[Chellce] We have some more chats going on now, so I would like to say a huge hello to Phil Korbel, who is from The Carbon Literacy Project. Phil is going to be talking about the importance of climate change. So I will hand over yourself now Phil. Thank you. [Phil] Thanks, Chellce. I'll just do that traditional thing, 'hope you can all hear me'! But yes, I should have been in Glasgow but you can tell, perhaps, that I'm not. I'm on Didsbury Road in Heaton Mersey outside one great contribution to the low carbon agenda. It's The Good Life, they are the low carbon mini market here on Didsbury Road. So as well as being from The Carbon Literacy Project I was one of the founders of Sustainable Living in the Heatons, a brilliant community group there. What I've been invited to do is to give residents' perspective on all this climate stuff here in Stockport. I'm just trying to prop up the phone and make sure that I can do the rest of this bit. Okay? This is the joys of live broadcasting! I'm glad I wasn't in Glasgow, actually. Okay, so people think that stopping global heating is about starving polar bears and melting ice caps. But it's not. It really isn't. It's about us. It's about here. It's about now. Back in 2018, we did some training for some public sector bigwigs for Andy Burnham, a whole bunch of these people in the room. One of those people was the Chief Constable, and I asked him what happened to his job when it got hotter and he said, "Well, we arrest more people". What do you mean, arrest more people? He said, "Yeah, there's more violence, more theft, when it's hotter." I said, "Well, that sounds like canteen room banter." And he said, "No, no, that's not canteen room banter. We have the data," he said, And I went, okay, if you got the data, what sort of temperature does that start to come in at? And he said, "18 degrees. 18 degrees centigrade and there is more trouble, more arrests, across Greater Manchester." The whole of the room went, "Oh, no. Right. Okay. This isn't about polar bears, is it? It really is about us." It's also about science. It's the sort of science, the level of scientific agreement, that you can't argue with. And part of what science is doing is impelling speed and scale of change that is really, really hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine, but it's totally necessary. Just think to yourself, how on earth are we going to reduce our use of fossil fuels for heating, for transport, for making the stuff that we buy? How are we going to reduce that by 78% by 2035? That's less than 14 years! That's not a figure I picked out of the air. That's the law. That is a legal target for us all. So we're in a period of change and we don't have much choice about it. It's either change brought on by much more extreme weather or it's the change needed to prevent that stuff. Now here's the thing, I live on a hill. I'm a bit smug about that in Heaton Mersey, I'm not going to get flooded. But you know what, the floods in Bramhall affect me. Do you know why? Because putting right that damage and stopping it happening again, you know where some of that money is coming from? Out of our council budget, an overstretched council budget, that means there's less money for social care, less money for road mending, the other stuff that we want to see happening. And that spend goes on for years after floods so you can't isolate yourself from global heating. I don't know if you saw Barack Obama's speech at COP yesterday. There's some wonderful stuff there. He did speak for an hour, I recommend the last five minutes, but he was talking there that the movement forward towards net zero is not going to be perfect. It's going to take unprecedented levels of cooperation and cooperation between people that might not be used to cooperating. It's going to be difficult. And he also said it's rarely going to be perfect. Another thing he said, is we've got to listen to the people that are resistant to change, especially those people who might come out of the changes less well in the short term. But here's the thing, a lot of people put action on climate as about being less, you know, we're not going to have so much of the good stuff. No, no, no - we're going to have better. We often talk about co-benefits. The great other things that happen. Elise was talking about that, these great other things that are going to happen as we ramp up our action and the speed of action on climate change. What is the value of a safe future for our children? What is the value of clean air, for warmer homes with less sick people in it? What's the value of more and better jobs? It's also not about the council. I know this is staged by the council. This is a Stockport thing. Surely we're past the idea that the council is going to fix it. We've got to get on board and do the most we can. Another thing that happened at COP, Prince Charles last week referred to needing to be on a warlike footing to tackle the climate crisis and in a warlike footing you need to mobilise. And the first stage of mobilisation is training and skills. You don't send untrained firefighters into a burning building and really in many, many ways, we are all now firefighters. We've got to gear up. We've got to step up on this.. Now when we started The Carbon Literacy Project in 2012, we had a lot of explaining to do about the facts of climate change and the facts of greenhouse gases, the greenhouse effect and the dire consequences of doing nothing. Nine years on, we really don't need to do so much persuading about the fact, and it's much more about "Well, what the hell can we do about this?" So we need to equip people with the knowledge and motivation and skills to maximise their impact on the climate crisis, whoever they are and whatever walk of life they come from. Sometimes it's tangible action. Switching your energy supplier to a renewable tariff, cutting down on the number of flights you have if you have more than one flight a year, leaving the car at home, if you can, all that sort of stuff, we've got to get on it. But the thing I really want to bring home is if you're on a lower than average income, don't beat yourself up about your own footprint. It's going to be lower than average. And if you are in a vulnerable household, you are going to be more vulnerable to extreme weather as well. That's not a passport to doing nothing - raise your voice. Get others to act. You can still make your mark. But don't beat yourself up about it. Talking about making your mark, I can't wait to hear what the young people are gonna be saying in the young people section of this event around one o'clock. I'm totally biased, my daughter is going to be part of that! But really, I can't wait to see what comes there. I was talking to a high up in a large company with a base in Stockport, and he was reflecting on the fact that it was only a couple of decades ago, two or three decades ago, that people were dying on the shop floor because health and safety wasn't a thing. And he really thinks that action on climate, it needs to be something really, really similar to how that has become. Everyone's got to get in on this and get going with it. There's also a lot of doom-ism about it - this is really serious. We are going to feel negative impacts from global heating, so people can get pessimistic. But the best therapy for pessimism is action. Now you might have a strong opinion on climate change. Your opinion on climate change is irrelevant. It is a fact. It's like, "Oh, I have an opinion on the existence of chairs or I have an opinion on the the direction of gravity". Come on, this is just a fact. We just need to get on with it. If you're running a business, your opinion on climate change is irrelevant. Your customers will demand it. If you're in a supply chain, your clients will demand it. And goodness knows your children are going to demand it too. And there's a load of stuff you can do at home and at work. So I've mentioned some of that, getting on to renewable tariff, eating more plant-based food. If you can afford it, getting an electric vehicle instead of petrol or diesel, using the car less, there's a whole bunch of stuff you can get on with. But really, here's the thing. We should and can all do, is raise our voice. Our leaders and representatives want us to do more to tackle the climate crisis, but they need to know that we are behind them. Sheila, Elise, all their colleagues, all the officers. They want to do more, but they need the confidence that we support them. Which doesn't mean not holding them to account, scrutiny is going to be really important in this too. So there's a load of really great stuff in Stockport Climate Action Now in the CAN plan. We need to help it happen and it will make Stockport a better place, and it will do so sooner than you think. We need to support it. We need to play our role in it and make sure it happens and scrutinise the fact that it's happening, holding it all to account. So if you think that this climate malarkey isn't your thing, well, it is, whether you like it or not. You cannot self isolate from extreme weather, so it's time to get on board and do your bit. And to borrow that phrase that Barack Obama borrowed just yesterday: let's get to work. Thank you.