Hunts council to debate public part in climate change
THE steps councils can take to encourage residents and businesses in Huntingdonshire to reduce their carbon footprints will be the subject of a public debate on Wednesday. Huntingdonshire District Council has taken to introducing each council meeting with
THE steps councils can take to encourage residents and businesses in Huntingdonshire to reduce their carbon footprints will be the subject of a public debate on Wednesday.
Huntingdonshire District Council has taken to introducing each council meeting with a set-piece debate. Unusually, the controlling Conservative group has offered the choice of subject to the Liberal Democrat opposition at the meeting in St Ives.
Councillors will be asked: "How can local councils challenge, encourage and enable local residents and businesses to reduce their carbon footprints?"
Liberal Democrat leader Councillor Peter Downes told The Hunts Post: "There was no point in our choosing a party-political subject on something everyone knows we don't agree. Instead, we are hoping to have a constructive debate that we hope will lead to a large measure of cross-party consent."
Cllr Downes has invited Matt Taylor, carbon reduction systems co-ordinator at the Low Carbon Innovation Centre of the University of East Anglia, as keynote speaker, and will aim to introduce examples of what other local authorities are doing to encourage grassroots environmental action.
"At HDC, we have quite a good environmental strategy, even if it was slow to produce and late," Cllr Downes added.
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In advance of the debate, Huntingdon's Churches Together and the environment forum of the Huntingdonshire Strategic Partnership last week offered the chance to see the climate blockbuster film The Age of Stupid free.
Starring Pete Postlethwaite and directed by Franny Armstrong, it tells the story of a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking back at old footage from 2008 and asking: 'why didn't we stop climate change when there was till time?'
INFORMATION: The district council meeting on December 2 starts at 7pm at the Burgess Hall, Westwood Road, St Ives.
