22 September 2019
Last Friday, school students around the world took part in the Climate Strike; many workers downed tools and joined them. Calling for urgent global action to halt the wholesale emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that threaten to send the climate over an irreversible tipping point in eleven years’ time, young people like Swedish school student Greta Thunberg are showing far more real leadership than the United Nations, never mind your Trumps, Putins, Xi Jinpings, or (heaven help us) Johnsons.
Here in Macclesfield too, young people took the lead, as school students demonstrated and marched through town to demand climate action, with hundreds of adults also gathering in support. What a contrast to our supposed political “leadership”! Our MP, who never usually misses an opportunity to get his photo in the paper, was nowhere to be seen. Cheshire East Council may be “under new management”, but it still seems to be “business as usual”. It’s all very well for them to announce that the mayor’s Bentley will be replaced with a greener vehicle and covers are to be placed over swimming pools, but our local Labour leadership seems just as firmly wedded to the car-culture as the previous Tory regime.
Combatting climate change demands - among other things - massively reduced, not increased, car- and air-travel. Yet only this month, the council cabinet has asked the government for £22million towards the cost of building the Poynton Relief Road. This is to be bulldozed through miles of Poynton and Adlington green belt, for the sake of increasing traffic into Macclesfield (100 years’ experience has shown that bypasses only ease traffic on other roads in the short term and actually increase traffic overall) as well as encouraging more air travel from Manchester Airport.
Some joined-up thinking is needed here, Cheshire East Council.
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