Hard to ignore – Climate Rush Bristol make a racket at the Department for Transport
Climate Rush Bristol took the messages of the people of Bristol right to the doors of the Department for Transport, to make sure they couldn’t be swept under the carpet.
The consultation on rail fares (Rail Fares and Ticketing Review), which closed last week, is about proposals to increase rail fares and reduce funding for ticketing staff. fares are already the highest in Europe on most routes, and are set to rise over the next three years. As high fares and poor service are the biggest barriers to people using public transport it’s clear that fair fares are crucial to breaking our dependency on cars, which has been shown to have a strong negative impact both socially and environmentally.
We at Climate Rush Bristol like to make bold and loud actions that are hard to ignore but are always non-violent. We also try to keep our work as inclusive as possible as we believe that taking action on climate change should be something everyone gets involved in, not just ‘activists’. It was with this in mind that we went out onto the streets of Bristol to ask people to give us their opinions and stories about high fares, and the impact of potential rises. We soon found that many people have been affected by this issue, and that although people weren’t necessarily aware of the consultation they were keen to have their voices heard by the DfT, who through regulation effectively set rail fares.
Given our polite and non-violent approach we were pretty surprised at the panic that we caused in the DfT security staff, who hurried to lock the doors when we started to read out the opinions and stories of people that we spoke to in Bristol, and then removed us from the lobby when we tried to deliver our consultation responses at reception! We had explained to them what we were planning to do, but apparently this was so threatening that we had to be locked out. Eventually after speaking to several members of staff and people at the office for meetings we persuaded someone from the press office to come down to meet us and collect our letter to the DfT, and the consultation responses which we had written up on big cards. Just goes to show that even a small action makes us hard to ignore, and that even a non-confrontational response from the people can unsettle the policy-makers.
Message for Mr Davey: Don’t Blow It!
Last month, Ed Davey (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) released a draft energy bill which proposes major changes tothe energy market, but not in the way that any of us hoped. For example, his bill allows gas plants to produce more carbon dioxide than they do today, until 2045. And it imposes no restrictions at all on coal plants, as long as they undertake that one day in the indeterminate future they will “demonstrate” that carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment could reduce an unspecified quantity of their emissions. CCS has not yet been applied on a commercial scale so we don’t even know that it will have a significant impact on carbon emissions. And yet, Davey claims that the long-term aims of the bill are to stop climate change!
So, four members of Climate Rush Bristol made time in their busy work schedules to travel to London on Wednesday to deliver a message to Ed Davey asking him not to blow this opportunity to help prevent catastrophic climate change. We took the delivery to Ed’s doorstep as sadly he couldn’t meet us in person, and dropped off more thanforty hankies made by the people of Bristol along with a message from the group. These were made as part of our ‘Craftacular’at Bristol’s Big Green Week. We took abicycle trailer, gaily decorated in bunting and ribbons, on a tour around thecentre of town. At each stop, we got out our sewing kit, blank handkerchiefs, fabric markers, and pavement chalks. We attracted passers-by aged from 3 to 60-something, many of whom stopped for a few minutes to make a hankie with their own message asking Ed Davey to use his power to tackle climate change. We even got a celebrity signing, as one of our passers-by was Jonathan Porritt (author, and founder of Friends of the Earth and Forum for the Future) who suggested that Davey listen to us rather than George Osborne! With our fun and inclusive approach we showed that ‘ordinary people’ also have strong views on this issue, and that taking action on climate change need not be limited to ‘activists’.
