Current policies in place around the world are projected to result in about 2.9°C warming above pre-industrial levels, according to Climate Action Tracker. The United Nations warn that rising temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, extreme weather, food and water shortages, economic disruption, conflict, and terrorism.
We're in a climate and ecological emergency. Extinction Rebellion (XR) and school strikers played a major role in getting more than 80% of local authorities to recognise this by packing council chambers, lobbying councillors and signing petitions. This meets their first demand to ‘Tell the Truth'.
The second XR demand is to ‘halt biodiversity loss and reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025'. Only a handful of councils have set this 2025 target for their own emissions, but many more have set a 2030 target, both for their own and their area's emissions. This requires emissions reductions of at least 15% annually, which if adopted more widely would give a reasonable chance of staying below 1.5°C .
Reductions of this magnitude would involve transforming society: redesigning our transport systems, homes, cities, production and distribution of food, markets for financial investments, health systems, and much more. This may be radical, but it is broadly in line with what the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report demands. We need to leave most of our known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, but there is no sign that any world leaders at COP26 will agree to do that.
XR's third demand is to go ‘Beyond Politics' and be led by the decisions of a Citizen's Assembly. According to the Citizen Assembly Tracker only 16 councils have held one so far, but others have committed to be guided by the Scottish and UK Assemblies.
My XR friends tell me that they have tried to be supportive of their councils' strategies and action plans, but they get frustrated when councillors and officers are not responding to their declared emergency with the urgency needed, especially when compared to their response to COVID, where staff and resources were redeployed and standing orders suspended immediately.
XR groups have adopted many different approaches to getting councils to act on their declarations, from trying to engage and offering their skills as community members, to protesting outside meetings: often doing both at the same time. Realistic demands - for example by Wandsworth XR, around air pollution, trees and green spaces, food waste collections and divestment from fossil fuels - are reportedly ignored. Many local authorities, including my own, are being innovative with the resources they do have, but the scale of action compared to the need is tiny.
Even the current, inadequate UK climate target for 2050 will not be met without many more resources and responsibilities devolved to local government. The UK Government has refused to provide councils with the resources (financial, skills, competencies, delivery mechanisms, legislation) to achieve their net-zero undertakings and adapt to the consequences of emissions already ‘baked in'.
In the absence of Government help, councils need to turn to their communities for support , including groups like XR, whose members include retired and part time professionals with real expertise who are keen to get involved. They need to adopt a genuinely collaborative, rather than consultative approach, which will require an urgent change of attitude from both councillors and officers.
Councils also need to be brave, and take a lead. They will have many in their communities behind them. Currently councils' responses, to development for example, are often contradictory and conventional – and often outweigh climate and environmental considerations. The BBC reported recently that one third of councils that declared a climate emergency supported actions such as road building and airport expansion that increased emissions.
Cornwall Council, for example, has deservedly received a lot of praise for an approach that includes adopting a decision making wheel based on Doughnut Economics. However, their first big decision was to approve (after a split 6-4 Cabinet vote) a Spaceport at Cornwall Airport and to offset the emissions generated. Local XR activists support Professor Kevin Anderson's view that: ‘Offsetting is worse than doing nothing. It is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth.'
At least Cornwall could claim that the Spaceport would only increase the county's emissions by 0.1%. My own council recently voted 31-16 to accept £140m from the Government's £26bn roads programme to build a new road that I calculate, using the Tyndall Centre's Carbon Budget Tool, would consume 26% of our carbon budget until 2100, with no mention of offsets. This decision was taken despite overwhelming public opposition. No wonder XR groups are getting increasingly frustrated and returning to picketing meetings and blocking roads.
Kevin Frea is a member of Morecambe Bay XR and an Eco-Socialist Independent councillor with the Cabinet portfolio for Climate Action at Lancaster City Council. He is the founder of Climate Emergency UK.
