P&Per challenges Blair on Climate over breakfast at no. 10
Hannah Smith, from Bullers Wood School in Bromley, met with Tony Blair last week and challenged him to take action on Climate Change
Hannah Smith (second from left in back row) with Blair and other Stop Climate Chaos Campaigners in the Cabinet room
Hannah Smith reports:
One of the renowned perks of being a sixth-former is the sacred so-called “study morning”. Mine falls on a Wednesday and is not something I give up too willingly. So an invitation to a breakfast meeting last Wednesday, necessitating a scramble to the station at the crack of dawn, might not sound like something I would exactly appreciate… But wait. The agenda was climate change. The host was Tony Blair. The most important issue the world is currently facing, and the most powerful man in the country. I considered my options, and resolved that this opportunity was probably worth my Wednesday morning.
Soon enough I found myself in the Cabinet Room, voicing my concerns about global warming with the Prime Minister.”
Not a bad decision. Soon enough I found myself in the Cabinet Room, voicing my concerns about global warming with the Prime Minister and five other young people appointed by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, including members of Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, Tearfund and WWF. I was blessed with the responsibility of representing People & Planet.
The meeting kicked off with a few initial dilemmas: Were we supposed to stand up when the Prime Minister came in? Were we allowed to argue back? Would the breakfast meeting actually involve any form of breakfast? (Incidentally, in that order: not if it meant almost knocking your antique chair into the expensive camera equipment; definitely; and, sadly, no, but we did get to poke around upstairs at Number 10 afterwards.)
Blair warming to the Climate Bill
SCC
We quickly moved on to some slightly more important issues. Everybody had a chance to speak and to prove how much young people care about the huge and destructive impacts of climate change. We discussed the cost to global economies, the cost to wildlife and nature, and most importantly, at least in my opinion, the cost to human life. On the one hand we see extreme weather causing devastating storms and particularly floods, destroying homes, hospitals and entire communities. As every good P&Per knows, these are almost always the poorest people in the world, who never had the resources to create the pollution which produces climate change, and who now do not have the resources to protect themselves against climate change. On the other hand, also in developing countries, we see droughts, leading directly to crop failure, famine, and the loss of any hope of escaping from poverty. A potential increase in the atmospheric temperature of just 2° C will subject 200 million more people on our planet to starvation; at current estimates the actual increase could be 6° C by the end of this century. Thatīs something Iīm not prepared to accept.
Itīs something none of you are prepared to accept either - or at least, 1,537 of you. I know that, and Tony Blair does now too, because, to demonstrate our alarm, I delivered him all those hundreds of P&P pledge cards, in a beautifully and topically decorated box (thank you James!). I was fantastically impressed by your promises to use energy efficient lightbulbs, public transport and the good old power of the foot, and I really think Tony Blair was too, especially by the 613 people who ditched plane travel to Europe. Because maybe on an individual level this kind of activity doesnīt seem so significant, but as a collective dedication all our pledges really add up!
Carnival of Climate Chaos, 4 Nov 2006
Charlie Harvey
Thatīs what the I Count campaign is about. We do count. However, we told Tony Blair that there is only so far we can count without government response; we have to count on top-down action as well, for example on renewable energy sources and aviation tax. Specifically, I was asking Tony Blair to include a commitment in the upcoming climate change bill to a 3% cut in carbon dioxide emissions every year, as we and the other Stop Climate Chaos member organisations have demanded all along.
If he isnīt going to take action on a national scale, who is?”
As expected, the Prime Minister emphasised that reducing carbon emissions, and any attempt to tackle climate change, must be a worldwide process if it is to have any real success. Well, obviously. But we urged him to accept that he cannot let the UK sit belching out all manner of filth and wait for international agreement without doing enough on a national scale. Because if he isnīt going to take action on a national scale, who is?
That, I hope, is the message we left him with: that young people are all set to fight climate change but that he must be ready as well. I hope he took our concerns seriously, and I hope you do too. I hope you were among the 25,000 people at Trafalgar on 4 November, and if you were, I would like to thank you; I donīt think itīs a coincidence that somebody in Downing Street realised they had to talk to young people about climate change so soon after our spectacular carnival. Clearly those singing cacti made an impact.
Finally, I hope that the climate change bill we have all been lobbying for will at last consist of real solid commitments to halting emissions and climate chaos. The details of the legislation are announced in the Queenīs speech tomorrow. Yes, thatīs a Wednesday, and yes, it certainly deserves my beloved study morning, even if I donīt get to sit in Gordon Brownīs chair this week.