5th Anniversary of Sheffield Council declaring a Climate Emergency

Today people from many different climate groups gathered for a rally to mark the 5th Anniversary of Sheffield declaring a Climate Emergency. We sang “Sing for the Climate” and had a die in.

Political Parties were asked to explain why the Council had only managed to cut carbon emissions by 3% when, if they had been on target they would have cut by between 40-50% by now.

Here is my speech. The questions in the Council chamber follow.

Five years ago with friends from XR I presented a petition to the Council asking them to become Carbon Neutral by 2030. 

This is what I wrote to the Star at the time.

Climate change is now an emergency. The 2018 State of the Climate report says that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with the 2015-2018 making up the top four.

The UN told us last year that we only have 12 years to reduce our carbon emissions or the planet will heat beyond 1.5 degrees C. By that time my 3-year-old granddaughter will still not be able to vote, but the future of the planet may have been determined as uninhabitable.

As the world gets hotter feedback loops kick in, which are predicted to lead to ever-increasing temperatures, the “hothouse earth” scenario.

Massive forest fires have been spreading in Tasmania and in California. Drought has increased, making fires more likely. The burning of forests releases a massive store of carbon into the atmosphere, further adding to the greenhouse effect. The destroyed forest no longer soaks up the CO2, so even more CO2 warms the atmosphere.

In the arctic the ice reflects the sun’s rays. But warming has been melting the ice revealing the dark water. This absorbs the energy from the sunlight, warming the water and speeding ice melt.

Around the arctic the permafrost is melting releasing large amounts of methane, which is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Phil Camill described this as “unplugging the refrigerator in the far north. Everything that is preserved there is going to start to rot”.

These feedback loops mean that once climate change really gets going there will be no stopping it.

We can expect food shortages, starvation, far more extreme weather, wars over resources and massive movements of migrants around the world fleeing uninhabitable countries.

This is an emergency. We need rapid action to reduce our emissions. This won’t come from individual changes in lifestyle, we need systemic changes from Government, including local Government, to help us all do the right thing for the planet. At the heart of this must be the end of the worship of economic growth.

It is no use saying, “Our house is on fire, this is an emergency” but then saying, “Let’s ask a committee to report back in 6 months to see if we should call the fire brigade”. It is an emergency, so the Council should have acted like it is an emergency and called the fire brigade!

Five years ago we told the Council time was running out. Now time has run out. This year climate scientists tell us that average global temperatures will almost certainly be above 1.5C since pre-industrial levels. Things have got worse much more quickly than the climate scientists predicted. Most of the graphs measuring different aspects of climate change are literally heading off the scale. Daily we see new climate disasters, like the wildfires in Chile which have claimed over 130 lives. This does not mean it’s time to give up. Every reduction in Carbon emissions is vital and will delay the time when this planet becomes uninhabitable. But it does mean we need to do far more to prepare our communities for the horrific extreme weather we will experience in the near future. 

So 5 years since Sheffield Declared a Climate Emergency. How do you think they are doing?

Back in 2019 XR were stopping the traffic. Our pink boat kept popping up at important junctions in London.  More than 1000 people were arrested for climate protests. Greta Thunberg said

“ I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

What did the Council do? It released the Tyndall Report! 

In 2020 we were getting really concerned by the Council’s lack of action. On the first anniversary of the declaration we had a die in in the Town Hall and disrupted the meeting with a banner drop and singing songs. We blocked Parliament Square and blocked Rupert Murdochs printing presses.

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley said “high-emitting countries will be committing “climate genocide” without greater action to reduce carbon pollution.” 

What did the Council do? It released the Arup report! 

In 2021 XR had an Impossible Rebellion, we blocked Amazon on Black Friday and we made our voice heard in COP26 in Glasgow. 

Former US President Barack Obama said 

“We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.” 

What did the Council do?

They launched Pathways to Zero Carbon Sheffield. 

In 2022 the Dirty Scrubbers cleaned up Barclays but the Council decided to continue banking with them. 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said

“Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects.” 

What did the Council do? It launched its 10 point plan for Climate Action 

In 2023 dressed as bees XR swarmed around the Winter Gardens, Town Hall and Garden Centres calling for an end to Glyphosate use as insect numbers plummeted. We marched for Climate Justice alongside Palestinian campaigners fighting a different sort of Genocide.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said 

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”

What did the Council do? It launched the Decarbonisation Routemaps! (but not all of them!) and proudly boasted that it had reduced carbon emissions by 3% since 2019. Had it been on target this would be between 40 and 50%. 

Am I being harsh on the Council? Maybe. They are in the top third of unitary Councils according to Climate Emergency UK and are doing far better than Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, probably due to the hard work of the Green Councillors who I know often feel they are banging their head against a brick wall trying to get agreement for action from the other Councillors. I have been working with a group of activists and we submitted a very long list of questions to the Council. Yesterday I got some of the answers to those questions, and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of work that is going on . You can see the questions and answers on my blog TellthetruthSheffield.org

But they have to at least start acting as if this is an emergency. Spain, where much of our food imports come from, is in the third year of drought. For us the climate emergency will mean food shortages, inflation and poverty. 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Despite contributing minimally to global emissions, low-income countries and small island developing states endure the harshest health impacts. In vulnerable regions, the death rate from extreme weather events in the last decade was 15 times higher than in less vulnerable ones. 

Surely it is time for the Council to start acting like it’s an emergency. Tom Hunt, when you write your Council Tax letter this year, explain to all Sheffielders how vital climate action is. Make sure the front page of the Council Website points to easily accessible information about what the Council is doing and what help they need from the Government to do the things they can’t afford. 

Labour and Lib Dem Councillors, please support the Green Party motion that’s on the Agenda today, to spur the Council into taking much more serious action. Support the Work Place Parking Levy and Green Bonds so that there is finance to invest in public transport and retrofitting Council houses. Stop the waste of electricity in Advertising hoardings that use 3 households’ worth of electricity every day promoting stuff we don’t need that further damages the planet. Invest in training young people for the green jobs we need. Ensure all the different committees are setting targets to reduce emissions. 

Of course, the Green Party motion doesn’t go far enough, but it is a step in the right direction that the other Councillors must take if they are serious about tackling the climate emergency. But they also need to reconsider their fundamental beliefs. Politicians continue to repeat, at every opportunity, how important economic growth is to our future. When will they learn that economic growth is the problem? We only have one planet and we can’t keep plundering it as we are at the moment. It’s time for a post-growth economy, where happiness is valued more than money, tackling inequality is more important than shareholder’s profits and nature is more important than Gross Domestic Product. 

Thankyou for listening to me!

In the Council chamber we asked questions of the Councillors but the answers were mainly unsatisfactory.

When all the questions were finished we unfurled this banner and sang “Sing for the Climate” again. It is clear the Council are not treating the climate and nature emergencies seriously enough. How do we make them act?