If Social Services were failing to meet targets like this, heads would roll.

Last week we witnessed how Emergency Services safeguard our lives when faced with an extreme threat. We are grateful to everyone involved in handling the incident on Broad Street, which concluded without any casualties. Thankfully the bomb threat wasn’t real. The incident caused massive disruption, but people’s lives come first.

How is it then, when we are faced with a far greater threat, that politicians and business leaders can ignore it? More than a decade ago researchers calculated that globally 400,000 people die each year as a result of climate change. Since then the crisis has got worse. Yet politicians like Trump and Farage deny there is a problem, while others pretend that they are tackling it. However, they continue to make it worse by extending airports and failing to reduce carbon emissions at the rate required.

(What follows is a much shortened version of two previous articles, 6th anniversary of Council declaring a Climate Emergency and Council challenged on failing Climate Targets for the Sheffield Telegraph)

Two recent meetings at Sheffield Council highlighted the issue. At February’s Full Council meeting, South Yorkshire Climate Alliance campaigner Jenny Patient asked, “ It is now six years since Sheffield City Council formally recognised the Climate Emergency facing the world.  In February 2019 the council declared a climate emergency and subsequently stated its intention for Sheffield to become a zero-carbon city by 2030.  The timescale was ambitious but properly reflected the urgency of the situation.  

Since then, six of the eleven years between setting the target and achieving the goal have passed without any steps being taken that will genuinely make a serious dent in our city’s carbon emissions.  The positive actions that have been taken are commendable, but the reality is that they are on nothing like the scale and pace required.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tells us: “There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe, but leaders must act – now. We have just endured the hottest decade on record – with 2024 topping the list. Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025.”

What percentage of Sheffield’s all-time carbon budget has been used up since 2019, and how does Sheffield City Council plan to take trail-blazing action in 2025, to do all it can to reach net zero by 2030?

The answer was “Since 2018, Sheffield has used 54% of its carbon budget to 2100.” In other words, to get back on target we must emit less carbon in the next 75 years than we emitted in the last 6. 

The Council has failed miserably to address this existential problem. Unfortunately, they are not alone, as other big cities have similar statistics. If Social Services were failing to meet targets like this, heads would roll. But somehow, climate change is not as important. 

This graph, produced by Sam Wakeling, illustrates the magnitude of the task now faced by the Council to get back on track to Net Zero. 

Last Wednesday, the Transport, Regeneration and Climate Committee met. (view the webcast here) On the Agenda was the Council’s Climate Plan.

I asked the Committee “Please amend the Climate Action Report in two ways.

1. Be transparent about how Sheffield Council have significantly overspent their carbon budget with an increasing deficit each year. Explain that getting to Net Zero by 2030  will need dramatically deeper change than it did 6 years ago. Previous plans need replacing with emergency responses which reflect reality.

2. Explain Hothouse Earth, which is a real possibility now worldwide temperatures are consistently above the 1.5C threshold.  Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions may trigger a series of self-reinforcing feedback loops, leading to a runaway heating effect where global temperatures rise significantly beyond pre-industrial levels, causing massive sea-level rise and rendering large parts of the planet uninhabitable. It would lead to the collapse of society and the loss of billions of lives and must be avoided at all costs.”

Although there were good contributions from all 3 parties in the debate they decided not to ask officers to amend the report as this would take time away from more important work. 

To avoid problems like this in the future Officers should be involving people with expertise who are keen to help when reports are drafted. That was supposed to be one of the benefits of moving to a Committee System which It’s Our City successfully campaigned for. 

Green Councillor Alexi Dimond asked the meeting “Given that Sheffield has already used 54% of its carbon budget up to 2100, should this committee look at more radical and urgent action to achieve a just transition to net zero – for example through a complete overhaul of parking policy?

Cllr Ben Miskell, Chair of the Committee responded “The Council is committed to scaling up existing decarbonisation programmes. This includes further investment in active travel, public transport, and electric vehicle infrastructure, as well as continuing to retrofit social housing and support homeowners in improving the energy efficiency of their homes. Later today, I am pleased to announce that we will be launching an ambitious programme to decarbonise our bus fleet, with an £11 million fund to electrify at least 30 buses.” 

Investment in 30 Electric Buses is welcome, but this is only about 7% of our buses. The climate emergency requires immediate action and Councillors should be banging on the door of 10 Downing Street demanding the funding they need to provide it.

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Linda writes “The latest article is brilliant as usual- with the link to the Broad St incident.BUT the headline really really needs to be changed from. ‘ Social’ services to ‘ Emergency ‘services.Fire/ police and paramedics are somehow trucking along and functioning in emergencies. Social services, thanks to many decades of underfunding and top down objectives via Acts, have not met their local and national targets for ages as we all well know – including all the terrible resulting scandals. Not a useful comparison.”

I take her point. The reason I used Social Services is as Linda points out, they are seriously underfunded, as climate projects are, but when things go wrong the media are very quick to point the finger and play the blame game. Nobody, apart from bloggers like me, seem to be pointing out the massive lack of funding for climate projects, or the lack of action which will cost billions of lives.

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