Comment
Greater Cambridge Local Plan Preferred Options
Representation ID: 59777
Received: 10/12/2021
Respondent: Monica Bijok Hone
I am writing in a personal capacity to object to the Draft Local Plan. I do not wish to complete your online questionnaire.
This plan is a plan of the 1980s and 90s, putting economic growth as its core and primary objective. Vast swathes of concrete, profits for a small group of landowners and developers and huge inward migration are the only things it is sure to deliver.
We are in the year 2021. The council, the country and the world have declared a climate emergency. We are on track for a catastrophic 2.4°C of warming and 2.4 metres of sea level rise, easily within my children's lifetime. Yet all this plan does is carry on with infinite growth while pushing the lie that it can also increase or double nature and increase or double food production. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN ACHIEVED. It's called greenwash. I urge councillors and the government to listen to the science, and not be conned by the increasingly desperate growth lobby in what feels very much like a last minute gold rush, with the writing very clearly on the wall.
This plan needs to be urgently scrapped, as does any post in the council related to growth and development. Stephen Kelly's job title needs to be 'Joint Director of Planning and Carbon Degrowth'. His success should be measured by annual reduction in carbon footprint of all sectors, and measurable increases in biodiversity populations. Without this radical change we are simply accelerating towards the abyss, and denying our children precious years to find ways of adapting to and reversing global heating.
The council and the government need to encourage the University of Cambridge to stop growing locally and encourage it to set up a campus in the North where there is still some environmental capacity, and where regeneration of empty homes, and good jobs would be welcomed.
The obligation on every council in England to grow relentlessly for all infinity is a madness that needs to be scrapped urgently by the government, and a new national strategy that will seek to provide housing and jobs where there is environmental capacity, while at the same time working to reduce the carbon and land footprint in areas such as Cambridgeshire, where environmental limits (in water supply) have already been breached.
Every Councillor and council employee should be assessed on how successful they have been, year on year, in reducing their carbon footprint, increasing biodiversity and well-being of the existing residents, and of the city and county as a whole.
Further, I have read and support the letters sent to you by Friends of the Cam, and Cambridge Labour Environment Forum. These letters provide evidence for the case I have made here.
I am writing in a personal capacity to object to the Draft Local Plan. I do not wish to complete your online questionnaire.
This plan is a plan of the 1980s and 90s, putting economic growth as its core and primary objective. Vast swathes of concrete, profits for a small group of landowners and developers and huge inward migration are the only things it is sure to deliver.
We are in the year 2021. The council, the country and the world have declared a climate emergency. We are on track for a catastrophic 2.4°C of warming and 2.4 metres of sea level rise, easily within my children's lifetime. Yet all this plan does is carry on with infinite growth while pushing the lie that it can also increase or double nature and increase or double food production. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN ACHIEVED. It's called greenwash. I urge councillors and the government to listen to the science, and not be conned by the increasingly desperate growth lobby in what feels very much like a last minute gold rush, with the writing very clearly on the wall.
This plan needs to be urgently scrapped, as does any post in the council related to growth and development. Stephen Kelly's job title needs to be 'Joint Director of Planning and Carbon Degrowth'. His success should be measured by annual reduction in carbon footprint of all sectors, and measurable increases in biodiversity populations. Without this radical change we are simply accelerating towards the abyss, and denying our children precious years to find ways of adapting to and reversing global heating.
The council and the government need to encourage the University of Cambridge to stop growing locally and encourage it to set up a campus in the North where there is still some environmental capacity, and where regeneration of empty homes, and good jobs would be welcomed.
The obligation on every council in England to grow relentlessly for all infinity is a madness that needs to be scrapped urgently by the government, and a new national strategy that will seek to provide housing and jobs where there is environmental capacity, while at the same time working to reduce the carbon and land footprint in areas such as Cambridgeshire, where environmental limits (in water supply) have already been breached.
Every Councillor and council employee should be assessed on how successful they have been, year on year, in reducing their carbon footprint, increasing biodiversity and well-being of the existing residents, and of the city and county as a whole.
Further, I have read and support the letters sent to you by Friends of the Cam, and Cambridge Labour Environment Forum. These letters provide evidence for the case I have made here.