A delegation of High Peak Greens attended the Party’s Spring Conference in Scarborough where they heard the Party Leaders call for urgent action on the Climate Emergency.

Co-leader Jonathan Bartley demanded that spending on weapons of mass destruction be scaled back to allow greater spending on the real emergency that will affect all our lives. He said that the tens of billions committed to the HS2 high speed rail project must be redirected to the local rail networks and that the £30 billion roads budget needs to be used to support improved bus services to help reduce car use.

Jonathan Bartley, Co-Leader of The Green Party (Follow him on Twitter at @Jon_Bartley)

On the need to transform our energy network, Bartley said that the nuclear projects planned must be scrapped and the billions committed to them redirected to the building of a truly renewable and sustainable energy system based on solar, wind and tidal energy.

‘After 300 years on industrial growth we have the wealth in this country,’ he said, ‘what we need now is the political will to use that wealth for the greater good of all and to tackle this unprecedented Climate Crisis.’

Speaking after the conference, Jand Reynolds, coordinator of the High Peak Green Party, welcomed the announcement by the Government that they are going to aim for net zero emissions by 2050. ‘This commitment is welcome,’ she said, ‘but it remains to be seen whether the government will have the will to take the action needed to realise this ambition. It will need some hard policy decisions including on fracking, the third runway at Heathrow and HS2. It must reinstate the grants for home insulation and support to solar energy that it has scrapped.’

‘Thanks to the efforts of the school strike protesters and Extinction Rebellion, people are now signalling clearly that they want to see clear action on climate change. It will affect all our lives. Governments have wasted years putting off the difficult decisions. The UN has given us 11 years to begin to bring our emissions down, this is a wake call that we can no longer ignore.’