COUN IAN GILLIES (The Press, January 10) is right to criticise Labour for allocating another £42,000 for consultants to update York’s “economic vision” for the Local Plan.
However, I don’t agree that the 2007 Future York Report is still relevant in the present economic situation.
The Stern Review, a government report of 2007, identified the economic benefits of urgent action to combat climate change by investing one per cent of GDP in cutting carbon in preference to a predicted five per cent pa economic cost of inaction.
As a 20-year vision for York, the Local Plan must take full account of today’s harsher economic realities as well as impacts of increasingly frequent severe weather events.
As 2012 has shown, food and energy security will need addressing, in the face of increasing world food and energy prices.
More jobs that depend on volatile global financial markets will not feed local people or keep us warm and dry. The coalition government’s economic fix of more road building will only make it harder to cut carbon.
Investment in insulation, domestic renewables, public transport and flood defences would create more jobs, help slow the rate of climate change and create a less frightening future for today’s young people.
Coun Andy D’Agorne, York Green Party.
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