Local authorities are virtue signalling their green credentials by promising to reach ‘net zero’ before the Government’s country-wide deadline of 2050.
However, the 160 or more mainly left-wing councils who have made the pledge have gone ahead without a democratic mandate. According to the Daily Telegraph, millions of council tax payers will be funding the race to meet the target without having voted for it.
“The public have not been asked for their consent”
Together and Climate Debate UK revealed the councils involved and say: “The pledges are not just undemocratic, but anti-democratic. The pledges’ principles and aims have not been contested in public. And the public have not been asked for their consent.”
Oxford council is targeting net zero by 2040, and has zero emission zones in which petrol, diesel and even hybrid cars are charged up to £10 a day to use roads. Leicester council wants to be carbon-neutral by 2030.
Ben Pile of Climate Debate said: “Labour councils are among the keenest to deny working and poorer families the freedom of private transport. These are the very people Labour claim to fight for, but rather than asking local people if they want these draconian policies, Labour councils seem to be serving the world’s richest people instead.”