Stuart Anderson, MP for South Shropshire, has recently stated his intention to support the repeal of the 2008 Climate Change Act.  Below is the response (abridged), sent on behalf of Shropshire Climate Action and local groups in the South Shropshire constituency:

“We… strongly support the 2008 Climate Change Act and are very concerned to learn that you wish to see the Act repealed. We believe that the political consensus…and the implementation of the Act have enabled the UK to make significant progress over the last 17 years on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Act's robust, legally binding framework, and the independent advisory body it established in the Climate Change Committee (CCC), have proven particularly effective.

The UK has been widely recognised for its climate leadership internationally, increasing its influence and leverage in international negotiations… Repealing the Act would cause significant damage to the UK’s reputation at home and abroad, jeopardising confidence and investment in the UK’s vibrant green economy… (which) is growing at three times the rate of the wider economy.

Repealing the Act would also undermine the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution [NDC] to the Paris agreement… The CCC 2025 report and the recent report in advance on the state of Climate action worldwide…explain the urgency of accelerating action.

As far as we understand it, your desire to repeal the Act doesn’t appear to be premised on any scientific data that challenges either the Climate Change Committee’s report nor the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

75% of the UK population want to see the Government taking action on Climate Change. Any retreat from our Climate commitments by political parties will carry grave consequences—undermining our national credibility, damaging our international standing, and betraying the trust of future generations.”

Our chair, Chris Deaves, adds his thoughts: “I studied astronomy at university. In my studies I saw no evidence of space fleets arranging with tons of clean water, air, food or life forms.  The earth is finite and so are its resources.

It is ironic that Shropshire contains the cause and solution to these issues. Ironbridge is the birthplace of the industrial revolution and its consequences, not least of which is idealisation of growth based on increasing output, which cannot be maintained for ever.  

On the escalator from the Shrewsbury bus station is a picture of Charles Darwin and a quote: “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” 

Seeking to retain obsolete concepts of growth (and its concomitant evil of unfair resource distribution) is a fearful and unthinking response to the need for change and a cheap hook on which to hang short-term populist policy. Improving the cost of living, resource inequality and better public engagement in governance require evolution, not a nostalgic adherence to old policies. 

The increasing ‘undemocratic’ objections we see around us are signs of democratic evolution in progress by the only routes open and policy makers would do well to remember that all the principles of evolution apply remorselessly to us all.”