Labour join climate march

Fareham Labour members joined the climate strike march in Fareham on Friday as part of the global day of action.

Women’s Officer Julie Kidby who attended said, “It was fantastic to see Fareham residents turn out to make their voices heard. Just like the 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who started all this in Sweden just over a year ago, Fareham’s strike was organised by a 16 year old girl too and I extend my congratulations and thanks to her for doing a great job.

It is now down to those in office in our government and councils to take fast, significant and long term action to help save our planet and environment. There are many things that need to be done, but in particular Fareham borough is a heavily car-dependent area due to insufficient and expensive local public transport – this must be a priority area for improvement to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

While outside the Civic Offices the climate strikers were handed the following statement from Cllr Seán Woodward:

“I am aware that many councils have declared a climate emergency but not necessarily backed up their announcement with a detailed plan of action. That won’t be our approach. What we will be doing in Fareham, and I will be announcing this at a Meeting of the Executive on Thursday 26 September, is to set up a working group that will identify what further actions we can take to mitigate climate change in Fareham and reduce our carbon footprint.

“One of the Council’s six corporate priorities is to ‘Protect and Enhance the Environment’; an important part of this is to minimise the impact on the environment by reducing our use of natural resources; minimising the generation of waste and maximising the collection of recyclable materials.

“Last year we launched our ‘Give Plastics the Push’ campaign, which is about reducing how much Single Use Plastic (SUP) we use. This initiative was led by Cllr Simon Martin who has the Executive Portfolio for Streetscene and is proving extremely successful. I will therefore be calling on him to help drive this new project forwards for us and to develop a bespoke action plan for Fareham.”

At Fareham Labour we look forward to hearing what plans and actions the new Council working group will put forward.