Stroud Green Party turned out with over 600 people from across the county, and tens of thousands of others across the world today, in a global call for action on climate change. In New York and London there were huge marches coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly. Here in Stroud we marched from the Sub Rooms up to Rodborough in a long line stretching as far as the eye could see, with police stopping traffic for us. On arrival we formed a giant heart to signify our love for the planet and our desire to look after it.
In the Green Party we believe that real action on climate change can only come through political change. Sadly, the old adage “if we all do a little we can achieve a lot” doesn’t really apply to climate change. We all use energy. If we all do a little we will achieve.. a little. Solving this problem is going to take big changes to the ways we generate energy and the ways we use it.
The challenge before us is this: a large proportion of the fossil fuels currently in the ground need to stay in the ground. That includes a lot of the easy-to-reach stuff, not only the stuff that can only be reached by unsafe practises like fracking. We need to de-carbonise our economy. Investing in renewable energy, while certainly important, is not enough and will not in itself do anything to prevent oil and gas companies from extracting all the fossil fuels they possibly can, given the current “free market” attitude to the problem. Unrestrained free-market capitalism, as well as causing a whole host of other problems, is a key part of the climate change problem.