Responding to the Climate Emergency

Introduction

The Council meeting on the 30th October 2019 agreed a motion to declare a climate emergency.

It noted that the most recent State of the UK Climate 2017 report identified:

  • We will be experiencing summers that are 2.5ºC warmer
  • Our winters will be milder with the average temperatures being 2.2°C warmer
  • There may be a 16% decrease in summer rainfall making our summers much drier but more variable
  • Winters will be wetter with an average of 14% more rainfall
  • Mean sea levels around the UK have risen by about 16 cm since the start of the 20th Century

The Council resolved to:

  1. Join other local authorities in declaring a climate emergency
  2. Create a member working group to propose an informed target for the Council’s carbon reduction by 2025 and to review it every five years thereafter, and to develop a “Carbon Action Plan” towards these goals, and that this working group should report back to the Council no later than March 2020
  3. Develop a strategy for RMBC to play a leadership role in promoting community, public and business partnerships in reducing carbon emissions
  4. Mandate officers to lobby government for additional resources to support this strategy where these are required
  5. Pledge to produce, in January of each year, a Rotherham Climate Emergency Annual Report, detailing the Council’s progress against the Carbon Action Plan
  6. Pledge to ask our partner organisations across Rotherham to support us by making clear commitments to dealing with this climatic crisis
  7. Require all officer reports from April 2020 to Cabinet and Full Council to contain impact assessments in relation to climate change