Letters

Letters to the Editor

There has been talk of the Prime Minister ruining our Nation using the “2030 Agenda”, so I brushed up my political history to try and figure out how we got here.

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro,  the United Nations Assembly  Agenda 21 called for a comprehensive plan for the Future Sustainability of the World. It took some time, but in 2015 the entire 178 nation strong Assembly adopted the “17 Sustainable Development Goals to End Poverty, Protect the Planet, and Create Prosperity for All”.   A plan for the Future of the Entire World, to be achieved by 2030.   

They even made up a mnemonic to remember it by  “PEACE AND Justice FOR ALL Good Partnerships”, each Capital letter being a Goal.

The goals were simple : 

1) P.  no Poverty, World access to all  basic necessities, food, clean water and sanitation.   

2)  E. End Hunger  ensure food security, nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. 

3)  A.  All in Good Health, disease prevention, universal healthcare.

4) C. Clean Water and Sanitation   

5)  E.  Education for all.   

6) A.  Affordable Clean Energy from renewable energy generation   

7) N. No further Climate Change or Global warming. 

8) D.  Decent Employment and Economic Growth.   

9) J.  Justice and Equality for all.

10) F.  Financial Inclusion. Adequate financial provision for All Nations, including cash poor Third World countries. 

 11) O.  Open infrastructure and Innovation. Creation of sustainable Cities and Communities, with proper planning, and affordable housing and transport.

12) R.  Responsible Consumption and Production.  Waste Reduction, efficient use of Resources and sustainable practices.   

13) A.   Action on Climate.   Immediate action on Climate change reduction, raising awareness, transition to Clean Energy.

14) L.  Life under Water.   Conservation and sustainable use of Marine resources, protecting marine Ecosystems, prevention of Marine Pollution.   

15) L. Life on Land.   Halting Biodiversity Loss, fighting Desertification, restoring Land Degradation,  Sustainable Use of Land.

16) G.   Good Partnership.  Promoting Peace, Justice, and strong accountable International institutions.   

17) S.   Sustainability for all.  Collaboration of Governments, businesses and civil societies, and sharing of knowledge and resources essential to the achievement of  all  these  goals and SGDs.

Unfortunately, the United Nations Assembly of 2015 left out of this plan one essential heading, the Letter G for GREED, the glue that holds together every Bank, Financial Institution, Government Treasury, or other Finance organisation in this whole World, and controls the hearts and minds of every financier and politician with a finger on the purse strings.  It is this ingredient that has, in my lifetime, destroyed without thought any attempt at curtailing the destruction of our World, or belief in the rights or sanctity of any living creature upon it, and has without any compunction trashed every attempt however well designed to combat the annihilation of every good thing upon it . The time for the fulfilment of the 2015 UN Assembly plan is this year half over, and we have accomplished NOTHING. not of this Agenda or of  any other subsequent plan for the continuance of life on earth . We still have 6 years left to achieve the 2030 agenda, but don’t hold your breath.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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Both our current Rother Valley MP, Jake Richards MP and his predecessor, Alexander Stafford, have in a recent edition of the “Tizer”  written of abuse, threats, and criminal behavior towards them and their families. Why? Granted Jake Richard’s reaction to protest has not been what we should  expect from someone elected to represent us, but Alexander Stafford is long gone, so why the baboonish, destructive and immature behavior. I have been a voter now for over 70 years, and in all that time, never, except maybe for a short period, still to be reviewed, during the miners strike, have I seen the like. Have we totally lost all confidence in politics, or has the country become so thuggish and brain-dead as to be ungovernable. The next few years will tell. 

Glad to read the Battery Storage Facility near Wickersley has been shelved, for all its alleged green credentials. Trouble with building on Green belt land is 1 building after erection always seems to become 10 a few years later, and goodbye Greenbelt.

Not such good news are the Solar Farms proposed on Green and  Agricultural Land throughout the Area. Agriculture has taken a battering already this year from the Government’s ill thought out Death Duty changes, and as for “solar farms supporting many of the same goals as green belt for wildlife and recreational facilities”, forget it . There are erection methods and spacing designs that could support agriculture on the same site, but the solar farm designers would have to accept increased costs and the problem of allowing public access on the sites. Solar generation is badly needed if we are to achieve anything like our Clean Energy targets, but the way to achieve them is to integrate them into other designs, not look at them in isolation. We just need to stop always looking for the easy way out.

Look up  “Ofwat” in the media and it tells you that “it works in the interests of the Consumers by making sure the companies are properly run, the system resilient, and the market competitive”. It also tells lies. Faced with the lack of care and maintenance of the infrastructure and the continuing sewage scandal, our new Government was going to take the industry to task and ensure it did its duty. The result?  The companies supplying the “Services” are exactly the same, and on the 18th.December 2024, Ofwat is expected to announce increases to the Consumers Water and Sewage bills approximately twice that of the increases approved in July, and already expected to create affordability problems to 40 percent of its customers. To the residents of Rotherham, those billed by Yorkshire Water Authority can expect an increase of +35 percent, and those by Severn/Trent, +46 percent.        So much for the Keir Starmer style Labour Government, and an “Ofwat” that works in the interests of the Consumer.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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So COP29, the Global Conference upon the outcome of which, believe it or not, our future depends, is drawing to a close, but this time not without some wrangling among the assembly, so much so that the final debate is still going on and the end report delayed. To any who have not been following this conference, the dispute is from the representatives of poorer mainly Global South nations, who have been bearing the brunt of the Climate Change devastation, but due to their low finances have been, and still are, unable to make the changes needed to combat it, and nations such as the rich G7 countries, including ourselves, who so far have gotten away with it mainly unharmed. The Global North’s initial offer, to the poorer nations, of $250million by 2025 was described as an insult by the Developing Countries, who countered that a sum of $1.3trillion per annum by no later than 2030 would be needed if they were to stand any chance of meeting their commitments. (I have just read that this dispute has been ended with a commitment by the Global North of $300billion per annum from 2025, hardly a satisfactory answer to the Developing Countries stated needs.)

All this bickering would be laughable were the subject of the dispute not the very survival of the Planet on which we all depend. Already this year our previous target of not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise has been breached, as has our aim to reduce CO2 pollution, with the news that in 2024 our Atmospheric Pollution Emissions have  already exceeded those of previous years. Nobody is listening. The news is full of news about loss of life, global catastrophes, storms and tidal anomalies of ever greater severity and in places never before affected, and everyone apparently wants to believe they are isolated cases and could never happen to them. The richest nation of the Western world, the United States of America, is now totally in the grip of a Climate Change denying Government for the foreseeable future,  making the fight to preserve the life of our home Planet even harder for the rest. 

The COP28 United Nations pledge to divest itself of Fossil Fuels “in a just and orderly manner” is now also under attack, an Organisation having been launched in Azerbaijan by the oil rich Arab countries with the express purpose of reversing the COP28 commitment.

And all the while the Nations of the World continue bickering, prevaricating, and dragging their feet, while the Bankers and Financial giants continue hoarding the World’s riches and erecting themselves grander tombstones in the Cemetery that they are rapidly making of  Earth.

Maybe, the way we are presently performing, we don’t deserve our World, and Adam Laycock’s prediction of its end is getting closer.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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As I write this letter the delegates for the next COP are assembling in Azerbaijan. Once more, as with COP28, a country virtually floating on oil and dependent on fossil fuel sales for its existence, and again as at both COP28 and the recent Biodiversity COP the number of delegates and supporters  are totally outnumbered by Oil cartel representatives. Even before the event had begun it was reported that the Chief Executive of Azerbaijan’s COP team, Elnur Soltanov, was using his position to discuss possible new Fossil Fuel contracts, and President Ilham Aliyev has told delegates in his welcoming addresses that oil and gas were “a gift of God “.   

Still, this is the only COP on Climate Change we have this year, so we need to make the best of it, although we will be lacking several significant faces. Outgoing US president Joe Biden has declined to attend, and US president elect  Donald Trump, a dedicated climate change denier, will certainly not be there. EU president Ursula von der Leyden has declined to attend, as has China’s president Xi Jinping, India’s PM Narendra Modi , and Argentina’s Javier Milei, and after being accused by president  Aliyev of “brutally killing” citizens of New Caledonia  during recent protests, and France’s Pacific territories being described as “colonies”, France’s president Emmanuel Macron and his delegation have also left.

Those remaining will have plenty to discuss, the average global temperature in 2024 now the highest on record, the breaching of the 1.5C temperature rise threshold established in Paris in 2015, the estimate by Climate Analytics that the world is on track for a temperature rise of 2.7C overall as present policies stand with little action or improvement during the last three decades. Increasing rainfall and flooding in many areas, but also drought and famine in other previously fruitful ones. The increasing wind speeds and changes in Climatic and Oceanic patterns.  All demonstrably linked to man’s persistent use Fossil Fuels over the last 150 years and the inexorable buildup of pollution from the burning of the same.

A fellow subscriber to the Rotherham Advertiser’s “Postbag”, Adam Laycock, wrote several weeks ago that God had revealed to him that the World would end in twenty years from now.  I have no wish to dispute with him the omnipotence of God, but from my observations of man’s increasing selfishness and lack of charity to others, I am of the firm belief that if our world comes to an end it will be from no act of God, but rather the result of the arrogant and unconcerned activities of Man

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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I always believed holding conferences calling for reductions in Oil consumption in countries floating on the stuff was crazy, so when a conference on Biodiversity was to be held in the most diverse country in the World, surely this time it was going to go right ?   Wrong!!  Everyone wants Climate Change and Loss of Biodiversity to stop,  but only if someone else pays for it.  

“A Matter of Life or Death” was how the situation was described by Colombian President Petro at the start of the conference, speaking of the 73 percent decline in the planet’s Wildlife population in less than 50 years. Nor are the deaths reserved to wildlife, as a result of the nation’s efforts to curtail illegal logging there were 79 murders of indigenous wildlife defenders in Columbia last year, 40percent of cases worldwide. The biggest problem is the reluctance of the rich nations of the North to pay their share. A package of $20 billion promised by 2025 has so far raised a mere $163million, a drop in the ocean compared to the United Nations estimate of $700billion that will be required to properly manage Diversity and halt its present World destructive decline. Think that sounds a lot ? It’s actually less than the USA spends each year on  military spending in support of actions like  Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian arabs, in short the richest Nation of the Western World spends more on the murder of Mediteranean Arabs than preservation of the World’s essential Biodiversity.

But just because the USA is the largest player in the game does not make it the only one. Biodiversity is the variation in natural resources that creates the world conditions that all life relies on, and our blind assumption that it is someone or something else’s problem to provide it is no longer valid. It manufactures the air that we breath, it creates the conditions that supply the food that we rely on, the movement of the atmosphere carries water vapour to the places where for millennia we have been supplied with water to drink, it is a global phenomenon that has across the entire planet been the controlling feature creating the conditions for life in all its unbelievable variations to exist and interact.  And for generations the human race has been altering those conditions and diluting that diversity for reasons that we believed were to our advantage, without really understanding the implications of what it was that we were doing, so we have now stretched the limits of that biodiversity to beyond its capacity to recover without drastic action to help that recovery. Recovery that has to be paid for, despite the reluctance of the World’s bankers to open their coffers to the World in the interests of mere survival, because survival is the end game of this present crisis, like it or not.

 Whether Great Britain is any better than the rest of the Western nations we shall hear when we are given the reports of our Representatives at the COP, Environment Secretary Steve Reed and Nature Envoy Ruth Davis.

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party