News from Caroline Russell: Mayor must back up “climate emergency” declaration

The “climate emergency” declared by Mayor Khan^[1] in response to Caroline Russell’s London Assembly motion lacks clout without swift, detailed action. Today, Caroline put forward an amendment^[2] to the Mayor’s 2019-20^[3] budget for a £650k fund to update his climate change targets and programmes to make London carbon neutral by 2030.

Caroline’s proposed budget amendment:

• £405k to fund the research to produce a 12-year emergency climate change implementation plan consistent with keeping global temperatures at or below 1.5 degrees. This would update the Mayor’s carbon reduction targets^[4] and specify the adaptation measures that London will need by 2030 to cope with extreme weather events associated with rapid global warming.
• £245k to fund the extension of the Mayor’s Solar Together programme – a group-buying scheme for solar panels – to cover 33 London boroughs rather than the 12 currently. This will contribute to meeting his target of one gigawatt of installed solar capacity by 2030. The government’s Feed in Tariff (FiT) is due to end in April 2019, which is expected to bring a drastic fall in installations.

Caroline Russell AM said:

“We are facing 1.5 degrees of warming by 2030^[5]. The Mayor’s plans are working to 2050 and are out of date. Our budget amendment would allow the Mayor to bring forward his carbon reduction targets. Unless he updates his plan, he cannot tell government what London needs to tackle the climate crisis. Waiting for other cities to put forward their costed plans, as he suggested when I questioned him today^[6], is frankly irresponsible.

“This is no time for complacency. We don’t have 30 years. We have just over a decade to cut the risks that extreme heat, drought and flooding pose to the wellbeing of Londoners.”

Funding for these proposals will be sourced using £650,000 of the Mayor’s capital programme reserve.