IN DEPTH W

E’RE not going backward to caves. We’re going forward to a sustainable future.

After 30 years as a campaigner on green issues, Andrew Cooper should know what he’s talking about.

The 20-year veteran of Kirklees politics has stepped forward as a candidate for the deputy leadership of the Green Party nationally.

And he’s taking with him his northern roots to bring, he believes, a new dynamic to London-based politics.

Voting is open until August 31 for the new leader, deputy leader and executive of the Green party. Cooper is standing against the incumbent deputy, Amelia Womack, who was elected to her first two-year term of office in 2014.

“Quite a lot of parties can be London-centric,” he observes.

“I’m looking to find a north/south balance. Our leadership team has got lots of facets to it. With me as deputy leader it would have somebody who is experienced giving a voice that is experienced in this authority outside of London.

“The Green Party has 180 councillors around the country but very few of them are in a position to make change. But I have always approached the things that we do in Kirklees and seen them in a national context.

“I have always been keen to change things for the better – to improve them and to choose politics to do that.”

Barnsley-born father-of-two Cooper, 53, joined the Green Party in 1988. Prior to that he was in the old Liberal Party.

He became a Kirklees councillor in 1998, representing Newsome ward. Back then he was the home energy conservation officer for Calderdale Council. Now he’s a fulltimer with the Green Party, helping and providing advice to local parties as well as acting as the national spokesman on energy.

In December he’ll be among the EU delegation at the COP Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, proposing more power for local authorities to tackle climate change.

Among his goals is establishing a new way in which local councils like Kirklees - and others in countries all around the world - can do their bit in reducing carbon emissions.

He wants them to have the ability to set their own targets to contribute directly to the 2015 global action plan on greenhouses gases known as the Paris Agreement.

On a local level he spearheaded the introduction of LED street lights, which used 50 per cent less energy than a standard light and saved the council tens of thousands of pounds. It was later replicated across the borough.

“That was a good idea,” he says with pride.

A similar project to introduce stand-alone solar street lights fared less spectacularly.

“Solar power is great but in that application it didn’t work well,” he admits.

One triumph was the £21m Kirklees Warm Zone project, which Cooper initiated. A pioneering carbon reduction scheme, it provided free loft and cavity wall insulation to more than 50,000 homes and helped tackle fuel poverty by assisting people on low incomes to reduce their fuel bills. The average household saved £200 a year.

The three-year programme went on to win the Ashden Award for the best local authority sustainable energy scheme in the UK.

“There is power in ideas,” adds Cooper. “Politics should be about good ideas and trying to make them a reality.

“If we are about changing things for the better then that is the whole point of politics. You shouldn’t change things for the sake of them but you should try and make a positive difference.

“The Greens in Kirklees have had an impact on various administrations. We’ve taken the view that we’re here to make a positive difference with whoever is in charge of the council.

“We know how to negotiate. We know what we’re putting forward as deliverable and what ideas will not come to fruition.”

Cooper is keen to dissuade people of the view that the Greens are a one-issue party, with the issue in question being climate change.

Yet he is acutely aware that it is what separates the Greens from their political rivals. What’s more, he believes the wider public and home and abroad is edging towards politicians who take global warming seriously.

“The things that the Green Party seek today is what other parties will seek tomorrow.

“We were ahead of the game on climate change. We were coming up with the first ideas on how to tackle it. We’ve always been regarded as a