Jessica |
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http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,2032710,00.html
Amongst today’s coverage of the Climate Change Bill, I was particularly interested to see Ken Livingstone come out in favour of personal carbon allowances. At the Hackney and Islington CRAG meeting last week, we were talking about ways of lobbying the GLA and councils to adopt emission-cutting measures and binding targets, as opposed to simply making declarations. Can we lobby Ken to lobby the govt on adopting a personal allowance scheme? Or get his endorsement for London CRAGs as a pilot for Londoners? Maybe we can start a sub-group for those of us already involved in lobbying and working with Councils, to devise a campaign for extending some CRAG expertise to them? For example, there’s an initiative in Hackney to get Council-run schools switched to renewable energy suppliers…
The Guardian, 13.3.07:
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also, check out David Milliband launching the Bill on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3F9TT2jDs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edefra…
Political mood warming to allowances
Guy S
I noticed this too. I think Ken’s a natural ally here. Reckon he could be very supportive of positive, practical initiatives. The iCrag meeting discussed approaching Transport for London (TfL), getting them to include mileages (rather than just journey times) on their routeplanner websites, and possibly carbon emissions too. Of course this could also be extended to utilities companies – the work of a moment surely to tweak utilities bills to include a quarterly CO2 statement!
Getting TfL on board, though, would be even more of a coup, ‘cos it could potentially lead to a green reward points system (a la Tesco) on Oyster travel cards. Perhaps getting a week pass and using it daily (suggesting you are just using public transport, not using a car) could be incentivised with some rewards. A nice counterpoint to the Congestion Charge?
I’d very much like to make approaching TFL an action for the Islington CRAG.
Also re. others warming to personal allowances: the Green Alliance is very much on board over the idea – it’s collaborating with RSA Carbon Ltd in its research. And I heard Chris Huhne talking about them the other day – in answer to questions at a Campaign against Climate Change public meeting. He was generally supportive but made some fair points about potential inequity, even name-dropping the study by Dresner and Ekins on how the poorest tenth actually emit proportionately more (drafty homes etc).