Our streets should belong to people first, vehicles second
Jenny has worked to make safe space for walking and cycling, to improve public transport and to reduce traffic levels
Read on for her latest posts on this topic
Amendment 10 is a pretty good amendment and something to work towards, even if it is not accepted today. It would require a report every six months rather than annually; “indirect impacts” are explicitly mentioned; and it would require a report to Parliament by the Secretary of State, with a four-week consultation period, rather than no consultation at all.
Continue reading “HS2 Bill Amendment 10”
The first day of the Report stage of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill saw four votes on amendments, three of which Jenny voted for in an attempt to improve the project if it cannot be stopped:
Continue reading “HS2: Destruction and broken promises”
We should cancel HS2 and reallocate all public funds to a zero carbon transport future – why the Green Party voted to oppose HS2.
Continue reading “HS2 opposition and alternatives”
Thank you for your response to my previous letter regarding incineration and climate change. I am writing to you ahead of the publication of the CCC 6th Carbon Budget advice to government to draw your attention to serious failures in your previous analysis of this issue.
Continue reading “Burning waste: Letter to Climate Change Committee”
If all the incinerators in our planning process are built in the next few years we will double our capacity to burn waste and double greenhouse gas emissions. So if government aims to reduce the waste we produce, do we have less recycling or import more waste?
The first day of committee saw Jenny supporting all the tabled amendments in an effort to improve this bill…
Continue reading “High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill Committee Stage day 1”
My Clean Air (as a human right) Bill has been submitted to the Lords today and will hopefully reach a 2nd reading in a few months. It is one of five separate Bills being put forward by MPs and local authorities to promote the idea of a Clean Air Act. Continue reading “Clean Air Bill goes to Lords”
I find it infuriating that Labour and Lib Dem councils are still approving waste from energy incinerators while their national parties declare a Climate Emergency. Labour have passed a motion at their conference aiming for zero carbon by 2030, but contracts between local authorities and incineration companies will last well beyond this timescale.
In 2016 waste incinerators officially accounted for 10.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases and that total is going up rapidly as we burn more waste. The real total is double that according to analysis done by the ‘No Incinerator UK’ campaign, who point out that the amount of plastic being burnt has gone up rapidly since 2011 when the government last calculated the mix of waste that was being put into incinerators.
A quick glance at oil company profits from recent years shows that plastic production has become crucial to their profitability with plastics accounting for half of global oil consumption growth to 2040. Oil, in the form of plastic, is the ideal fuel for incinerators and enables them to reach the temperatures where everything else burns nicely. We want to stop cars using petrol in the next ten years, so why are we happy for incinerators to use it?
Boris Johnson has written an article in The Times describing the Environment Bill which will be in the Queen’s Speech on Monday. As a quick measure of how green this Environment Bill really is, here are five policies that it must include: Continue reading “Green tests for the Environment Bill”
