When ‘Your Waverley’s Carbon Neutrality Action Plan Update went under the spotlight of a council scrutiny committee, it allowed Farnham Councillor Carole Cockburn to have a rant.
Although she agrees with many of the authors’ proposed measures to tackle the climate emergency, not everything sat comfortably with the member for Farnham Bourne. Including heading down the A3 to Waverley Towers on her bike donned in Lycra.
She doesn’t want everything she reads provided digitally, and she isn’t getting on hers, or for that matter, anyone else’s bike!
Go, girl – go – and speak up for the rising number of older people in the borough brought up to “waste not want not,” who walked many miles to school and didn’t know what plastic was – let alone how to recycle it.
CARBON NEUTRALITY ACTION PLAN update
In December 2020, the Council adopted its Carbon Neutrality Action Plan (CNAP) 2020-2030, which contained a collection of actions to reach Waverley’s net-zero carbon target by 2030.
The report above provides the first annual progress update against the priority areas within the plan. The plan was “adopted as a “live document” that will continually evolve to reflect further funding, policy and technological changes and opportunities for new projects.
The report said there had been progress in several areas to be celebrated a year on. But it also highlighted the scale of work still required. It has engaged APSE Energy, a carbon consultancy, to review its baseline and trajectory to indicate better the costs of becoming a net-zero carbon council.
Good for her!! – You won’t get me on a bike either – Think there is a problem on the A281 now? wait until all the inexperienced cyclists get on it… I would be a Huge Liability on the road. Happy to walk.. But we don’t have an awful lot here that we can walk to safely.
I just wish councillor Cockburn would use her Close relationship with our MP to push for local council meetings to be held virtually, this would save both Waverley and Surrey from having their members polluting the environment by having to drive to every meeting under the outdated local government legislation.
Now there’s a good idea – lots of us couldn’t understand why it wasn’t continued… and then we found out who the culprits were … the government!
Going carbon neutral “making or resulting in no net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” especially as a result of carbon offsetting is expensive especially if the timescale is condensed. There is also too much greenwashing and corruption in offsetting. Carbon capture is often carbon dumping for future generations to fix.
Why not begin by buying less goods from nations with coal powered generation in excess of 50%?
Now, there’s an excellent idea. How about stamping in great big letters MADE IN CHINA on everything MIC? It makes us sick here at the Waverley Web; every time we do an Antigen Test we continually fill the coffers of nations who use coal-powered generation.
Well said. I cannot use a bike I use a bus because I’m not allowed to drive. I feel both bullied and increasingly angry. I remember acouple of years ago there was a lady, moved down from London that cylced and had a trailer for her children. She was most enthusiastic for cycling around Farnham. I wished her the best of luck and raised my eyes heaven ward for a bit I’d devine protection for the children. A month later I saw her again and she was one angry individual. Not sure if she remains in Farnham but it hasn’t taken her long to find conditions perhaps worse than where she came from. Cars are intimidating dangerous things. As a pedestrian I’m vulnerable to them and bikes. I would be in favour of a Godalming to Farnham via Elstead cycle and pedestrian path. Properly built and appropriately lit. Partly because it would be an engineering wonder and also because I enjoy a good follyy. Even if I cannot use it. One wonders if the bike brigade remembers some of the basics. In Britain it rains. That puts a good few off regular use in the Winter. There is a route that doesn’t involve steep hills until you reach Waverley Abbey but then you have the water meadow and a road that scrapes its way to a hill with a very narrow ascent up to Farnham. The alternative is through Moor Park to the Bourne. Feasible, expensive lots of cross landowners English Heritage Natural England. To count just a few. Use of said route. Well that’s the thing. Who would use it? People visiting Waverley perhaps. Tour de Surrey at weekends. Cost. Astronomical. Alternative. The bus. The 46. But doesn’t run Sundays and us one an hour and finishes at six thirty. Useless. So people get in their cars Over Christmas we had no bus for a week because of State holidays. So I say Carole is right. Don’t lecture us about going green and getting on bikes. Solve the public transportproblem first.
Clifford Jones
@meaninglessmud