Two contrasting views this week of what “the environment” can mean. The Town Council has members on various organisations in the town. Three of the councillors (a record number) expressed an interest in South Lakes Action on Climate Change / Towards Transition (SLACC/TT) – the group who successfully gained Transition Town status for Kendal this year. On Tuesday we met up with Chris Rowley of SLACC/TT to discuss how we could work together. Last night we had another meeting, this time with Clare Feeney-Johnson, who holds the Environment and Sustainability Portfolio on South Lakes District Council, to see how this link could fit into the wider ‘environment’ activities in local government.

It would be easy to see this as the two extremes of the green agenda. SLACC/TT worries about the two life / civilisation threatening issues of climate change and peak oil; SLDC worries about recycling plastics and card from remote Cumbrian farms and villages – and litter (especially dog poo). There are of course areas of overlap – Clare had just visited an eco-school, which I’m sure SLACC/TT would endorse equally enthusiastically.

Pressure groups exist to form public opinion, and then elected bodies respond to the wishes of their constituents. Pressure groups will of course try to short-circuit the process and influence the elected bodies directly, and it is arguable that elected representatives have a leadership role too. However, after knocking on lots of doors during the recent election campaign, I did hear a lot about dog poo, but very little about climate change. The challenge for councillors who share SLACC/TT’s convictions will be to help them get the message across to ordinary Kendalians.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 8:47 am and is filed under Greenery, Kendal Town Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.