Spent Tuesday morning outside county hall in Trowbridge lobbying Wiltshire Council to vote down a motion that would have withdrawn it from the Nottingham Declaration on climate change.
It was only the new authority's second full council meeting and nine councillors (a mixture of Conservative and Independents) had submitted a motion which essentially said that climate chaneg is a myth and signing the declaration was a waste of time. A copy of this and the officer's view on it can be found here.
The councillors who put their name to this were: Mr Doyle, Mr Mark Griffiths, Mr Hawker, Mr Knight, Mr Newbury, Mr Payne, Mrs Ridout and Mr Seed. It was proposed by Cllr Rod Eaton.
I addressed the council along with Gary Mantle from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, Mark Fletcher from North Wiltshire Green Party and Stephen Eades from Friends of the Earth.
Ten councillors then spoke and it was interesting to see the varying quality of the contributions. Most impressive, I thought, was a councillor representing the Devizes Guardians who was fluent, unemotional and, crucially, brief. Others were barely coherent, too clever or tried to hit too many targets.
While a couple of councillors tried to swap scientific quotes, facts and figures the nature of the meeting meant anything too 'heavy' just got lost. Cllr Eaton just repeated huge swathes from climate denying books by Nigel Lawson and Ian Plimer which wasn't very effective. For those who've had to deal with sceptics before it was all too familiar.
It was instructive that the only figures quoted by cabinet member responsible for the environment were polling figures to show people in Wiltshire want action on climate change.
As it was the motion went down in flames 86-6 with 2 abstensions. So two of the original signatories backed off. Not only that but the council agreed to sign up the 10:10 pledge as well. We ended up in a better position than when we started.
There is a press release from the council here about this and a report from the Wiltshire Times here.
I understand that privately the ruling Conservative group were seething at what they saw as an unecessary distraction. There was no chance this motion was going to get through but it made the council look defensive and the actions of a few painted the authority as a whole as being reactionary. To be fair, council leader Jane Scott made an good speech in which she backed the declaration and put tackling climate change as a priority for the authority.
More importantly it has given a massive boost to environmental groups in Wiltshire. On the morning people travelled from Colerne (well, that was me), Bradford on Avon, Melsksham, Calne and Salisbury to join the lobby. A Facebook page got 120 friends, a petition was signed by more than 200 people. Cllr Scott said her email inbox had never been so busy. Various pressure groups joined in as well as the green energy firm Good Energy. All this arranged in less than four days and covering a weekend. New contacts and new networks were formed.
I don't think the environmental movement in Wiltshire has quite flxed its muscles in this co-ordinated way for some time and it will be interesting to see how it wishes to flex them again.
Brilliant work!
Posted by: James | Friday, September 18, 2009 at 08:54