City Councillors Agree to Meet Striking Students
Following the Climate Emergency Forum held in Coventry Council House on 15 March, the day of the first Global Student Strike for Climate, a number of senior Coventry Councillors have now agreed to meet students on 23 April, during the Easter Holiday, to talk about climate change.
In part because of the short notice for the meeting, and in part because they need to be careful to ensure that they follow the local government regulations about what can and cannot be done in the period leading up to an election (often called “purdah“), they can only speak for a relatively short time and to a limited number of students.
Nevertheless this is excellent progress compared to what happened at the forum when only one councillor (Roger Bailey) was able to attend.
As we write this, United Nations Association Coventry Branch are currently trying to identify students who are available to attend the meeting. Unfortunately some students are out of the country on holiday.
We invite any Coventry student who wants to attend to write to philip@unacov.uk as soon as possible.
It was really interesting meeting the Conservative Councillors and hearing about their projects regarding the reduction of Coventry’s CO2 emissions in partnership with Warwick University. However, I do think that it would be better if they could include more citizens and implement other projects too. For example, tours of Coventry Refuse Centre and a Festival to promote practices such as litter picking, tree planting and buying/growing food more locally as well as reduction of food waste. Publication of environmental statistics on the Council Website with would be good too. Still, the local election is tomorrow so we will have to see.