COUNCILLORS from across the political spectrum have enthusiastically endorsed a proposal from a leading Tory “to end Punch and Judy yah-boo politics” to help England’s largest county become carbon neutral in a decade.
North Yorkshire County Council has agreed to draw up a detailed action plan which will see it consider the environmental impact of every decision it makes and regularly monitor progress towards a greener future after being told it must not delay its response to global warming any longer.
After Harrogate District Council leader Councillor Richard Cooper unveiled the move, saying it was critical councillors were supportive and non-confrontational politics, it received an almost unprecedented level of cross-party backing.
The Yorkshire Party has described the move which would see the county authority develop a carbon reduction plan and work alongside district councils to achieve net carbon neutrality as close to 2030 as possible as “brilliant” and the Independents group said it was a “damn fine proposal”.
Liberal Democrat and Labour members also spoke of their eagerness for the county to use momentum from the initiative to bolster environmental schemes, such as increased provision of electric car charging points.
Referring to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released world’s leading last October, in which climate scientists warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, Cllr Cooper said the county council’s role was to show leadership.
He said: “It is not for us to declare a climate emergency, what we need to do is to say how we address that. And I don’t think it is something we can put off any longer.”
Cllr Cooper said any actions or changes in policy would need to be fully costed, both financially and in service delivery terms, in the interests of pursuing an ambitious plan.
He said: “We need to grow up as politicians and realise that if we don’t achieve all our targets we need to discuss how we can achieve them, not start Punch and Judy yah-boo politics saying ‘you haven’t achieved what you said you are going to do’.”
He said councillors needed to “realise that even if we don’t achieve everything, what we do achieve is good for and for the good of the environment and our communities and that we should work together to achieve things in due course that we don’t manage to achieve initially”.
The Harrogate Central member said the council and the communities it served would also need to herald and celebrate their green achievements, such as the county council’s move to replace sodium street lights with LED ones, saving 3,300 tonnes of CO2 a year and £1.3m of expenditure.
He added: “Reducing carbon output can make very good financial sense and in fact, in most cases does.”
The authority’s Stronger Communities executive member Councillor David Chance said the council needed to be aware of “the impact of each and every decision it makes on the environment”.
He said while hitting the carbon neutrality target by 2030 was ambitious, it was achievable.
After hearing of a desire for transparency on the rate of the council’s advances in meeting green targets, the authority’s leader Councillor Carl Les said a quarterly report would be produced to pinpoint progress.
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