Saturday 14 December 2019

"Jingle Bells, Fracking Smells"


We decided to celebrate Christmas this year with some divestment campaigning, by joining Red Leicester Choir to sing anti-fossil fuel carols in three banks in Leicester. 

In Barclays, we sang ‘We wish you would stop drilling’, in HSBC we sang ‘Jingle bells, fracking smells’ and in Santander we sang ‘Dirty energy, dirty energy’ to the tune of ‘Oh Christmas tree’. All three banks invest their customers’ money in dirty fossil fuels and we wanted to voice our objection to this and encourage people to move their money. We hope these banks will make a New Year’s resolution to clean up their investment policy!

Saturday 30 November 2019

'Trees Please' at the Big Climate Fightback


Since the launch of Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire, working groups have formed to look at different areas of climate policy and they have all been busy. The trees group have dubbed themselves ‘Trees Please’ and on Saturday 30th November, they organised a trip to Shipley Country Park in Derbyshire, to help the Woodland Trust plant the Young People’s Forest as part of the Big Climate Fightback campaign. X people and one dog went along and spent the afternoon braving the mud to plant trees, with most people managing to plant about 15 trees each. (The dog tried to dig a few up, but we distracted her with a stick to chew.) This was good training because ‘Trees Please’ are aiming to plant 20,000 trees in Leicester! 



If you’re not already part of Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire, get in touch to find out how to get involved.


Sunday 20 October 2019

Climate Action Leicester


Across the country, Climate Action Groups are starting up to bring together seasoned campaigners and people new to activism to call for action on climate change. They are asking local councils to declare a climate emergency and then adopt ambitious climate action plans to tackle the problem. 

In Leicester, we held a launch meeting for our Climate Action Group on Sunday 29th September. We had booked Secular Hall, expecting that to provide plenty of space, but then 85 people showed up and we were quite cosy! 



Mel and Zina facilitated the event on behalf of Leicester Friends of the Earth. We began by talking to each other about what had brought us to the meeting and what upsets us most about climate change. This gave everyone the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit. We also discussed effective campaigns for change that we had seen or been part of, to help collect ideas about what works. 


We then split into groups and looked at ideas for actions that local councils can take on climate change in different areas: transport, housing, green spaces and education. Everyone had time to consider every topic and vote for the ideas that they thought would be most effective in Leicester. When we collected all the votes together, we were able to identify the following policies that we want to see in Leicester City Council's Climate Action Plan:

General

  • To set annual measurable targets for Leicester to achieve net zero greenhouse reduction by 2030.
  • To require officers and councillors to identify for each council decision whether the recommendations would help or hinder carbon reduction.
  • That council to set up a cross-party, non-partisan Climate Emergency Advisory Committee.

Buildings

  • To enforce building standards.
  • To require higher standards than current national standards for all new developments.

Nature

  • To protect existing local green spaces, green belt and locally designated nature sites
  • To increase tree cover on council-owned land to 20%, update local planning strategies to double tree cover across the Local Authority area, ensure existing trees are properly protected to store carbon support nature, improve soils and water quality, aid flood protection and urban design.

Transport

  • To reduce car use through measures such as promoting car sharing, improving the bus service, and constraining road space
  • To prioritise transport investment into cycling, walking, trams and public transport, such as electric buses
  • To improve and integrate our public transport system.

We sent this list to the mayor, Peter Soulsby, and we have now set up smaller working groups to campaign in each area. If you missed the launch meeting but you would like to get involved in a working group, please email leicesterclimateaction@gmail.com. The City Council will be launching a 
consultation on their new Climate Action Plan this Autumn and we need as 
many people as possible to get involved in the campaign for action on climate 
change in Leicester!


Saturday 31 August 2019

Michael Sackin

We were sad to hear recently that Michael Sackin, an active member of Leicester Friends of the Earth, died on 12th August. Michael had been part of the group since 1995, until his health prevented him coming to meetings. Even when he was unwell, he continued contributing to email discussions until just a few months ago. He was a dedicated activist and had been involved in all of our campaigns over the past few years. He spent many hours standing on street stalls and talking to members of the public about 20 mph speed limits, air pollution and the need to protect our bees. He was particularly concerned about genetically-modified organisms and agricultural chemicals. Michael will be fondly remembered by all of us as a true friend of the Earth.

His family have set up a Just Giving page to collect donations to national Friends of the Earth in his name and we will be making a group donation. 

Thursday 15 August 2019

A Manifesto for Leicester's Wildlife


Today we presented our Manifesto for Leicester's Wildlife to Leicester City Mayor, Peter Soulsby. Our biodiversity campaigner, Malcolm Hunter, explains:
“All around us the natural world is in decline, but there is a lot we can do to help to halt and reverse this, even in an urban area such as Leicester, given the large amount of land now occupied by urban areas and the fact that urban areas can sometimes actually provide a haven for wildlife that is struggling to survive in surrounding intensively farmed countryside.

The City Council are already doing some good work in this area, but we believe that even more can be done and we hope that the City Council will find our suggestions useful and give serious consideration to taking them on board”.


City Mayor Peter Soulsby said:
“I very much welcome this initiative from Leicester Friends of the Earth and look forward to working with them to look at how we can best use their suggestions to further develop the City Council’s work in this area”.



A Manifesto for Leicester’s Wildlife

Across the world, nature is declining at an unprecedented rate. This will have serious implications for the long-term sustainability of human society[1].
When people think about nature, they tend to think about the countryside, but urban areas are also important as they now occupy a significant proportion of land.  In fact, cities can provide a haven for many species that are struggling to survive in intensively farmed rural areas.[2]

Leicester City Council has a 10-year biodiversity action plan[3], which contains many laudable aspirations and policies.   However, although progress has been made, such as in the creation of wilder areas in many parks, we believe that much more could be done.  We are keen to work with the Council and other stakeholders to look at how current good work can be built upon.   

This document is not intended to be a comprehensive catalogue of everything that needs doing.   However, it aims to contribute some ideas and encourage further discussion.

We would like to make the following suggestions:

Look at the city as one habitat.  Leicester’s existing biodiversity action plan is very focused on protecting sites of particularly high wildlife value and on identifying and improving other sites with high potential.  The rest of the City is also important because the total area of potential habitat involved is greater, even if its quality is lower, and one continuous area of habitat can support more wildlife than several separate areas.  The more that we can connect up areas of prime habitat, the better.  This could be achieved by a drastic reduction in both the frequency and degree of pruning of street trees and a further reduction in the frequency of cutting of roadside verges. 

Plant more trees.  The Council’s current policy is to replace any tree felled with a newly planted sapling, but this does not replace like with like, in terms of providing wildlife habitat or mitigating climate change[4].  Mature trees contribute far more to both than newly planted saplings.  The Council should acknowledge this and adopt a policy of replacing any tree it fells with, say, 20 saplings.  This would come much closer to replacing what has been lost and would allow for more informed decisions to fell mature trees. 

Become a pesticide and herbicide-free town.  Recent years have seen a massive decline in insect populations, with knock-on effects for other species.  Alongside habitat loss, a major driver of this decline has been the use of pesticides.  We would like to see Leicester sign up to become a pesticide-free town[5].   The Council should not only avoid the use of pesticides, but also adopt a policy of making sure that any seeds or plants purchased from external suppliers do not contain pesticide residues. 
Plan to make space for wildlife.  The Council should review its planning policies to check that it makes maximum use of the powers available to prevent environmentally damaging developments and to ensure that developments protect and enhance biodiversity.  This can be done with green spaces, sustainable urban drainage, nesting boxes, hedgehog holes in new walls and fences, restrictions on paving over of gardens and requirements to incorporate green roofs and walls.  In addition, the Council should review whether it has sufficiently robust procedures in place for monitoring whether planning requirements are actually complied with.
Incorporate green roofs and walls into Council properties.  The Council should consider incorporating green roofs and walls into the new council housing that it is hoping to build and its existing buildings.  Green roofs can also be added to bus shelters.[6]
Reduce light pollution to protect wildlife.  The Council’s current policy makes no mention of reducing the impact of light pollution on nocturnal wildlife; something needs to be added to the strategy on this issue.
Consider potential biodiversity and climate change impacts of all Council decisions.  While one part of the Council may be striving to act in an environmentally sustainable way, this may be undermined by the actions of other parts of the Council with different priorities.  We would like to see the Council declare a “biodiversity emergency”, in addition to its recent declaration of a “climate emergency”.  It should adopt a policy of assessing both the biodiversity and climate change impact of all Council decisions and these assessments should play a major role in guiding decision-making. 
Green up the Council’s purchasing and investment policies.  Beyond the boundaries of Leicester, the Council’s purchasing and investment decisions can have a major impact on biodiversity.  For example, the City Council has recently established Fosse Energy, a not-for-profit energy company that aims to source all the electricity it provides from renewable sources.  This is a very welcome initiative but they count electricity produced by burning biomass as renewable.  In fact, electricity generation from burning biomass is leading to large-scale felling of forests, with severe negative implications for nature and the climate.  The Council should avoid using biofuels for similar reasons.  
Engage all citizens of Leicester in helping to promote biodiversity and wildlife.  In an era of financial constraints, one avenue for reaching people is schools, not just in terms of educating and involving a new generation, but also as a way of reaching families.  Relevant teaching materials and lesson plans could be provided for teachers and the Council could consult with the Young People’s Council.  Local media outlets, such as the Leicester Mercury and Radio Leicester, could help get messages out.  As allotments can play a potentially important role in supporting urban wildlife; the Council could provide allotment holders with advice on how to best manage their plot to enhance biodiversity.

Organise a biodiversity conference.  Finally, to help catalyse a wider conversation, the Council could consider organizing a conference to look at further developing local policy.  As well as involving environmental organizations such as Leicester Friends of the Earth, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, etc., this could involve schools (with teacher and student reps); youth organizations; trades unions; the Chamber of Commerce; the universities; community and faith organizations.  To help organize this and to research what is happening elsewhere, the Council might look at appointing one or more graduate trainees.  






[1] Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment

[2] This important role for urban areas is recognized in the IPBES report. A People’s Manifesto for Wildlife have also produced a list of policies that they would like to see adopted by towns and cities in the UK to allow nature to flourish.


[4] A recent report has the role of trees in mitigating climate change: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76




Saturday 13 July 2019

Clean up the banks!


To highlight that the banks are investing enormous amounts of their customers’ money in dirty fossil fuels, we staged a cleaning flash mob at branches of Barclays, HSBC, Santander and Natwest in Leicester city centre.



We wore our cleaning clothes and brought dusters, brushes and polishing cloths to symbolically clean up the banks. While some of us cleaned, Melanie Wakley explained why we were there with a loud hailer:

“Scientists tell us that we’ve got 11 years left to take action if we want to avoid irreversible changes to the climate.

Runaway climate change would be an unthinkable disaster – it would mean drought, floods, extreme heatwaves and sea level rises. The poorest people would be the worst affected and it would become impossible for humans to live on parts of the planet.

We need to be investing in clean energy and a liveable planet. It’s time for these banks to move their customers’ money out of fossil fuels.”

Outside the banks, we also spoke to customers about how they can move their money out of dirty energy.



Between 2016 and 2018, Barclays invested $85.1 billion in fossil fuels; they are one of the top investors in oil mining. In the same period, HSBC invested $57.8 billion in dirty energy, including tar sands, Arctic drilling, coal mining and fracking. Santander have increased their investment in fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change was signed in 2015, investing $14.9 billion in dirty energy in three years.



Following a meeting with a member of Leicester Friends of the Earth last week, Leicester East MP, Keith Vaz, signed a cross-party letter to the prime minister in support of onshore wind energy. Onshore wind turbines are now the cheapest source of energy in the UK. They are also hugely popular, with over three quarters of the public backing their use, according to the government’s own statistics. However, since 2015, the government has introduced planning and financial barriers that have stood in the way of new projects. The campaigners are hoping that Leicester’s other MPs, Jon Ashworth and Liz Kendall, will also sign the letter and support clean energy.

Wednesday 26 June 2019

'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.



Sunday 23 June 2019

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 20th 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.


Saturday 8 June 2019

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. 


Thursday 9 May 2019

Indigenous peoples conquest and revival

This longer article was written by Alison Skinner, a member of Leicester Friends of the Earth, to give an overview of the history of indigenous peoples. 



Summary

The UN estimates that there are currently around 370 million indigenous people living in over 70 countries. Most of us are aware of the way in which our European ancestors exploited indigenous peoples in the lands they conquered, but we also need to think about the new methods of social and economic oppression which are happening right now. It is also the case that indigenous people in many countries are not just passive victims of this process and where possible are acting individually and collectively to preserve their homes, communities and culture.


Friday 19 April 2019

We want your campaigning stories!


The University of Leicester is helping to organise a Journey to Justice Festival in October at Attenborough Arts Centre. Journey to Justice is a charity aiming to use education to inspire future activists. They have created a travelling exhibition about the US civil rights movement and in every city they visit, they also try to showcase local stories about social activism. 
The University is researching stories in Leicester and they want to include a local story about environmental justice. One of the organisers came to our April meeting to ask for our help. So, if you've been involved in environmental campaigning in Leicester, tell us one (or more) of your stories! We're interested in any environmental campaigns - it doesn't matter how long ago they happened. Here are some questions to get you started:
  • When did this happen?
  • What were you campaigning for?
  • What did you do for your campaign? 
  • Who helped?
  • What happened as a result of the campaign?
If you've got photos or leaflets to accompany your story, we would love those too (images of leaflets would be fine - no need to send originals). Please email us with your stories: leicesterfoe@gmail.com Let us know whether you are happy for us to pass on your contact details to the University researchers and then you may see your story included in the exhibition!

Tuesday 2 April 2019

Launch of the Healthy Air Manifesto

We held a photo opportunity outside Leicester Town Hall, at 5.30pm, on the 2nd of April, to launch the updated version of the Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester. The manifesto sets out proposals for improving Leicester’s air quality.  The launch is timed to coincide with the start of the campaign for the local elections on the 2nd of May. To highlight the extent of the problem we wore face masks, including, in some cases, proper gas masks.

Air pollution has been shown to greatly increase people’s likelihood of developing lung disease, heart disease, strokes, dementia and even depression.  It has also been shown to adversely affect lung development in growing children and to impair cognitive development.
Leicester has particular problems with air pollution due to the layout of its roads and due to lying in a bowl, which traps polluted air; and last year the World Health Organization identified Leicester as having some of the worst levels of air pollution in the UK.  Some progress in improving Leicester’s air quality has been made in recent years, but Friends of the Earth believe that much more still needs to be done.   
Malcolm Hunter, a spokesperson for Leicester Friends of the Earth said:
“Air pollution has wide ranging effects on people’s health and contributes towards hundreds of extra deaths a year, in Leicester alone.  Urgent action is needed and we are therefore calling on all candidates in the forthcoming local elections to commit to implementing those policies in this Manifesto that are within the City Council’s power to implement and to lobby central government to act on those that are not.”

Sunday 31 March 2019

Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester



In 2015, in conjunction with other local campaign groups, we launched our first Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester. Four years later, we have published a new list of policies that we think are necessary to reduce the levels of air pollution in Leicester. 

Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester


Version 2: Spring 2019


Air pollution contributes to respiratory illnesses, heart disease, cancer and even Alzheimer’s disease. Half of Leicester residents are concerned about air pollution. We want to live in a city where the air is clean and does not damage anyone’s health. We welcome Leicester City Council’s action on air pollution, with the target for increasing cycling, the electric taxi charging points and road space re-allocation schemes, like that being implemented on London Road. However, with the new understanding about the scale of the environmental crisis facing our planet and the City Council’s declaration of a climate emergency, we believe there is still more that can be done.

Reducing the overall level of motor traffic is the most effective way to tackle air pollution, reduce climate change emissions and create a renewed sense of community. We are calling for the council to take the following urgent steps to protect our right to breathe clean air:

1. Create a city-county transport planning group to co-ordinate transport planning between the two councils.


Reduce pollution from public transport
2. Introduce a Class D charging Clean Air Zone in the Air Quality Management Area. 

3. Conduct a feasibility study into building a tram and/or trolleybus system in Leicester to provide pollution-free (at point of use), reliable mass transportation.

4. Electrify the bus fleet on a rolling programme, starting with the vehicles on the most polluted routes.

5. Adopt the same timetable as Oxford City Council to clean up taxis, with a phased approach that requires all Hackney carriage taxi drivers to have zero-emission capable vehicles by 2025 to receive a licence to operate in Leicester.  

6. Convert the Midland Mainline and CrossCountry train line to run on electricity or hydrogen. Investigate re-opening urban railway stations, like Wigston, and branch lines along heavily populated routes.

7. Follow the example of Paris in establishing a car-free day within the inner ring road every month, to encourage people to explore alternative means of transport and reduce pollution.


Reduce the number of trips by private motor vehicles

8. Re-regulate the bus companies to control ticket prices and increase patronage. Make bus travel free for children.


9. Establish a Workplace Parking Levy to charge employers who provide car parking. Re-invest any money raised through this scheme in public and active transport. 

10. Set a limit for the amount of car parking spaces available in the city centre and commit to a programme to gradually reduce that number. Require all car parks to provide secure bike storage.

11. Accelerate the process of re-allocating road space to more sustainable forms of transport, such as active and public transport, and ensure that new cycle provision is always physically segregated.  


Education
12. Run a campaign to make car drivers more aware of cyclists and improve their safety.

13. Follow the example of York City Council in introducing a campaign to stop drivers idling their engines and enforce the law with a fine.


14. Run a smarter choices travel planning programme for journeys to school across the city, to encourage parents and children to walk, cycle or take the bus and thereby reduce pollution around schools.

15. Enforce Leicester City Council’s Smoke Control Area to ensure that only smokeless fuel is burnt in domestic stoves. 

16. Raise awareness of air pollution to help vulnerable people to reduce their exposure and encourage people to change their behaviour to reduce their contribution to the problem.

Wednesday 20 March 2019

Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The last film in the 'Green Screen' series at the Phoenix was Beasts of the Southern Wild. 

The student climate strikers began the evening with a very inspiring talk about why they are making a global protest against climate change and why we should all try to make a difference.   

Lucia and Amy said they held a protest in Leicester on the 15th March to raise awareness about climate change.  They gave out leaflets to people walking by – some people accepted the leaflets, some didn’t but Lucia said it was the 70% who stopped to talk to them, supported them but just accepted climate change – that really frightened her.  People who said yes, we know it is true but we have no power to change or stop it, so can do nothing to prevent it happening.  People in the street thought that they alone as individuals had no way of stopping the progress of climate change.  Lucia agreed with them she said as individuals we can’t stop it but we have to come together to fight this – if people don’t care about themselves, they should care about their children’s future, their grandchildren’s future.  She said we need to come together to fight this and we need to make governments listen and help before it is too late. 

We then watched a film about an area of land called ‘the bathtub’ which was due to go under water when the ice cap melts and the water level rises.  The film was about the families who lived there knowing that the water level would rise.  A wall had been built to protect people from the rising water but some families were on the wrong side of the wall…. Some of them left, taking as many of their belongings as they could and some of them said they would stay as it was their home and where they made a living.  The rains came though and the water level rose – some of the people survived and some didn’t. 

It is difficult for me to tell the story because it broke my heart – watching family’s homes (albeit very poor homes) going under water as climate change hits with such devastating results.  I think it was even more traumatic because children were involved and just makes me ask – how can we let this happen?

As the Student Strikers said at the beginning of the film – we must stop this – we must get governments to listen…. Lucia and Amy said they worried about the 70% who were indifferent – who say we can’t do anything about climate change – we can’t get people to listen and change things….  But one thing is for sure – we will keep trying, striving for change, striving to make the Governments of the world wake up to the reality of what will happen if we don’t sort this out.

We will keep trying to make Governments listen, trying to get society to change its ways, we will keep trying – and we will win – because we have to…..  

Tuesday 26 February 2019

Natalie Bennett Climate Change Talk


On Tuesday evening, the Plan-It Change Society at the University of Leicester and Leicester Green Party co-hosted an event called Climate change: the world is acting and so can Leicester. The main speaker was Natalie Bennett, ex-leader of the Green Party. She began by talking about the unseasonably nice weather we had been having and how it was indicative of climate change.  She explained that before she got into politics, she came from a scientific background but said that she had discovered that very few politicians came from scientific backgrounds.  This of course makes it difficult to work with them on climate change.

Natalie then gave us a report on the UN climate talks in December.  She talked about the different groups who attended the talks and how this has developed with new groups being represented each year.  Interestingly, she said the fashion industry were represented for the first time in 2018, which is important because they contribute emissions equivalent to the maritime and aviation industry combined.

Natalie said she would talk about the good, the bad and the ugly at the talks. The ‘ugly’ was the way that Poland promoted coal. Schools in Poland still have coal boilers and everyone left the talks with the ‘Katowice cough’ from the pollution.  However, she did have an interesting anecdote. She saw a man shovelling coal into a school’s coal hole and took a photo.  The man waved at her and without speaking any English indicated to her that he didn’t want his picture taken shovelling the coal. She deleted the picture but kept the picture of the coal heap and he was satisfied with that.  Natalie thinks people are becoming ashamed of being associated with the coal and that things will change, even in Poland.  


Natalie then moved onto the ‘bad’.  The farming industry at the talks claimed that they didn’t need to change from using nitrogen-based fertilizers - they would just use less.  But using any nitrogen fertiliser requires enormous energy input to make the fertiliser and they then evaporate and contribute to air pollution. We can’t just use it more efficiently; we have to move to organic. 

Then came the ‘good’. Natalie said that now we understand the science better, we know that we all need to change and we know that we have to do this soon – within 12 years…  She discussed how difficult it is to change society but then she said let’s think about what has changed in the last 12 years.  For example, Twitter is only 12 years old and it is now central to political debate so it is possible to change very quickly.

Natalie then went on to talk about the shipping company, Maersk. At the talks they announced that they were going to be carbon neutral by 2050.  This means that by 2030 they are going to be buying carbon neutral ships.  But these ships don’t exist yet, so this Tmeans in 11 years they are going to design, build and commercially produce them! We may not know what the route of change is yet, but we will have to work it out!  


She ended by talking about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who has become the voice for the student climate strikers.  Natalie said everyone can make a difference – Greta began at the age of 15 by sitting outside of her school saying politicians need to listen… We as adults need to celebrate and support the youth movement, encourage them and bring them on board.   


Natalie then introduced two student climate strikers from Leicester. Joe said he heard about Greta and her protest but thought he couldn’t do anything himself.  He thought there wasn’t enough time to organise anything but then realised his sister was talking to all of her friends trying to organise a protest and he thought he had better join in.  At the first Leicester student climate strike, they got about 30 students to meet up at the Clock Tower.  They have since had a meeting to talk about their group principles such as peaceful protest and they are now organising another event for March 15th.

His 13-year-old sister, Amy, then spoke.  She talked about her dream for the future, which mainly was to make sure she had a future!  She wants to say to politicians that you should care too and this message is their top priority.  She ended by saying that adults should understand this isn’t ‘our’ responsibility as kids - this is ‘your’ responsibility as adults.  She said our planet is dying and adults need to sort it out.

Gasland film


On Tuesday evening, the Plan-It Change Society at the University of Leicester and Leicester Green Party co-hosted an event called Climate change: the world is acting and so can Leicester. The main speaker was Natalie Bennett, ex-leader of the Green Party. She began by talking about the unseasonably nice weather we had been having and how it was indicative of climate change.  She explained that before she got into politics, she came from a scientific background but said that she had discovered that very few politicians came from scientific backgrounds.  This of course makes it difficult to work with them on climate change.


Natalie then gave us a report on the UN climate talks in December.  She talked about the different groups who attended the talks and how this has developed with new groups being represented each year.  Interestingly, she said the fashion industry were represented for the first time in 2018, which is important because they contribute emissions equivalent to the maritime and aviation industry combined.


Natalie said she would talk about the good, the bad and the ugly at the talks. The ‘ugly’ was the way that Poland promoted coal. Schools in Poland still have coal boilers and everyone left the talks with the ‘Katowice cough’ from the pollution.  However, she did have an interesting anecdote. She saw a man shovelling coal into a school’s coal hole and took a photo.  The man waved at her and without speaking any English indicated to her that he didn’t want his picture taken shovelling the coal. She deleted the picture but kept the picture of the coal heap and he was satisfied with that.  Natalie thinks people are becoming ashamed of being associated with the coal and that things will change, even in Poland.  


Natalie then moved onto the ‘bad’.  The farming industry at the talks claimed that they didn’t need to change from using nitrogen-based fertilizers - they would just use less.  But using any nitrogen fertiliser requires enormous energy input to make the fertiliser and they then evaporate and contribute to air pollution. We can’t just use it more efficiently; we have to move to organic. 

Then came the ‘good’. Natalie said that now we understand the science better, we know that we all need to change and we know that we have to do this soon – within 12 years…  She discussed how difficult it is to change society but then she said let’s think about what has changed in the last 12 years.  For example, Twitter is only 12 years old and it is now central to political debate so it is possible to change very quickly.

Natalie then went on to talk about the shipping company, Mersk. At the talks they announced that they were going to be carbon neutral by 2050.  This means that by 2030 they are going to be buying carbon neutral ships.  But these ships don’t exist yet, so this means in 11 years they are going to design, build and commercially produce them! We may not know what the route of change is yet, but we will have to work it out!  


She ended by talking about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who has become the voice for the student climate strikers.  Natalie said everyone can make a difference – Greta began at the age of 15 by sitting outside of her school saying politicians need to listen… We as adults need to celebrate and support the youth movement, encourage them and bring them on board.   


Natalie then introduced two student climate strikers from Leicester. Joe said he heard about Greta and her protest but thought he couldn’t do anything himself.  He thought there wasn’t enough time to organise anything but then realised his sister was talking to all of her friends trying to organise a protest and he thought he had better join in.  At the first Leicester student climate strike, they got about 30 students to meet up at the Clock Tower.  They have since had a meeting to talk about their group principles such as peaceful protest and they are now organising another event for March 15th.

His 13-year-old sister, Amy, then spoke.  She talked about her dream for the future, which mainly was to make sure she had a future!  She wants to say to politicians that you should care too and this message is their top priority.  She ended by saying that adults should understand this isn’t ‘our’ responsibility as kids - this is ‘your’ responsibility as adults.  She said our planet is dying and adults need to sort it out.