Posted on

Copenhagen or not, we have local responsibilities

Expectations for Copenhagen have been a swinging pendulum over the last few weeks.  Obama is going…he’s not going.  We’ll have legally binding agreements…we won’t have legally binding agreements.  In this uncertainty, the LGA held a timely debate earlier this week called Copenhagen: can we turn global talks into action on the ground? The panel was suitably expert to stimulate thought and incite intense frustration (or maybe that’s just me).

Richard Kemp (Deputy Chair, LGA) started off the discussion with a sobering figure on the high percentage of people who still think climate change isn’t caused by humans.  Then Chris Church (Low Carbon Communities Network) told a similarly upsetting anecdote of doing a training session in a district authority where a group of councillors came together and said that the council shouldn’t do anything about climate change as it’s not an issue.  This points to one of the main issues with the role that councils play in the UK’s response to climate change: we need politicians who aren’t afraid to make a tough decision that might only realise benefits after their time in office.  (It would also help if they accepted the causes of climate change in the first place.) Continue reading “Copenhagen or not, we have local responsibilities”

Posted on

Talk is cheap

The forthcoming National Policy Statements will not be assessed for carbon and the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) is not required to consider climate change in its decisions.  So how will we meet carbon reduction targets if major infrastructure is built without adequate consideration of the consequences for carbon?  Local planning authorities will need to produce impact assessments for applications being handled by the IPC.  How will this be funded and what support will planners have in preparing such assessments?  The Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum on Friday raised more questions than it answered.

The topic was The implementation and impact of the Planning Act 2008 and the speakers and audience focussed on the NPSs, the IPC and climate change.  To be fair, Sir Michael Pitt (Chair of the IPC) and Richard McCarthy (Director General, Housing and Planning, DCLG) had responses to the above questions, some of which were more convincing than others.  But they weren’t nearly as convincing as Hugh Ellis’s characteristically blunt thrashing of the regime. Continue reading “Talk is cheap”

Posted on

Planning for health and climate change in the UK

I’ve been wearing ‘climate change goggles’ for the last few months.  This isn’t nearly as fun as wearing beer goggles, but the consequences are much more constructive.  Last week I went to a seminar on using spatial planning to deliver health outcomes.  The event was part of the launch of the King’s Fund report on ‘The Health Impacts of Spatial Planning Decisions’ which provides evidence for how planning policy and decisions can affect health outcomes.  Viewing the event through the climate change lens allowed me to focus on a few key links between national agendas for health and the environment in the UK.

Climate change and health are cross cutting issues throughout planning policy statements.  Work on both climate change mitigation and adaptation have direct effects on health outcomes in the UK.  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by collocating services and providing infrastructure for non-car travel will reduce air pollution and ‘obesogenic’ environments, in turn reducing heart and respiratory disease and obesity.  Dealing with energy efficiency in new-build and existing housing stock is essential to reduce CO2 emissions but is also vital to address our vulnerability to increasing extreme weather events (e.g. heatwaves like the summer of 2003). Continue reading “Planning for health and climate change in the UK”