Don't cut our future

The two Friends of the Earth groups in Haringey have written to all councillors urging them not to cut the handfull of officers working on climate change and sustainability. We will be lobbying the council leader just before Christmas to try to save as much capacity as possible.

"We recognise and welcome Haringey's continuing commitment to achieve a 40% reduction if CO2 emissions from the whole borough by 2020. We are asking you to make sure that Haringey retains the capacity to deliver this necessary and steep cut in CO2 emissions that the council committed to in October 2009.

We know that you are having to agree massive cuts in spending. Friends of the Earth believes that it was not necessary to cut the deficit so quickly, and that there should have been a much larger proportion of tax increases - particularly green taxation and the "Robin Hood" tax on currency trading - compared to spending cuts.

We are urging the government to quickly establish the Green Investment Bank, and to make much bigger investment in the shift to a low-carbon economy, which we know will create many jobs and help prevent a double-dip recession. We are also urging the government to introduce a system of local carbon budgets, with associated funding, to ensure that all local authorities act with the necessary ambition, and we welcome the support of the Council in that campaign. However, in the short term that does not help Haringey - you are having to make the cuts.

We want to stress that tackling climate change is not like other services. It's about the survival of humanity and of most life forms on the planet. The climate science is becoming ever more alarming and well-founded. The droughts and fires in Russia, and the floods in Pakistan, are a stark reminder of the threats to global food supplies and security that climate change will bring. The Earth will not wait for the recession to end. It is vital that we maintain - and redouble - efforts at every level of society to cut our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Councillor Goldberg said, in answer to our question to Full Council last week, that the Council is trying to find ways to keep the climate work going. We welcome that statement, but we are concerned that there is still no guarantee that this work will continue to be adequately funded.

This is not wasted expenditure, but an investment - this work will deliver cost savings to the borough, to residents and to businesses, create jobs locally, and help tackle our dangerous dependency on increasingly expensive and insecure foreign sources of fossil fuels.

The expenditure we are talking about is pretty small in relation to the council's overall expenditure. We therefore ask you to insist that adequate funding is maintained."