Nature's way of telling us something's wrong

Wednesday 6th April 2016 @ 19:30

Meeting in No.28 Market Place Belper

Working together for the environment

BelperStuff has been plugging this meeting for the past few days so regular readers might be suffering from event notification fatigue. If that's the case then don't go any farther than the embedded video .......... Nature's way by Spirit ........ I think recorded in 1970.

Link to the Nature's way for those who receive the post by email without embedded stuff

If you have made it this far, hopefully enervated by the video, you might like to read on to the blurb and agenda that goes with the meeting:

Working together for the environment

This meeting has been convened because many of us in the green movement have been dismayed at the gradual unpicking of legislation and commitments by the government since the 2010 election; most alarmingly the accelerated attack on a Zero Carbon Britain that must be our goal. Despite the best efforts of thousands of hard working individuals, protesting on endangered sites, holding meetings to educate and inform, writing articles and letters to news media, lobbying their MP’s or taking part in political party policy forums ………. despite all of this we are faced with a government that is turning the clock back on environmental reforms. Their determination to retain carbon sources of energy and to go big on nuclear are headline news but the devil is in the detail. In their autumn 2015 analysis of the international sustainable energy industry Ernst & Young has seen the UK drop out of the top 10 for places to invest in renewable energy for the first time. The report declared that the government had ‘sentenced the UK renewables sector to death by a thousand cuts …………. such as:

·            Scrapping the Zero Carbon Homes building standards

·       Changes to Vehicle Excise Duty

·       Privatising the Green Investment Bank

·       Applying the Climate Change Levy to renewable energy

·       Cut renewable energy subsidies for onshore wind

·       Cutting subsidies for larger solar power schemes

·       Cutting subsidies for small-scale renewable

·       Proposals to remove pre-accreditation for feed-in tariff schemes

·       Delaying the autumn 2015 round of Contracts for Difference for large scale         renewable energy projects.

·       Scrapping the Green Deal for home energy efficiency investments

·       Abandoning a previous commitment to increase the share of environmental taxes in the total tax take

So how do we respond

We can carry on as we are and hope to win the hearts and minds of the electorate come 2020 but many fear that this will not be enough. We have to do more to make this present government take notice and this is what we want to explore in this meeting. Therefore:

Our meeting agenda

1.       Welcome and overview by the meeting chair

2.       Environmental gains since the clean air act of 1956

3.       The current situation

a.       Withdrawal from the zero carbon commitment

b.      Fracking & UCG

c.       Unpicking the commitment to environmental transportation

4.       How can we best work together

5.       Labour Environment Campaign (SERA)

Each element will involve a short introduction then be open for general discussion.

There will be a chance to discuss the role and potential of a local SERA branch at the end of the meeting.