Keeping the big picture in mind

During an informal chat following a recent webinar I had spoken at, I raised an issue about how climate change actions might proceed. I noted how easily the issue of the day can be usurped by another topic irrespective of how it which might dominate our thoughts. We are all aware of what the current news item is. 

COVID-19 has brought a number of problems including a health crisis, balancing childcare and work, isolation for some older people and huge stresses on some businesses and resultant job losses. A number of benefits have emerged such as reduced traffic, better air quality, less vehicular noise, more people walking and cycling and less commuting. The reaction to some of the problems has been encouraging from a climate perspective. In order to enable social distancing some are calling for wider pavements to allow the public to walk more; expanded cycleway networks and cycle lanes; the closure of some city centre roads to vehicles and the pedestrianisation of others. A free bike being given to all secondary school aged children to reduce the school run is an idea being considered by one southern local authority.

The point is that whilst all of these ideas are welcome and will have a range of positive climate impacts, they are simply not enough to fully address the climate emergency. We cannot afford to take our focus off the main issue while concentrating on the smaller elements that make up the big picture. We need more active transport but we also need electric and hydrogen vehicles and the infrastructure that goes with them. We need more working from home but we also need to retrofit 20 million properties.

While spending time focussing on widening pavements, which is obviously necessary for the Covid-19 response, we also need to think about the emissions created from the process of creating the materials we will be using to widen them and how to maximise the active travel benefits. Climate change needs to be considered alongside coronavirus recovery. 

Equally, if we don’t operate at scale we won’t make the targets we have set ourselves. A recent report from the IPPR’s Environmental Justice Commission suggests that the government should invest at least £30bn into a green recovery echoing the Committee on Climate Change’s call for low carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure to be at the heart of rebuilding after the pandemic. This is the scale of activity we need to aim for.

Local authorities can’t change everything in their areas but they can make big changes. They own lots of assets, they have lots of influence and they are going to be around for many years so can carry a long term message. They need to encourage, plan for and act at scale.

Climate emergencies have been declared and will come back to the top of the news list. Concentrating on cycle ways is a necessary part of addressing climate change but we also need to keep the big picture in mind. We can’t fall into the trap of working on one problem and ignoring another important one. By all means make smaller changes…but make them alongside the bigger stuff.