Extinction Rebellion has launched a new campaign accusing Bristol council of 'greenwashing'. The environmental group has alleged the council has not made any credible commitments to achieve the city’s carbon neutral target by 2030.
The term ‘greenwashing’ is attributed to businesses, governments and organisations conveying a false impression to make people believe they are doing more to help the environment than they actually are. Extinction Rebellion cites Coca Cola, Amazon, HS2 and HSBC as global offenders of this.
Greenwash-free Bristol is a public awareness campaign with the intention of holding those in power accountable for their actions, or perhaps lack of actions, through posters and billboards around the city. Dr Claire Gronow, a Lecturer in Environmental Management at the University of Bristol, is launching the campaign on behalf of Extinction Rebellion.
Read more: Live: Extinction Rebellion targets major Bristol tourism conference
When Bristol Live approached the council for comment, a spokesperson said the city has already reduced its direct emissions by 30 per cent since 2018. They also highlighted how Bristol was the first city to declare a climate emergency in 2018, with an ecological emergency announced soon after - scroll down for the full response.
Speaking about her concerns on greenwashing in political spheres, Dr Gronow said: "While the central government and Bristol City Council have made commitments to lead us to net zero carbon, neither has any credible plan to reach that target. The government is actively supporting fossil fuel projects that will increase, not reduce, carbon emissions.
“Bristol City Council declared a climate emergency committed to making Bristol a carbon neutral city by 2030 but has not produced any credible plans to achieve this, and indeed is not even monitoring progress. The danger here is that people will think it's all under control and of course it is not.”
She explained how she believes the city is facing a “tsunami of greenwash” accusing businesses and governments of using “smoke and mirrors” to try and avoid the growing challenge of reducing carbon emissions. “People want their politicians and media to be truthful’” she began. “People want to do the right environmental thing. But the dishonesty of greenwashing makes it impossible to know what’s right or true.”
Click here if the survey fails to load
A spokesperson for the council said: "Our One City Climate Strategy identifies what we need to do as a council, city partners, citizens, businesses, and central government. To meet the goal of decarbonising our homes, buildings, and transport, Bristol needs around £9 billion of investment."
It has also allocated £19million in its budget for 2022/2023 to address emissions from council buildings and vehicles. The majority of new housing developments are being built using heat pumps instead of gas boilers as per the council's report indicating they would be banned by 2030.
Dr Gronow criticised the council's decision of still approving some new developments that use gas boilers. The Government is still yet to impose a clear date in law for banning the sale of gas boilers in the UK.
Extinction Rebellion's campaign will call out the “dishonest practices” of the council and other Bristol developments over the coming months. One poster design is targeting Bristol Airport for pushing to expand airline flights, a move that has been criticised by many.
Richard Baxter from the Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) said: “It’s no joke when Bristol Airport claims it puts sustainability at the heart of their expansion proposals when their plans to grow to 12 million passengers per year is estimated to result in adding 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.”
Want our best stories with fewer ads and alerts when the biggest news stories drop? Download our app on iPhone or Android
The planning application section of the Bristol Airport website notes that necessary terminal expansion would come alongside “enhanced environmental projects.” Mr Baxter commented that support of the expansion was “gambling with our future”.
Earlier this week, protesters from Extinction Rebellion attempted to disrupt a major tourism conference in the centre of Bristol, because the keynote speaker there is the boss of Bristol Airport. It was the first time the boss of the airport made a public appearance since the Government's Planning Inspectorate overturned earlier planning refusal.
Meanwhile, Bristol City Council is more than a quarter of the way through its time to make the city carbon neutral by 2030 since it declared a climate emergency in 2018. There are less than eight years left for the council to implement these changes to help Bristol achieve this target.
Full response from the council
The council spokesperson continued: “Bristol was the first city in the UK to declare a climate emergency in November 2018 and an ecological emergency was declared soon after. Our approach recognises that the twin challenges of climate and ecological emergencies cannot be solved by one single individual or organisation.
"Therefore, our One City Climate Strategy identifies what we need to do as a council, city partners, citizens, businesses, and central government. To meet the goal of decarbonising our homes, buildings, and transport, Bristol needs around £9 billion of investment.
"This scale of investment will only be achieved by combining public and private sector investment in new and innovative ways. In Bristol, one of the ways the Council is doing this is by creating the City Leap Energy Partnership which aims to attract £1 billion of private sector investment to help cut the city’s emissions through renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Read more: Bristol residents will be asked to plant trees in their garden to help council reach target
"We are also working with Government and other UK cities to help accelerate these innovative finance mechanisms. Furthermore, we have allocated £19m in our budget for 2022/2023 to address emissions from council buildings and vehicles.
"We’ve reduced our direct emissions by 30 per cent since 2018, with an aim to achieve net zero by 2025. We are supporting sectors to transition too by developing policies that will support sustainable practices and boost the green economy.
"Other policies, such as requiring all new buildings to be carbon neutral, are being explored for the upcoming refresh of the city’s ten-year development plan. Through our planning controls we’ve managed to shift the majority of larger residential developments away from using gas to using district heating or heat pumps instead. We are also using alternatives to gas boilers in many of our new council led developers such as at Ashton Rise, which will use ground source heat pumps.”
Read more: I tried app Too Good To Go and got all this food for less than a tenner
Latest news: The day Greta Thunberg put Bristol at the centre of the world in 2020 - in pictures
Read more: Bristol puppeteer fighting food waste and feeding hungry children
