'The Time is Now' mass climate lobby

A group of people from Leicester, including members of Leicester Friends of the Earth, Global Justice Now Leicester, Leicester Green Party and a Baptist minister, travelled to London today to attend ‘The Time is Now’. This mass lobby was organised by environmental and faith organisations, bringing people together to tell MPs to end our contribution to climate change and restore our natural environment.

The organisers estimate that 12,000 people attended. They stood in groups organised by geographical areas along the banks of the Thames and held up signs with the names of their constituencies, so that MPs were able to find their constituents. At 2pm, everyone set off alarms to wake up parliament to the climate emergency.

The activists were asking politicians to create policies to slash carbon emissions now and also pass a strong Environment Bill that can restore nature, cut plastic pollution and improve air quality.

The government has set a long-term target for ending our contribution to climate change but their energy policies seem to be going backwards. They are still pushing fracking and trying to open a new coal mine, while increasing taxes on solar panels. When we are facing a climate emergency, that is madness. The long-term target is meaningless without immediate action.

We were disappointed that Keith Vaz did not turn up. Liz Kendall and Jon Ashworth did come to speak to their constituents, however. We had an interesting conversation with Jon Ashworth about the connection between human wellbeing and the environment.

Clean Air Picnic

We invited our friends and families to a ‘Clean Air Picnic’ in Jubilee Square on Sunday, to show support for action on air pollution in Leicester.

Thursday 20^th June is national Clean Air Day, which aims to give people the opportunity to find out more about air pollution and ‘help make the air cleaner and healthier for everyone’. Air pollution in Leicester is above legal limits and is known to be damaging people’s health. We recently launched an updated version of our Healthy Air Manifesto, with a list of changes that we want to see to tackle the problem. 

When we had finished our picnic, we gave out copies of the Manifesto and leaflets about air pollution to passersby. We also had an activity for children, who helped to make clean air bunting that we will use at future events.

Earth Movers award for clean air campaign

On Saturday, two members of Leicester Friends of the Earth attended Groundswell, an event organised by national Friends of the Earth in Birmingham to talk about climate change campaigning. We met four more people from Leicester and Leicestershire there and we hope they will come and join the local group! We were honoured to receive an Earth Movers award for our air pollution campaign and the Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester that we have re-published this year.