North must help to save our climate

From: Ian Richardson, Railway Street, Beverley.

THIS month has witnessed some UK cities finally taking on board the enormity of the challenges raised by urban pollution and climate change. Birmingham has made the courageous and surely correct decision to restrict car use in the city centre.

Even greater credit must go to Glasgow, with an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral. These examples, positive though they may be, are put to shame by Copenhagen where 50 per cent of all journeys are made by bike, and where the city is on target to be carbon neutral by 2025.

On green issues, the old song might well go ‘there is nothing like a Dane’. Sadly, as a frequent traveller in all Yorkshire’s four big metropolitan areas, namely Leeds, Hull, Bradford and Sheffield, I feel deeply concerned that our region is just not facing up to the enormity of the challenges.

Only Sheffield has a tram system, which, to be frank, is a disgrace as anybody visiting Belgium or Holland sees them in far smaller places than the Yorkshire cities.

Congestion and pollution are catastrophic in all four Yorkshire cities, where far too little is being done to improve bus and rail services. The incredible fact that one can not access the KCOM Stadium in Hull by train, even though it stands right next to the only two rail lines, is utterly staggering and unthinkable in mainland Europe.

This region, which led the world into industrial and technological revolution, should be in the fast lane towards a greener future, not crawling along like so many of the cars that bedevil our city routes.

We need to step up – and do it quickly. A note to the politicians in London, it is not so much a powerhouse we need in the North – but a greenhouse.