It’s party conference season and, while I was away at Green Party conference in Brighton, a shocking but not totally unexpected thing happened: the Old Courthouse in Cockermouth fell down - a striking metaphor for the state of society.
The building was neglected, declared unsafe and evacuated. There is money around, plenty of it, but not in the right hands. It was no-one’s priority. There was so much to fix, and it was so difficult to know how to start, that no-one started and then it was too late; the catastrophe had happened, and it almost certainly can’t be fixed. There are knock-on effects: the bridge was closed, at first to all comers, now just to cars, busses and lorries, though the pedestrian and cycling experience is far from ideal, and I’m sure the businesses in Market Place are feeling the effects.
190 years ago, when it was built, it probably wasn’t such a dangerous location, but damaged in heavy rains two years ago, it’s just another victim of extreme weather events made more common by climate change. It's only due to remarkable resilience, strong building materials and good workmanship that it survived two years before its eventual collapse.
Meanwhile, at conferences held for their party faithful and the press, politicians state categorically what they would (or wouldn’t) do to keep our planet within safe limits. The Conservatives will delay proposed action to lower carbon emissions. They have offered so low a price that no new offshore windfarms will be built in the latest round of funding allocations, but they will allow new oilfields and gasfields in the North Sea. Labour has finer sounding words but won’t overturn the Rosebank Oilfield license, won’t introduce a wealth tax to fund the investments we need to see and won’t introduce a proportional representation voting system so that politicians who prioritise the common good could get elected in numbers.
At Green Party conference we voted through a new policy that companies should be required to put environmental and social priorities ahead of financial returns to shareholders. Speaker after speaker affirmed that energy security and cheaper bills aren't delivered by allowing highly-subsidised, foreign-owned fossil fuel giants to extract more oil and gas from these islands and sell it overseas to the highest bidder. They come from grasping the opportunities of unblocking and upscaling abundant and affordable renewables, and properly insulating the nation – ensuring clean air and water, thriving nature and wildlife, and high-quality skilled and stable jobs in the process.
It's not just the energy and climate spokesperson in our party who cares about climate change; it runs through the Green Party like lettering through rock. The benefits of action on climate change include more comfortable housing, cheaper bills, a healthier population, better food, better public transport, more green spaces, better mental health, recovering wildlife populations.
Let's hope the house doesn’t fall down before we get there.
Cllr. Jill Perry
Published in Local Newspapers
