Tea and biscuits with my MP

While most of our group was at the Wave on Saturday 5th I spent the afternoon at a climate change discussion with my MP Sylvia Heal and other local people. I had been invited to a tea discussion at a local scout hut by my MP to discuss the issue of climate change. As I’ve never meet my MP before I thought discussing climate change face to face might be more useful than going to the Wave. There were about 30 of us there altogether with roughly 7 people per table. My first disappointment came fairly early on when it became apparent that each table would discuss a separate topic relating to climate change, which would have been ok if the people at each table could have chosen the topic themselves (since everyone probably had their own individual concerns). Instead all tables were forced to discuss topics set to a pre-arranged agenda. So much for local democracy.

The event kicked off with Sylvia Heal giving a short speech about the urgency of dealing with climate change and some of the problems we will face if we don’t address the issue now. She then handed over to Lord Hunt (who works for Ed Milibands Department of Energy and Climate Change) who gave another short speech about all the things the government were doing to tackle climate change, including the importance of developing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and allowing four new coal-fired power stations to be built that will use this technology. He didn’t mention that CCS has not yet been proven to work on a large scale and that any solution for tackling climate change must use technologies that have been proven to work and can be implemented in a short time span. He didn’t mention that two of the proposed power stations will use post-combustion CCS (captures the C02 after the coal has been burnt) and that only 25% of carbon emissions will be captured (meaning it still emits 75% of its emissions) until 2025, after which if proven to work it will capture 100%. He didn’t say if the power stations would be closed down if CCS proves unviable after 2025. Unfortunately because of the set up of the discussion these were questions I never had an opportunity to ask.

            After the speeches the discussion got underway, our table was given the topic of “local community” to discuss. Whilst I’ve already mentioned my disappointment with the set up it was encouraging and useful to hear other people’s ideas for making small changes locally. A few of us mentioned switching to a decentralized energy supply system and there seemed to be a lot of frustration over Dudley’s recycling system. Which compared to other local councils is pretty appalling (no plastic, no cardboard and some items are taken all the way to Kent to recycle). However it remains to be seen if any of the ideas that were talked about will be taken any further or whether this was just a pre-election event designed to convince us that our MP cares about our views and climate change.