Climate Change – From Me & Cornwall Council

I thought I would share a few things just to show I’m not ignoring all the community effort on Climate Change.

I have used the Climate Vision pledges to further my journey to understand about Climate Change and to start reducing my carbon footprint. This link will help you find out more.

Climate Vision Pledges

I thought it would be far to difficult and time consuming to work out my Carbon Footprint but followed a link to the WWF calculator and found it quite simple and quick although I do appreciate it will not be precise.

 

When I looked more closely, ‘stuff’ was my problem so all those bits and pieces we buy or people buy us so, with my birthday coming up I’ve said no more ‘stuff’ lets have trees!

As you know, Cornwall Council declared a climate emergency – my report of that Council meeting in January– and committed to take stock of what it is already doing and look at how it can do more. This work is well under way and will come to Neighbourhoods Overview and Scrutiny Committee for the first time for their input on 31 May, at a special meeting.

This was the message sent to all Councillors from the Chair of that committee about the meeting on 31 May:

Dear Members

In response to the motion to full Council in January 2019 regarding Urgency on Climate Change, you will recall that one of the resolutions we made was for Cabinet to be advised in six months’ of the proposed plans to help address the issue.  Cabinet is due to receive a report in July 2019,  

In order to provide Member input into the process, the Leader has asked for Neighbourhoods Overview and Scrutiny Committee (NOSC) to lead on the Council’s Climate Change work and as NOSC Chairman, I have agreed on behalf of the Committee for the work to be added to our work programme, given its importance and the support from full Council in relation to it.

Due to the tight timescale to report to Cabinet and the time required to undertake a thorough piece of scrutiny work, I have asked the Monitoring Officer to authorise an extraordinary meeting being held on the afternoon of 31 May 2019 and this has been agreed.  The meeting will be open to the press and public and as with usual OSC meetings, 15 minutes of the agenda will be set aside for public questions, which for an extraordinary meeting have to be about the item(s) on the agenda.

The extraordinary meeting will be the first stage of the work for NOSC and will involve helping to shape the report to Cabinet in July 2019.  The extraordinary meeting will commence at 1pm on 31 May 2019.  With regard to the next stages of the work, we will recommend to Cabinet as part of the July 2019 report, that NOSC undertakes more in-depth work via a series of Inquiry sessions regarding various aspects of the plan and work streams.

I hope you agree with me that this is an important area of Council work for NOSC to be involved in.  Other Members are more than welcome to attend the extraordinary meeting and I have both Trelawny Room and the Council Chamber booked in order to help manage numbers.  It would be very useful if non-Committee Members could advise Joanne Heather, the Democratic and Governance Officer who supports NOSC if they will be attending.  

By that date I will no longer be in the Cabinet and will not (I don’t think) be a member of this committee but I have indicated my intention to attend. The meeting will be open to the public but anyone wanting to speak and ask questions will have to register in advance – link to meeting details including email for questions. Hope to see some of you there.