A climate emergency has been declared in Leicestershire after county councillors unanimously backed a motion calling for more to be done by their authority to cut pollution.
Councillors across all three parties agreed to reduce emissions, with the overall aim being to make Leicestershire County Council’s own operations carbon neutral by 2030.
Climate change campaigners say there are only 12 years before irreversible damage is caused to the planet.
Members of environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion were at County Hall this afternoon to see the motion being passed.
The group held a picnic before the annual full council meeting took place.
Councillor Max Hunt (Lab) moved the motion.
He said: “As shown by the work of Leicestershire’s own David Attenborough, this is a crisis that needs urgent attention.
“Change needs to happen, and it must happen in our lifetime.
“We can’t leave the cost of this to our children or our children’s children.
“We need to work smarter and work differently to reduce carbon emissions.
“There needs to be rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented change in all aspects of society.”
Seconding the motion, Councillor Blake Pain, lead member for environment at the Tory-run council, said: “By 2030, Leicestershire County Council wants to emit zero carbon from activities under our control.
“This will require hard cash and hard resources to back it up.
“It is an extremely important issue that we all care about.”
Leader of the Lib Dem opposition Councillor Simon Galton was applauded by campaigners when he suggested that rather than sell land for development, the council hold onto it and use it as farm land.
He said: “Capital receipt to the council is ranked higher than climate change. That needs to change.
“There needs to be an absolute re-think in the way we do things if we’re being serious about this.”
Councillor Terri Eynon, leader of the Labour group at County Hall, said: “As a trainee doctor I learned a new word for uncontrolled growth: cancer.
“That’s what our planet has, cancer.
“Sometimes I sit in surgery and tell a patient if they don’t make changes they will die in the next five years. They sometimes listen, most don’t.
“They are dead within five years.
"We need to listen and make the changes today.
“Every policy needs to be re-thought as soon as we can, and every policy that passes us from now on needs assessing with this in mind.”
Councillors from all three political parties unanimously backed the motion.
Such an emergency has already
.
