• IT was quite bizarre on Monday when Camden Climate Emergency, of which Camden Civic Society is a member, was delivering a deputation to full council and realise we were among a chamber of climate change deniers.

I had expected by now everyone accepted that burning fossil fuels is causing the global temperature to rise and this will cause catastrophic climate change.

CCE’s Alice Brown properly drew their attention to undertakings from two years ago that remain unaddressed and their only response was to say they had divested pension fund investments a bit and would do more by 2050.

Yet in Camden we see all around us mature trees and open spaces being destroyed, causing flooding from run-off, and demolition and concrete construction and worsening air pollution disproportionately affecting BAME communities.

Camden is grappling with the cost of retrofitting and will be working towards the new WHO NO2 and particulate guidelines, updating their action plan, and surveying inequality in the borough.

They had a number of experts addressing them, as well, who were quite explicit on the immediate danger. As Kate Jones of UCL said, climate change is outstripping action.

The UK is far off track and the longer we delay the higher the cost will be. We need to act now on embodied carbon, ensuring the natural habitat is in a good enough state to sequester carbon that our supply chains can withstand the impending disruption of impact in other countries.

Maria Sunyer Pinya from Arups emphasised that we have failed to keep pace and need to protect biodiversity and adapt urgently to build resilience to mitigate floods, water shortages, health impacts from overheating and address inequalities.

Yet the summary response from the council leader and cabinet member for the environment repeated a tired, anodyne, self-congratulation from pre-lockdown, for having declared a climate emergency on which Camden has taken little meaningful action and convened a citizens’ assembly without teeth or binding outcomes.

Both the leader and cabinet member for environment, incidentally, are so convinced that burning plastic for heat and energy is better than landfill, that they oppose pause and review for the Edmonton incinerator; even though going ahead with this will lock Camden into a ruinous contract and the UK into further over provision of incinerators.

DOROTHEA HACKMAN
Chair, Camden Civic Society