Campaigns are turning the heat up on the government to take action on net zero as the clock ticks to the start of the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Campaign Collective is involved in a range of activity designed to highlight the need for action.
Plans for a “Schools COP” are well underway as part of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week. A summit to develop ideas for debate, involving more than 50 schools, took place in October and the results will be discussed in classrooms across the country.
Lesson plans and teaching resources have been developed and are available for schools to sign up to online: teweek.org.uk.
Meanwhile efforts to encourage more funding for home energy efficiency programmes continue to be part of the work of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.
Recent moves by the government have been met with scepticism by campaigners with a spokesperson for the Coalition saying:
For millions of households who desperately want and need to improve their energy efficiency by switching to heat pumps, the promised government money won’t be enough. While costs for heat pumps will come down in time, the level of grant available at present is nowhere near enough for households already in fuel poverty.
Coming on the back of the damning Committee for Fuel Poverty report, which suggested that government investment is not targeted at those who need it most, it would appear that the Government has yet to learn lessons from the past.
The government also needs to confirm what has happened to the missing billions, which is the gap between the investment announced today and the levels of investment promised in the Conservative Party Manifesto at the last election.
We hope the Comprehensive Spending Review will offer more support for families in fuel poverty and plug the gap between funding that has been promised and that which has been delivered.
But it’s not just action that’s needed in people’s homes. The Scottish Ecological Design Association recently published a report highlighting how farming, biodiversity and land use must be reformed if net zero targets are to be met.
The online home of positive news, The Rooftop, will also feature grassroots campaigns and innovations throughout the COP summit to showcase the action community groups are taking to help solve the climate crisis.
To support The Rooftop, the public can now donate to its Crowdfunder: