Members of North Staffs Green Party will join activists
from trades unions and environmental groups at a protest in Hanley this
Saturday.
The protest has been organized by North Staffordshire
Climate Coalition; a campaign group founded in the run up to last year’s COP26
summit held in Glasgow.
The coalition brings together trades unions, environmental
groups and groups campaigning on issues of social justice to call for urgent
global action on climate change.
A spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said, “climate
change is the defining issue of our time, and it is important that we demand
action because the government under Rishi Sunak and his two predecessors this
year has not stepped up to its responsibilities”.
Adding that “the situation is rapidly approaching a point where
we will not be able to turn things around and will hand on a world that has
been irreparably damaged to future generations”.
Despite holding the presidency of COP26 the UK government has
been criticised for failing to meet the obligations it signed up to in Glasgow
and prime minister Rishi Sunak initially refused to travel to Egypt, only
changing his mind following pressure from environmental groups and MPs,
including some from his own party.
Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey said, “since last year in Glasgow the UK
government has gone in completely the wrong direction by introducing new North
Sea oil and gas licences, continued to roll out airport and road expansion and
will not even rule out the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria” [3].
The COP27 summit takes place in the Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt
and is organised by the United Nations to build on the ‘outcomes of COP26 to
deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency
– from urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, and
adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, to delivering on the commitments
to finance climate action in developing countries’ [1].
In his opening address to the summit UN Secretary General Antonio
Guterres said the planet was “on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the
accelerator”, and that the COP27 meeting was possibly the last chance to
develop a workable plan to prevent climate disaster [2].
North Staffordshire
Climate Coalition has issued statement outlining three demands, these are for
governments around the world to take urgent action on climate change, for local
authorities including Stoke-on-Trent City Council to honour the commitments
they made when they declared a climate emergency in 2019, and for an end to attempts
by the Egyptian government to use hosting the summit to cover up human rights
abuses.
The protest event in Hanley will take place from midday on
Saturday 12th November at the bus station located on Litchfield
Street, ST1 3EA.
Further details can be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/430403929255929
[1] https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop27
