Efforts must be made to tackle pollution, not pass problems along
WONDER what Conservative MPs aimed to conserve when voting down amendments to tackle sewage being discharged into our rivers?
Imaging the conversation at the house party when Bozza addresses the guests over the breakfast table: “Anyone for wild swimming?”
“No thanks, it’s just going through the motions!”
It’s not every day a poet enters the political fray. Andrew Motion did with a 2003 four-liner ‘Causa Belli’ attacking the dirty reasoning that led us to the invasion of Iraq.
Pam Ayres’ new poem ‘S***creek River’ (readable online) tackles the Environment Bill where at last it seems the government is getting the message that being associated with dirt and disease isn’t a good idea.
Last week I heard the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah on the radio.
Ella was nine years old when she died in February 2013 from acute respiratory failure, severe asthma and air pollution exposure.
Her living within 30 metres of the South Circular Road in Croydon exposed her to pollution that exacerbated her condition and led to her death. Governments had known for years of the illegal and toxic levels of pollution there and not addressed the issue.
And now Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation have discovered more than 250,000 babies were born in dangerously polluted parts of the UK in 2019.
The fact Manchester’s not as visibly dirty as you see in old photos and the 60-year-old film ‘A Taste of Honey’ doesn’t mean our children aren’t suffering.
And if they are suffering here when we have some degree of protection, what about elsewhere in the world where regulation and inspection is even less evident?
Off-shoring our pollution and greenhouse gases has been going on for years and some countries have started to say ‘not here.’
We shouldn’t be pushing our responsibilities onto others, pressurising the poor to take risks we don’t want to expose our vulnerable people to.
H. Anders, M4
Show climate leadership
AS GLOBAL climate talks get underway in Glasgow, I am joining 2,888 others in the North West to call on the government to end its domestic and overseas support for coal, oil and gas.
These talks are an opportunity for local people to make their voices heard. By coming together to demand justice for those most affected by the climate crisis, we’ll push global leaders to do what’s needed and rise to the climate emergency.
However, our government is currently showing a shocking lack of commitment to meaningful action on climate breakdown.
Plans for new climate-wrecking projects put the government’s credentials into perspective – a new coal mine in Cumbria, a vast oil field in the Cambo Field off Shetland, and new oil drilling in Surrey. What’s more, the government is still funding fossil fuel developments around the world, including a planned gas mega-project in Mozambique.
At the UN climate talks the UK government is asking other nations to transition away from fossil fuels, submit their own climate commitments, and provide climate financing for poorer countries.
But world leaders will not listen to a government that does not have its own house in order.
And as the hosts of this year’s talks, the UK government’s climate record is under more scrutiny than ever. The residents of this area are urging the government to show real climate leadership and end its support for coal, oil and gas for good at home and abroad.
Estelle Worthington, campaigner at Friends of the Earth
Valued park is under threat
THIRTY years ago when my sons were small, every day I would take them on Bolton’s Haslam Park for a good runaround.
Today they are healthy men with a great love of outdoor life and exercise. I put this down to having the opportunity to get outside in a very built-up area which has few green spaces.
The park remains available to people in the area to this day and it is well used, but it is now under threat.
Our green open spaces such as parks, moorland and allotments function as the lungs of our towns.
It might be said that together they constitute a ‘health commons,’ safeguarding our well being. They need to be properly valued for building resilience in terms of good physical and mental health.
These green spaces help to offset the negative health consequences of high concentrations of housing and traffic such as asthma, obesity and poor mental health.
It seems to me that if there is a crisis in which the council feel ‘forced’ to build on our green spaces then it is a crisis of their own making. It is inexcusable to build on green land for both health and environmental reasons.
Perhaps Bolton council should take a walk to Haslam Park and see what is being lost – and the view of Winter Hill from the park is breathtaking!
Alan Brown, Bolton