LGC Climate Change 2020

For new registrations or to find out more about the event email Harry.Bower@emap.com or go to climatechange.lgcplus.com

A welcome letter to all delegates from editor of Local Government Chronicle, Nick Golding.

Does your council have the bandwidth to focus on climate change? In all probability it is financially stretched, with its staff worn out from responding to Covid-19 for months on end. And whereas climate change is a long-term global problem, coronavirus requires bold local action here and now – without which people will fall ill or die, services will fold and economies will collapse. It’s easy to leave the fight against climate change to others while you focus on the most immediate challenge.

However, it is climate change that poses a far graver risk over the coming years and decades – it is an existential threat to the planet and every living thing on it. Recent weeks alone have seen overwhelming evidence of the scale of the impending disaster. What may have been the highest temperature ever recorded on earth was taken in a preliminary reading (54.4 degrees in California’s Death Valley) while it emerged that the Greenland ice sheet depleted at an unprecedented rate last year (one million tonnes a minute). This is on top of all the wildfires, hurricanes and floods whose growing status as staple of news bulletins should not immunise us from the growing toll of horror they inflict.

And climate change is most definitely not something that can only be tackled by international treaties or central government action. Far from it, councils at their best have a nimbleness which eludes higher tiers of government and a direct connection with the local population which can leave them in a better place to drive change, especially when it comes to people’s behaviour. While central governments may be paralysed by inertia or hamstrung by economic decline and vacuums in creativity there is a clear opening here for local government to step into the breach.

In truth fighting climate change should be the overwhelming priority of every tier of government. But with our government concentrating on coronavirus and Brexit, and international agreements on climate change so far falling far short of what is required, perhaps it is at the local level that the greatest advances can currently be made.

However, councils are short of financial resources and – with this being a relatively new area of councils’ mainstream work – knowledge is limited. There are also legal barriers to moving forwards and the need to bring the local population on board when their priorities might be overwhelmingly economic stability.

This is why we decided to bring you LGC Climate Change. We want to assist officers, councillors and their partners to overcome the real difficulties that councils face in taking practical measures that move their organisation and their local place towards net zero carbon. We want to help you build strategies that can make a difference and take incremental steps that can help your place become environmentally sustainable alongside economically sustainable.

We have brought together some of the finest thinkers and doers from within and beyond the sector to help you bring about change. And we also hope that this new format of virtual event – a change from what we initially intended but nevertheless a low-carbon alternative – meets your needs. We intend to produce far more events and content on climate change and seek your help to ensure we are meeting local government’s needs so please give us your feedback on this new event.

I very much hope you enjoy this event and wish you luck in taking local actions that can contribute to global change.

Best wishes,

Nick Golding