Climate Change Campaign

Big Ask Meeting 65 members of the public turned up at our meeting at the Town Hall last month. The panel included representatives from the main political parties (among them Steve Pound MP) and Simon Evans from the Energy Advice Centre. Martyn Williams from Friends of the Earth outlined the Climate Change Bill, and there was a lively question and answer session. Being just before the local elections it was probably inevitable that the politicians tended to stray from the subject of climate change to more general electioneering! Many thanks to all those who helped with the event.

Day of Action To date, 365 MPs (more than half) have signed Early Day Motion 178 calling for year on year reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. This EDM has the most signatures of any in this parliamentary session. However it will expire in the autumn and so we need to move on to the next stage in the campaign. Ideally we would like the Climate Change Bill to be a Government Bill, and there are new postcards for the public to sign urging Ministers to get the Bill included in the Queen's Speech. We need to convince the Government that this is a crucial issue. The three Ealing MPs have all signed the EDM but we must keep up the pressure.

The next Climate Change Day of Action is 17 June – we are having a stall at Hanwell Carnival that day, so we'll be using that event to tell the public about the campaign. We might also think about helping to target MPs in other constituencies who have not signed the EDM.

Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill passes Third Reading

This is the Bill that was almost wrecked by filibustering in March but which fortunately was allowed to be debated again in the Commons on 12 May. It now goes to the House of Lords. Its main provisions are