THE CLIMATE CHANGE BILL

Climate Change Bill and Impact on Thistle Co

Climate Change Bill and Impact on Thistle Co

Introduction

In neoliberal Britain vestiges of commons governance remain, as witness many a village green, and a recent law for the governance of commons - the Commons Act 2006. These vestiges, and the enduring folk memory of the real tragedy of the Enclosures, sustained efforts for over a century to enhance the free access of the British people to walk throughout the land of the British Isles which achieved legal affirmation in the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill 2001. The folk memory of struggle over the land of Britain - and of enforced exile from it - helps explain the strong moral concern for the present and future victims of climate change in the developing world that was widely expressed through the desire in Britain for a strong climate change bill in the U.K parliament. And hence a proposed legally binding greenhouse gas reduction target of 60 per cent by 2050 was raised to 80 per cent in the final reading of the U.K Climate Change Bill 2009 after much lobbying by citizens of their parliament.

This concern to restrain the fossil-fuelled economy reflects too the enduring love of the British for the peculiar mix of wild and cultivated land that still constitutes the small-scale but diverse landscape of the British Isles. Without serious local and global reductions in greenhouse gases much of the Thames Valley and Eastern England - including the venue for this conference in low-lying Cambridge - will be threatened by regular flooding or permanently submerged by the end of the present century.

Britain's history as the first major coal-burning nation means that, per capita of those presently living, Britain has emitted more fossil fuel-related CO2 into the atmosphere than any other nation. Britain has few deep mines left but it still emits significant quantities of CO2, as well as mercury, soot and sulphur particulates, from coal-fired electricity-generating plants and there is many a rural village and small town where the pall of sulphurous coal smoke still hangs in the air on a cold winter's night. A mammoth coke-burning plant remains in South Wales to this day though much of the coal it now cooks comes from Poland and further afield. And the British and Scottish governments - despite the U.K Parliament's Climate Change Act 2009 which commits the U.K to greenhouse gas reductions of 80 per cent by 2050 - proposes commissioning new ones to provide 'base power'.

Thistle Healthcare is a family run business with over 20 years experience of providing healthcare services throughout west central U.K. This has been mainly through the provision of care homes for the frail elderly and younger adults with special needs. Each facility is expertly designed and constructed to provide state of the art accommodation and nursing care whilst being ideally situated for excellent access to local amenities and transport networks. The foundation of Thistle Healthcare success is based on their value added ...