Council Leader says tackling climate change is something we can all work towards

By Jessica Durston - 2 November 2021

Politics

A monthly column by Swindon Council Leader David Renard

Tackling climate change will be headline news for the next few weeks and rightly so because it is an issue which affects all of us.

At the time of writing, almost 200 countries from around the world are due to attend the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow, which runs for two weeks from 31 October.

I will be one of those in attendance in my role as both Environment spokesman for the Local Government Association and also as Leader of a council which has responding to climate change at the heart of its agenda.

My colleague, Cllr Keith Williams, our Cabinet Member for Climate Change, and Labour councillor Jane Milner-Barry will also be representing the council and the town at this very important summit and will be travelling up to Scotland in an electric car. Unfortunately, I am travelling to the conference at a different time so was not able to join them, but I will take the long journey by train to minimise my own carbon footprint as much as I can.

The climate talks will bring environmental experts, campaigners and heads of state together to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change. We all hope it will be a landmark moment for the world, with countries pledging to cut their emissions and to present their plans for doing so.

Let us hope in years to come we look back on COP26 as a pivotal time in the world’s response to our warming planet.Government policy worldwide will go a long way to shaping how we significantly cut our emissions over the coming years, but we still all have a part to play in our everyday lives, no matter how small, when it comes to making the right choices to help the environment.

Last month, the council’s Swindon Travel Choices team organised two Electric Vehicle roadshows at the Orbital Shopping Park and Lydiard Park to give local people the chance to find out more about owning an electric vehicle.

Cllr Williams joined a team of experts from local retailers Cleevely EV and Just EVs, Southwest EV Owners Group, and the Energy Saving Trust, to answer any questions people had about grants, finance, charging points and anything else they were not quite sure of. There were also electric motorbikes and push bikes on show.

Electric vehicles now have a 9.5 per cent share of the UK new car market, up from 5.4 per cent last year. If this growth continues we could see a million electric vehicles on our roads by 2025 and projections estimate this could rise to anything between 2.7m and 10.6m by 2030.

So we need to be prepared, especially when the Government has committed to phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. Our Be the Change website (www.swindon.gov.uk/bethechange) has lots of handy tips and advice on how we can all make our own small changes to tackle climate change.

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