Economist claims Nottingham City’s climate protection strategy is too little, too late

Here is a summary of Brian’s critique of the Council’s strategy.

A) Measured against the latest scientific thinking on the nature of the climate crisis the proposals of Nottingham City are too little too late.

B) Although there are many proposals, some of them quite good, the big
spending departments in the city - education, leisure and community and
social services - appear to be dragging their feet - the proposals as they
effect social services and leisure and community are weakest of all.

C) Many of the policies do not appear to have been thought through and there
is little evidence that the city is aware of the complexities and
complications - e.g. the proposals to extend the Nottingham in Bloom
initiative into arrangements for bio-fuel.

D) Even the most dramatic policy proposals - carbon neutrality in 10 years
for the council as an organisation - is too slow and it is not clear that the
city realises what this would entail as carbon neutrality is not explained.
Carbon neutrality has many implications in regard to carbon offsetting
arrangements that need to be explored. The issues are more complex than meets
the eye.

E) The idea that planting trees absorbs CO2 and hence is a climate crisis
mitigation measure is one of the ideas that is used uncritically. Planting
trees is a good idea but the climate issues are more complex.

F) Energy efficiency improvements will be overwhelmed by growth and the
city's growth orientation will undermine its energy and carbon reduction
achievements. This contradict the the promotion of the city as a regional
shopping paradise and the policies for a 24 hour city (both of which will
generate plenty of greenhouse gases). The recent building boom in the city
has and will lead to increased emissions - even if future ew developments
have some energy efficiency and embedded renewable energy features.

G)There is a mistaken emphasis on large organisations, on high technology and
high science based solutions - the key solutions are those involving low and
intermediate technologies. A strategy to ecologically restructure the city
would provide many manual and skilled manual jobs - the employment that the
city has lacked for 30 years as a result of the decline of its manufacturing
industry. This would help resolve the city's social crisis on its sink
estates.

H) Many holistic community level projects involved, for example, in urban
cultvation have made a start in a community level response to climate change
- their role is not acknowledged or recognised in these policy proposals -
nor their importance in simultaneously helping deal with the social and
health crises in the city. This is a particular failing here in the social
services inability to recognise the importance of these projects.

I) The city council appears to have no recognition of the interconnection
between the climate crisis and oil and gas depletion - a gas crisis in the
North Sea in the last year has only been partially 'averted' by more electric
power generation using coal supplies - this pushes up carbon emissions - and
carbon prices on the European Unions Emissions Trading System - leading to
increased electricity prices. Depletion in oil and gas pushes up energy
prices in their own right.

J) The city (and social services in particular) appear not to recognise that
adjustment to the climate crisis (and to oil and gas depletion) will put huge
burdens on the city's most vulnerable people - for example in rising fuel
prices. It proposes no policies that would anticipate and help the vulnerable
people in the city cope.

K) The city council claims that it is proud and ambitious in its policies.
These policies are not ambitious enough - though many individuals involved
with the city may have caused to be proud of what they have done about the
climate crisis, the city as a corporate organisation does not.

K) It has 5 years to set things right.

The Councils strategy document can be seen at:-
 http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/agenda.asp?1642

The full critique document is attached as a pdf.

Brian Davey
Feasta
www.feasta.org