability to see the global impact of climate change and our role in it. Part of it is the straightforward corruption of donations to the Conservative Party buying influence, North Sea oil licences and the demolition of our net-zero target. Their resistance to all things green is often disguised as innate conservatism, but it is pure hypocrisy, they love open-cast coal mines and giant fracking wells but find large windmills an ugly addition to our traditional landscape. Continue reading “Geothermal Heat and Power Debate”
Jenny’s long standing campaign to stop incineration and raise the alarm over CO2 emissions and local air pollution has been joined by Greenpeace. They have teamed up with Exinction rebellion and UK Without Incinerators to deleiver a 10 point action plan to the PM for a swift shift to a circular economy.
Noting social justice concerns, the action plan stresses that better measures to curb pollution from incinerators are urgently required. It points out that incinerators are “imposed on communities against their will, harming their air quality without their consent” and that these plants “are more likely to be built in poorer areas and in areas with higher racial and ethnic diversity”. Greenpeace data has shown that UK waste incinerators are three times as likely to be located in deprived areas.
Jenny met them at the Big One weekend of protests in London, saying that “Everyone deserves clean air”
A key green party demand is to stop more incinerators being built and for councils to withdraw from the long term contracts that have such a negative impact on recycling rates.
The government suffered four defeats on amendments to the Energy Bill in the Lords last night, including one championed by my Green Party collegue Natalie Bennett on community energy. These will now go back to MPs for them to consider and hopefully we will get a few shifts in the government’s position.
The first amendment adds a new clause imposing a duty on the Secretary of State to bring forward a plan within six months of the passage of the act for low carbon heat, energy efficient buildings and higher standards on new homes.
The second adds a new clause requiring the Secretary of State to bring forward regulations to prohibit the opening of new coal mines in England.
The third adds a requirement to have regard for the UK’s net zero emissions target into Ofgem’s general duties.
The fourth amendment requires the Secretary of state to bring forward regulations to require large energy suppliers to purchase electricity from low carbon community sites and provide annual reporting on the use of such schemes
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 