Write to the Derbyshire Councillors on the planning committee

When NANC attended the planning meeting in Nottingham one Councillor said he had not had any letters about this issue.  Well lets change that at Derbyshire.  Lets write to the Councillors and tell them we don’t want new coal in Derbyshire.  Derby is under fire from planning applications to extract new coal by means of open cast mining.  There are at least 5 potential open cast mines in the pipeline in Derby including one that is cunningly disguised as cleaning up of polluted land.  So Derby know what the score is.  And they have voted to oppose them before so lets hope they continue to vote to oppose them.  So here is a list of the Councillors who will be on the planning committee:

Trevor Southerd (Lab) chair
Nigel Allwood (Lib Dem)
Beth Atkins (Lib Dem)
David Chapman (Lab)
Gail Newman (Lab)
Robert Parkinson (Cons)
Peter Riggott (Lab)
George Wharmby (Cons)
Barbara Wilson (Lab)
Paul Smith (Lab)

Write to them and ask them to vote NO.  Remember by the time this goes to committee we will have a Climate Change Bill committing us to an 80% cut in emissions by 2050 so we need to start now if we are going to achieve this target.

NANC love Patrick Mercer

Patrick Mercer is the MP for Newark and today he said to the Newark Advertiser “There will be no coal fired power station in my consituency while I live and breathe”.. What a man!  He understands the situation.  No new coal.  NANC not only oppose the getting of new coal from the ground by opening new open cast mines and new reclamation schemes such as that at Langton but we also oppose the Governments plans to build new coal fired power stations in this country.  And that could mean one in Nottinghamshire.  As we have said before, we do not need new coal fired power stations and we do not need new open cast coal mines.  We can easily meet our energy targets by energy efficiency, energy conservation and renewable energy.  Leicester Council have saved money and carbon by investing in a large scale insulation project.  Next week the Government will vote on the worlds first Climate Change Bill and most MP’s are saying they will vote for an 80% cut in emissions of CO2 by 2050.  If we want to meet this target (and new evidence from the Tyndall Centre says we have 18 months to get our act together) then we cannot have coal fired power generation as part of the mix.  it simply won’t work.  That is why we like Patrick Mercer.  He gets it.

Planning Meeting at Derby

Because this application crosses the county boundary the application will also be heard at Derby County Council in November.  we will be there again.  Just because one set of Councillors showed a remarkable lack of knowledge or concern about climate change and the role coal has to play in atmospheric CO2 doesn’t mean that the Derby Councillors think the same thing.  After all they refused the application to open cast mine at Shipley – even if it was overturned by Prezza when he was Deputy Prime Minister (good riddance to him too).  We will be joined by the Erewash and Amber Valley Environmental Network.  The date?  As far as we know it will be November 17th but things may change – they have once already.  We also hope that some people from Pinxton may want to come along.