The Climate Emergency petition brought to the Council by Sustainable St Albans and Extinction Rebellion was warmly welcomed by all members of the Council and the Motion to make the District carbon neutral by 2030 was unanimously supported.
The motion however, whilst being welcome, was vague about what would actually be delivered to meet this highly ambitious aim.
Conservative Councillors Julian Daly and Teresa Heritage amended the motion to ensure that it was developed through a working party including all political groups and members of the public. They proposed that the Council sought out key government funding and that it worked with local experts at Rothamsted, the Building Research Establishment and the University of Hertfordshire. They also proposed specific immediate actions that could be taken including planting more trees to capture carbon; introducing the government’s proposed bottle deposit recycling scheme; introduce Secretary of State Michael Gove’s ban on plastics locally; ‘electrify our taxi fleet’ and provide more charging points locally. They also suggested that a monitoring scheme be introduced to monitor the local impact of the Governments decision to legislate for net zero emissions by 2050.
Cllr Daly said "We are at an exciting juncture in our journey to net zero carbon, we all need to work together and everyone will need to play a part."
