My (rather lengthy) Open Letter to our Town Council about Greening Up their Act

Dear Mayor and all Members of Lyme Regis Town Council,

It is time to #FaceTheClimateEmergency you declared

I’m writing an open letter to the Town Council which I shall also send to the local media for circulation if they wish. None of the comments I’m about to make are written with a desire to have them kept under wraps, quite the contrary, I want them to stir you into #ClimateAction. 

I’m an environmentalist, I’m CEO of a small international reforestation charity, a member of the Green Party, a supporter of XR and I’m stepping up my game to make more noise for humans, wildlife and biodiversity within and beyond the borders of Lyme Regis. 

I will endeavour to do more to call for radical action from you and other bodies, to protect the communities of Lyme Regis and the wider world from the existential threat of climate chaos. I had hoped that with all the assistance and free and very inexpensive resources you’ve been offered from various green groups and individuals in this area, that you would be hitting the headlines frequently with implementation of great, green ideas, but you haven’t. 

It’s time for environmentalists everywhere to demand more from their parish, town and district councils and government too - it’s time to get vocal.

Apathy, inaction and tardy implementation of low hanging fruit is no longer acceptable. Climate action needs to be a high priority - it poses a danger to our lives, our homes and our future. People in the town are looking to you for inspiration, for suggestions and for assistance to effect sustainable living changes in their personal lives and their businesses too. They need guidance, information, education and financial support.

Lyme Regis Town Council, if you think Covid-19 has delivered you a challenge or two to mitigate, you ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’, to quote Randy Bachman.

I have attended many Town Council meetings but am not able to join you for the meeting today (Wednesday 26th August 2020). I have a meeting and will still be at work, endeavouring to reforest Kenya in an effort to mitigate climate chaos causing havoc here in Dorset and across the world. The fast growing trees we plant in Kenya help stabilise our planet’s weather systems and reduce global warming and sea level rise. Additionally, they clean the air that blows all over the world. Trees in the tropics have a positive impact in the UK, in Dorset, in Lyme Regis.

I’ve decided to make my note public in the hope that it attracts a comprehensive reply and explanation of your intentions for environmental action, unlike previous correspondence, which despite being re-sent, hasn’t. I pay my taxes and do all I can to contribute positively to the town I live in and you, as our elected council are all obliged to serve residents and visitors alike. Serve us now. Protect us all. Safeguard our future. Protect your families and children. That’s your job.

In previous correspondence, I requested assistance to help me liaise with the right people at the Unitary Authority to discuss tree planting in our town. I received an informal response after bumping into the Town Clerk in a supermarket, saying you don’t have enough land to plant a tree for every citizen of Lyme Regis. This was an initiative I suggested to the Mayor last year, we discussed it at great length, our charity had plans for community education and engagement and we were going to supply you with over 3,600 trees, guards and stakes, free of charge. The Mayor seemed very excited about it. 

Your subsequent assessment of available land in Lyme indicated you don’t have enough space to plant them. Therefore, land would need to be released from the Unitary Authority to enable the planting to take place. I don’t know all the right people to speak to at Unitary - you do. I am very happy to give another presentation on why #TreesAreTheKey to mitigate some of the problems our planet is facing. You and every other town council around the UK should be doing all you can to get more trees in the ground.

We all need to be planting trees - en masse - right now and protecting existing mature stock, delivering education on why trees are vitally important and showing people how to care for them. I can help with all of that but I haven’t got the time to waste sitting listening to the council’s mind-numbing hold music, or sending futile emails that are never replied to, as I attempt to forge the right connections. I ask you once again: who do ‘we’ need to speak to, to make this project happen?

If my opening paragraphs appear terse, they should, they are. The idea of giving up yet another two hours to attend your meeting to proffer another green suggestion (all of which you’ve heard before) and to endorse the phenomenal legwork being done by Belinda Bawden, Rob Smith and others who understand the gravity of the environmental situation our town and world are facing - doesn’t fill me with joy. My time is better spent at my desk, trying to raise urgently needed funds during the most horrendously difficult time for charities, ever. 

One in 10 UK charities are facing closure by the end of 2020 because of the pandemic. There are around 170,000 charities in the UK with a total annual income of about ￡51bn and many are small charities like The Word Forest Organisation, with an income of under ￡100,000. The government hasn't given environmental charities any financial assistance to help restore our planet’s ailing health, aside from offering them furlough and if you accepted that offer, you were unable to do anything to help your charity keep going… that’s no help at all! I communicated with a fellow CEO yesterday of an international environmental charity that has had to throw the towel in and she and her staff are devastated. The Word Forest Organisation will be closing down over my dead body.

You represent a coastal community surrounded by other volatile coastal communities - you should be leading the way and inspiring others.

To say that I am deeply disappointed in the environmental actions Lyme Regis Town Council and the Unitary Authority have taken to date, would be a phenomenal understatement and that too, is tragic. In the South West, there are countless groups with knowledgeable souls who would happily impart carefully gathered advice, backed by science. What connections are you forging with them? 

The One Planet Working Group was founded as an umbrella reporting group, a conduit between local eco-groups and the council, created to try and save time by delivering well researched solutions to local environmental problems. It received an initially excited, then  lukewarm, lacklustre response from council. Like so many environmental groups around the world, it remains reliant on green-minded volunteers, many of whom are working and have little spare time to attend, get active and champion change. Lyme Regis Town Council  hasn’t done enough to hold up its end of the bargain and investigate and evoke positive change based on their findings.

I’ve read through the agenda and lengthy notes for your meeting this evening, going back over many topics that I’ve heard lip-service paid to at previous Town Council meetings. I wonder, how many more lists will be compiled of potentially powerful projects that those in the powerful seats do nothing to breathe life into?

In my day job I have frequent meetings with our trustees that take an hour and a half to two hours and we generally focus on one or two topics. How on earth do you plan to give a fraction of the points on your agenda, the attention they require and deserve? How long will it be after your meeting before any action is taken to make any one of those suggestions a reality?

What bit of existential environmental emergency have you not understood and what bits are you taking seriously and working to solve?

There is no environmental urgency being displayed in Lyme Regis Town Council as far as I can tell, yet to my knowledge, you have at least two clear and able councillors who are championing green cause after green cause, providing your whole team with lengthy, well thought out, factual, doable action plans that contain far more current statistics and justification for their implementation than I can pull together in a letter from a ‘concerned citizen of Lyme’. 

You should be listening to the environmentalists you are lucky enough to have in your midst and supporting them with funds and action, not placating them with empty promises for a thumbs up at some point in the future.

Why haven’t you endorsed the idea of a collaborative team of environmental experts coming together on a weekly basis, made up of ethical individuals from eco-businesses and NGOs from the South West? They have the skill sets to deliver succinct, concise, life saving information to you, so you can deal with what is unequivocally heading our way? I say above, a ‘weekly’ meeting and sigh, imagining how that idea will be met. 

I suspect that here in the South West, there probably hasn’t been anywhere near enough death for you to give a thumbs up to the idea of a dedicated monthly meeting, let alone weekly! Put frankly, however, that’s the minimum required to stay slightly ahead of the problems we are going to face.

Some of the deaths hurtling towards us will come from the following: extreme weather events, causing localised flooding with associated drownings of people who cannot escape their properties, or who lose their footing trying to get to safe ground, building collapse, vehicle accidents, landslides, to name but a few.

Here’s a small quote from a recent news article about the incident that took place on the 14th August 2020 that killed three people and injured six others:

Investigation Confirms Landslide Caused Scotland Train Derailment

Heavy rains in previous days were believed to have caused the landslide. In a statement Friday, Chief Rail Inspector Simon French said that while fatal accidents on the railway remain rare, landslides "and other earthworks failures remain a risk to trains." He said this is becoming more challenging for the rail industry due to the increasing incidence of extreme weather events.

We haven’t got a railway station - neighbouring Axminster does. How geared up to help them cope with an emergency, are you? 

The UK's weather does indeed appear to be becoming more extreme. Temperatures are  following the global pattern and continually rising. The ten hottest years on record have all come within the last twenty years. Additionally, six of the ten wettest years on record have occurred in the last twenty years. 

I’m a long time environmentalist and like Belinda and Rob, I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on around the world. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see the kind of stories hitting the headlines until the end of my lifetime. I’m 55 soon, this is our reality now and Lyme Regis Town Council, you need to be preparing for it, not chit chatting about it once a month, putting token projects up for a vote, writing them up for the following month for more discussion, then taking months to implement them. You need to speed up your process - we don’t have time to waste. If you haven’t got enough staff, employ more or get volunteers in to help with the administration.

There has to be more focus put on mitigating pure chaos from global warming, sea level rise, increased pollution from fossil fuels and more. Act now, you’ll save lives by giving this global existential threat and climate emergency the time it needs.

An existential threat is not just a passing tricky phase we humans will have to negotiate, it’s exactly what it says: existential! You know all those dinosaur bones we’ve got around here… I rest my case.

This is the time to appoint a dedicated nature, wildlife and tree councillor.

This is the time to appoint a dedicated climate emergency councillor.

This is the time to show your town you’re taking this threat seriously - they are!

This is the time to be a leader in the field, not to shove a few lines about the whole planet’s climate emergency in your agenda. This topic should be the first thing on your agenda at every meeting, with sign off and approvals done too, not left for another conversation weeks later. If the current rule book doesn’t support that, change the rules!

I’ll remind you again, there is a planetary climate emergency and you signed up to mitigate it.

You might not think that the seafront of Lyme Regis is particularly susceptible to damage/death/chaos, so there’s not much to worry about. However, if you are only thinking about the boundary of our town as being the extremity of your concern, my word, you’re in for a shock: 

From Wikipedia: A climate emergency declaration or declaring a climate emergency is an action taken by governments and scientists to acknowledge humanity is in a climate emergency. The first such declaration was made in December 2016. Since then over 1,400 local governments in 28 countries have made climate emergency declarations (as of 23 February 2020). 

Once a government makes a declaration the next step for the declaring government is to set priorities to mitigate climate change, prior to ultimately entering a state of emergency or equivalent. 

In declaring a climate emergency, a government admits that global warming exists and that the measures taken up to this point are not enough to limit the changes brought by it. The decision stresses the need for the government and administration to devise measures that try and stop human-caused global warming. 

I’ve highlighted a few words above: 

• humanity: that is not exclusively Lyme Regis residents - it’s everyone;
• set priorities to mitigate climate change: I look forward to reading in your reply what your priorities are, when were they formalised and what sustainable, environmental projects have you actioned through to completion?
• entering a state of emergency or equivalent: have you actually entered a state of emergency or equivalent? 

Gwynedd Council has. Their council has met with local residents more than 300 times to discuss the climate emergency - I suggest you speak to them to ask what priorities a vulnerable coastal community should have.

From BBC News: Sea defences at Fairbourne will stop being maintained in the 2050s, but Gwynedd Council said it may begin "decommissioning" the village before then and start moving residents out. Villagers want more detail on when and how, saying uncertainty is devaluing homes and harming community life. Natural Resources Wales maintains the sea defences and a council consultation is taking place on Thursday and Friday to hear residents' views on options for the next few years. 

But some say there also needs to be more discussion about what happens to them and their homes if the village is to be abandoned to the sea. The council is leading a partnership to co-ordinate what happens in Fairbourne, and says some of the decisions about what happens in the long term are out of its hands. It said it was forecast "that the engineering and financial challenges of protecting the village are likely to become insurmountable earlier than other areas".

The people you need to speak to there are councillor Catrin Wager, councillor Mike Stevens and councillor Paul Rowlands. Councillor Rowlands said recently, “We need to change gear and do things on a greater scale, going further than being Carbon Zero by 2030 eg planting more trees and using new technologies”. 

This extract is from their motion declaring a Climate Emergency: 

The evidence is now conclusive that climate change is happening. Climate change is linked to extreme weather events, rising sea levels, drought and flooding. The consequences of global temperature rising above 1.5°c are so severe that preventing this from happening must be a key priority. The findings of the IPCC 1.5C study in October state that humanity has 12 years to take decisive action on climate change. 

All governments (local, regional and national) have a duty to limit the negative impacts of Climate Change.  The Council has obligations, under the “Wellbeing of Future Generations Act” to consider the impact of any decision it takes on generations to come.  The Council also has an obligation to protect the public.

Council further notes that the impact of climate change and extreme weather events are already being felt within the county. 23,244 Gwynedd residents live within a flood risk area.  Over the next century, sea levels are expected to rise by 1.1m.  Flooding already costs the Welsh economy c. ￡200 million per year.  

Gwynedd’s landscape presents many opportunities for energy generation, biodiversity regeneration and runoff flood mitigation.

This Council therefore resolves to do our utmost to ensure that the county remains a vibrant, viable and sustainable home for our children and their children for generations to come. 

We will do this by:

* declaring a Climate Emergency

* commit to taking decisive action to reduce carbon emissions and strive for a zero-carbon future

* look for innovative means to achieve zero carbon targets

* report back within 6 months on positive steps the Council have taken to reduce carbon emissions

It’s time for Lyme Regis Town Council to step up their game, to be pioneers and lead partnerships. Do it before you need to. Be innovative. Save lives. Prepare for what’s heading our way and think outside of the boundaries of Lyme Regis - this is a global problem, global human migration will affect us. 

Folks from the Netherlands, from Norfolk and Suffolk and a thousand other places will be looking for homes to be resettled in. Not one family, thousands of families who will have little more than the shirts on their backs. 

Within Lyme Regis Town Council there doesn’t appear to be a unified, collective understanding of what the climate emergency is, nor the gravity of it. Global warming doesn’t mean we’ll have a few more sunny days which will give our ice cream sellers a boost. It’ll result in the death of elderly residents who are unable to keep themselves hydrated. It’ll be crops failing to grow because it is simply too hot and we’re in drought or the floods have obliterated them and so on.

The UK is facing the worst wheat harvest since the 1980s, said the National Farmers Union less than 10 days ago. 

The Guardian report: They predict yields could be down by a third as extreme weather hits crops. It has been a tumultuous year for British farming after consecutive seasons of extreme weather with the worst harvest since the 1980s predicted, the farmers’ organisation said. “We’ve seen very challenging conditions across the country,” said Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the NFU, and an arable farmer in Essex. 

“Yields are down and this looks like the lowest harvest in about 30 years. The quality seems variable, but we won’t know what we’re looking at until it is all in.” But the problems with the harvest started at the beginning of the year. 

While this spring was the sunniest since comparable measurements began in 1929, and substantially drier than usual, it followed the wettest February ever recorded. Storms Ciara and Dennis battered many regions of the UK in the early and middle of the month, causing widespread flooding, followed by Storm Jorge at the end.

Just taking the single element of preparation for storm surges, I’m unaware of unity and preparation for mitigation within Lyme Regis Town Council - if I’m wrong (and I’d love to be), please tell me what you’re doing. You need to be thinking about how a major event will affect the residents of Lyme and the surrounding areas. 

Lyme Regis is not an island! We have neighbours! If you think Lyme will be unaffected by the phenomenal human migration of hundreds of thousands of people who have been flooded out and lost absolutely everything, you are deluded, you are wrong.

I need to close here. I’ve got to get back to work. Through my job, I’m sadly well aware of what living on the frontline of climate change looks and feels like. I know what human migration looks like, I know what hunger and malnutrition looks like from failed crops and yet another year of drought. I know what the start of societal collapse looks like too. Our charity will continue to take care of some of the most important people on the planet - the ones planting and tending the trees in the tropics.

If you want to know more about any of the above, ask me. If you want to discuss tree planting in Lyme Regis, ask me. I hope you aren’t going to need any more prompts to get your fingers out and protect the people you pledged to serve - I will hold onto a grain of optimism that you will.

If you manage to reply with comprehensive answers to all of the questions I’ve posed in this note, it will go a long way to restoring my faith in your claim that you believe we are under threat - you made that claim when you declared a Climate Emergency.

We cannot trade under the banner of business as usual. Council models that do not respect or embrace the idea of a circular, sustainable, renewable powered society and an economy based on people before profit, are doomed to fail the people they claim to represent. 

I reiterate my offer to help in any way I can to plant as many trees as is possible in Lyme Regis, to protect its citizens, its visitors, its present and future generations of residents and visitors. 

To finish, I’m attaching the content of an open letter sent recently to all EU and global leaders by Luisa Neubauer, Greta Thunberg, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adéla?de Charlier calling for immediate action. The sections that could be relevant for you, I’ve turned red, for ease of digestion and ACTION!

I look forward to hearing what happens at your meeting and will count the days between it and the first eco-action you undertake with bated breath.

Do not fail Lyme Regis. Do not fail our planet. 

Yours, in service,

Tracey West FRSA: CEO and Fundraiser

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OPEN LETTER AND DEMANDS TO EU AND GLOBAL LEADERS

From: Luisa Neubauer, Greta Thunberg, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adéla?de Charlier - visit climateemergencyeu.org to view online (but the site had problems yesterday, probably struggling with thousands of visitors, which is why I've reproduced it here)

#FaceTheClimateEmergency

This letter has been sent to all EU leaders and heads of state on 16 July 2020.

You must stop pretending that we can solve the climate- and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis.

Here are our demands of this open letter:

These are some first steps, essential to our chance of avoiding a climate and ecological disaster .

• Effective immediately, halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
• EU member states must advocate to make ecocide an international crime at the International Criminal Court.
• Include total emissions in all figures and targets, including consumption index, international aviation and shipping.
• Starting today – establish annual, binding carbon budgets based on the current best available science and the IPCC’s budget which gives us a 66% chance of limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5 °C. They need to include the global aspect of equity, tipping points and feedback loops and shouldn’t depend on assumptions of possible future negative emissions technologies.
• Safeguard and protect democracy.
• Design climate policies that protect workers and the most vulnerable and reduce all forms of inequality: economic, racial and gender.
• Treat the climate- and ecological emergency like an emergency.

We understand and know very well that the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy. The changes necessary to safeguard humanity may seem very unrealistic. But it is much more unrealistic to believe that our society would be able to survive the global heating we’re heading for, as well as other disastrous ecological consequences of today’s business as usual .

The last few months the world has watched with horror how the COVID-19 pandemic has hit people all over the globe. During this tragedy, we are seeing how many – not all – world leaders and people around the world stepped up and acted for the greater good of society.

It is now clearer than ever that the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, neither from the politicians, media, business, nor finance. And the longer we keep pretending that we are on a reliable path to lower emissions and that the actions required to avoid a climate disaster are available within today’s system – or for that matter that we can solve a crisis without treating it like one – the more precious time we will lose.

There is one other thing that has become clearer than ever: Climate and environmental justice can not be achieved as long as we continue to ignore and look away from the social and racial injustices and oppression that have laid the foundations of our modern world. The fight for justice and equity is universal. Whether it is the fight for social, racial, climate or environmental justice, gender equality, democracy, human-, indigenous peoples’- LGBTQ- and animal rights, freedom of speech and press, or the fight for a balanced, wellbeing, functioning life supporting system. If we don’t have equality, we have nothing. We don’t have to choose, and divide ourselves over which crisis or issue we should prioritize, because it is all interconnected.

When you signed the Paris Agreement the EU nations committed to leading the way. The EU has the economic and political possibility to do so, therefore it is our moral responsibility. And now you need to actually deliver on your promises.

Net zero emissions by 2050 for the EU – as well as for other financially fortunate parts of the world – equals surrender. This target is based on a carbon budget that only gives a 50% percent chance of limiting the global heating below 1,5°C. That is just a statistical flip of a coin which doesn’t even include some of the key factors, such as the global aspect of equity, most tipping points and feedback loops, as well as already built in additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution. So in reality it is much less than a 50% chance.

And distant emission targets will mean nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon budget – which applies for today, not a faraway future.

Talking about a “Next Generation EU” investment program while continuing to ignore the climate crisis and the full scientific picture is a betrayal to all “next generations”. Science doesn’t tell us exactly what to do. But it provides us with information for us to study and evaluate. It’s up to us to connect the dots. Well, we have done our homework and we will not accept your extremely irresponsible gamble. The insufficient 50% budget means giving up. And that is simply not an option to us.

Of course we welcome sustainable investments and policies, but you must not for one second believe that what you have discussed so far will be even close to enough. We need to face the full picture. We are facing an existential crisis, and this is a crisis that we can not buy, build, or invest our way out of. Aiming to ‘recover’ an economic system that inherently fuels the climate crisis in order to finance climate action is just as absurd as it sounds. Our current system is not ‘broken’ – the system is doing exactly what it’s supposed and designed to be doing. It can no longer be ‘fixed’. We need a new system.

The race to safeguard future living conditions for life on Earth as we know it needs to start today. Not in a few years, but now. And this needs to include a science based pathway which gives us the best possible odds to limit the global average temperature rise to below 1.5 °C. We need to end the ongoing wrecking, exploitation and destruction of our life supporting systems and move towards a fully decarbonised economy that centres around the wellbeing of all people as well as the natural world.

If all countries were to actually go through with the emission reductions they have set as goals, we would still be heading for a catastrophic global temperature rise of at least 3-4°C. The people in power today have so far practically already given up on the possibility of handing over a decent future for coming generations. They have given up without even trying.

The world’s planned fossil fuel production by the year 2030 accounts for 120% more than what would be consistent with the 1,5° target. It just doesn’t add up.

When you read the IPCC SR1.5 Report and the UNEP Production Gap Report, as well as what you have actually signed up for in the Paris Agreement, even a child can see that the climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today’s system.

That’s no longer an opinion, it’s a fact based on the current best available science.

Because if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe we have to make it possible to tear up contracts and abandon existing deals and agreements, on a scale we can’t even begin to imagine today. And those types of actions are not politically, economically or legally possible within today’s system.

In order to limit global heating to 1,5 degrees, the upcoming months and years are crucial. The clock is ticking. Doing your best is no longer good enough. You must now do the seemingly impossible.

And even though you might have the option of ignoring the climate crisis, that is not an option for us – for your children. Right now, there is no place on earth where children face a future in a safe environment. This is and will be very much a reality for the rest of our lives. We ask you to face the climate emergency.

by:

Luisa Neubauer

Greta Thunberg

Anuna de Wever van der Heyden

Adéla?de Charlier

Just in case you missed it, click here to sign it.