I THANK Cyan from Ruspidge for his questioning of the council’s 2030 carbon neutral challenge.

He will know that the IPCC report recommended that carbon emissions be reduced by 45 per cent by 2030 if we were to stand any chance of remaining below the 1.5C degree warming agreed to at the Paris Summit.

However, scientists are concerned that recent evidence suggests climate change is occurring faster than they had predicted.

Astonishing ice melt in Greenland, and the increase in forest fires are signs that the tipping points of methane release from the melting permafrost and darkening seabeds due to Arctic sea ice melt will be triggered sooner.

Cyan’s confidence that government will ‘roll out’ enabling measures in due course, ignores the damning report of the independent committee on climate change who reported in July that government had met only one of its 25 targets to address climate change and that it would miss its 2050 zero-carbon targets anyway.

Surely, the precautionary principle should apply now and we should do our best to reduce carbon emissions as much as, and as quickly as, possible.

Are you prepared to risk the government’s 2050 target sufficient to stop climate chaos?

I’m not, and young people aren’t either.

As the Cabinet member responsible, I am sticking to this target and hoping to beat it!

If I’m wrong, we won’t have lost much; if you are wrong, we could well lose everything. –Cllr Chris McFarling, Cabinet member for Planning Policy, Performance and Climate Emergency, Forest of Dean District Council.