Climate Change: Local Government must play its Role

5.11.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 8th Dec 2005

Local government has a key role to play in tackling climate change, Manchester Liberal Democrat Councillor Keith Whitmore told delegates at the United Nations summit in Montreal, Canada.

World leaders are seeking to build an international consensus on efforts to tackle climate change after 2012, when the Kyoto protocol expires. Talks are currently deadlocked, with efforts to bring the world's largest polluter, the United States, on board hampered by the Bush administration's refusal to sign up to any binding emission reduction targets.

However, Cllr Whitmore, who was representing the Council of Europe's local government arm, painted a brighter picture of efforts to tackle climate change at the local level. He revealed that Manchester City Council was reducing CO2 emissions at a rate in excess of the UK's national target.

"Manchester has set itself an ambitious target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1% of the previous year's emissions, which equates to a saving 58,870 tonnes a year." Cllr Whitmore said. "These savings are being made by adopting innovative policies and projects, which recognise the need to reduce the city's overall energy and fuel consumption and dependence on fossil fuel generated heat and power."

The issue is one of growing importance. New European research shows that levels of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere are now higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years and that sea levels may be rising twice as fast as in previous centuries.

The conference will run until Friday 9 December.

Note to Editors:

Keith Whitmore, President of the Committee on Sustainable Development of the Congress, attended the 11th Conference of the Parties to the UN's Climate Change Convention from 7 to 9 December in Montreal, which discussed the long-term approach to climate change after 2012. It was also the first meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.