Air Pollution in Canterbury

According to the Climate Change Act 2008, there are legally binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 80% by 2050.

2050 is a long way off and most of the councillors with responsibility for meeting the targets will be long gone by then. That must be why John Gilbey, the leader of Canterbury City Council, thinks that it isn’t all that important.

As he said, “the levels of air pollution are not that bad and only just over the top.”

So that’s OK then. I wonder if the same rules would apply were I engaged in the much less harmful practice of smoking marijuana in the privacy of my own room? Could I argue in the courts that my levels of smoking weren’t that bad and only just over the top?

Could I quote Cllr Gilbey’s line on climate change by saying that marijuana smoking is not the biggest issue facing us, and that I will take practical proper action, although I doubt that I will ever stop smoking?

The law, it seems, only applies to certain people at certain times.

Meanwhile, with air quality levels in Broad Street, Military Road and Sturry Road already in breach of the law, do the council have plans for the incursion of up to a hundred extra cars a day into the area once Herne Bay and Whitstable delivery offices close some time in 2013, and all of the postal workers in both offices are forced to commute to work, instead of cycling or walking as many of them do now?

Have they worked out what they are going to do with the extra traffic as people are made to drive to Canterbury to collect their undelivered packets?

The Royal Mail claim that they are reducing emissions. The trick they are playing here is that they are only counting their own emissions and not taking into account the extra emissions caused by their own staff and customers.

But I guess it doesn’t matter. We can all take Cllr Gilbey’s view. We’ll be dead by 2050 and climate change will be someone else’s problem.