Three years matter

This week you're going to hear a lot about climate change as the Labour government sets out, in detail, how the UK's energy industry is going to meet our ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions. Because that's this week's news agenda, organisations all over the place will be scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. Wandsworth's Conservative Council is no exception.

Yesterday it announced that it has plans to reduce its own "carbon footprint" by increasing the amount of renewable energy it buys and reducing energy consumption.

This is good news. But it's nowhere near progressive enough. Three years ago, Labour's manifesto for Wandsworth in the council elections argued for everything the Council announced today, and then some. It including incentives for local communities to produce their own energy and, if that production exceeded their own uses, to invest it back into the national grid, much like the one Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband talked about on Sunday.

Three years is not that long in the overall scheme of things. But we've all seen how slow progress towards curtailing climate change has been: lots of targets, little delivery. Every year that passes is one less year that we have to prevent the effects of climate change transforming London and the south east.

All I'm saying is that if we had ambitious, progressive local leadership we would have got us to the point Wandsworth Conservatives have now staggered to - and in fact much further beyond it - three years sooner. Those three lost years matter.

Click here to read the energy independence section of Labour's local manifesto from 2006.

Join me and call for a radical deal on climate change

In five months' time the world will come together in Copenhagen to agree a new treaty on climate change. The treaty will take over from the Kyoto agreement, the landmark climate change treaty that has introduced such terms as "carbon trading" and "emission caps" into our dictionaries.

It may be of surprise to those who have become aware of the issue of climate change in the past couple of years, but the political path to Copenhagen stretches back to 1992 and the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. That was the first global summit that recognised that our planet's climate was changing. It's been a grindingly - and for environmentalists frustratingly - slow process since then.

Half of the time since Rio has been taken up in a debate with climate change deniers that such a phenomenon was even occurring - and if it was, whether it was an entirely natural, or human-made event. The remainder has been squandered as countries; especially the US, put their short-term interests ahead of the hard, unpopular long-term decisions needed to stabilise our climate.

Fortunately, in Barack Obama, we have not just a recognition of the problem but leadership from the US now. Let's be under no illusions: the US is key to a successful climate change deal, because until the western world, united and willing to curb our own emissions came together, we had no authority - moral or otherwise, to tell developing nations that their massively expanding carbon-driven economies needed to be curtailed.

The G8 group of the World's largest economies, met yesterday in Italy and finally agreed to "cap" global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees warmer than "pre-industrial levels" by 2050. Not sure what that means? Well neither is the G8 - some believe the benchmark is this year; some that it is 1992 - a more difficult comparison year as our greenhouse gas emissions were much lower then.

The Labour Government has set out what we want from the summit early next year. And we want as many UK citizens to sign up to our pledge too - because in so doing, it gives us a stronger mandate to fight for those tougher targets. You can read more and sign up yourself at:http://www.actoncopenhagen.decc.gov.uk/

Thames gets flooded with sewage...again
Stuart asks the key questions
Click here to read the Summer 2009 edition

Tileman latest
How many have joined Putney Tories in supporting the 15-storey tower block? Click here

Highcliffe Drive gets cleaner
Stuart's petition gets council action Click here

Car scrappage success
Labour's grants to junk polluting cars and boost the motor industry is working Click here

Council rents halved as Labour money kicks in
Tories finally back down, but still charge the highest rents in the whole of London Click here

The state of Sherfield
Highcliffe Drive may be cleaner, but this part of the Alton estate is filthy and neglected Click here

May crime figures
Stuart's monthly monitoring of crime in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields Click here

My formal Tileman objection
Stuart - again -sets out Putney's objections to this overdevelopment nightmare Click here

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Published and promoted by Adam Gray on behalf of Stuart King, both of 35 Felsham Road, Putney, London SW15 1AY