The first council elections for 2 years are upon us.
And, on May 6th, we will choose most of the councillors who will be in power for the next 3 years. These will be the three most important years in responding to the climate emergency. This is our last chance to elect people who can respond. Making changes in 2024 will be too late.
We need to be carbon neutral by 2030. And that means the decisions our council makes in the next 3 years will determine if the response is adequate.
Our two local councils – Basingstoke and Deane and Hampshire County Council – make key decisions on things like:
• How many, and how energy efficient, our new homes and buildings will be.
• Our transport policy and whether we tackle the immense environmental damage our transport system is doing to our air quality.
• How we effectively manage waste and recycling.
• How much we invest in renewable technology.
• Whether we lead, or lag, in creating the green jobs of the future.
• How we are going to protect and nurture our land and water resources.
To help us all decide who should be making vital decisions on our behalf, and who we might like to vote for, Basingstoke Transition Network (BTN) has invited all of the major party groupings standing locally in these elections to provide a representative to participate in an online question and answer session.
The event will be online. 7pm Wednesday 21st April. You are invited to submit a question to candidates via
secretary@basingstoketransition.org by
midnight on Saturday 17th April. Questions with an environmental flavour will have preference.
It is a hoped that we will also be able to introduce questions which are responsive to the actual debate submitted in real time by the audience on the night. The event will be broadcast on
YouTube https://youtu.be/n-_HfvkZ5Us and it will also be possible to feed questions via the Basingstoke Transition Network (BTN) Facebook page.
