This past week, on ‘red alert’ high air pollution days, Londoners were warned to limit their time outdoors. At the same time, many drivers were sitting in parked cars with their engines running.
I asked one driver if he would switch off while he was parked up, doing paperwork. He shrugged: ‘What about pollution from agriculture?’ It’s a reasonable question on the national scale, but I couldn’t see any manure spreaders on the Walworth Road that day. Why not start with the changes within our reach? And energy-efficient driving makes financial as well as health sense: companies and individuals see the benefits in pounds and pence. Small changes add up.
A bit like voting. It’s such a small action, just ten minutes every few years, but our votes combined can make waves of change. Elections for the 63 councillors who sit on Southwark Council take place on Thursday 5 May. You still have time to register – the deadline is Thursday 14 April. If you’re already on the register, maybe there’s someone you know who isn’t? Send them this link: www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
But what difference do politicians really make? asks the weary traveller on the Walworth Road. Take a negative example first. Ten years ago, David Cameron scrapped a package of policies on wind, solar and energy efficiency, ditching the aim of making all new homes carbon neutral. That decision has cost us an estimated £2.5 billion, or £150 per household, per year. And we’ve lost out on the resilience and political independence that comes with generating your own power.
A positive example now. A hundred years ago, in 1922, Ada Salter became the mayor of Bermondsey and the first woman mayor in London. A pioneer of environmentalism, housing reform and public health, she’s remembered locally for establishing playgrounds and planting thousands of trees on Southwark streets.
Focusing on small things can help when the news is overwhelming, as it has been in the last month. But we need to stay alert to the big, positive changes that the world is crying out for. Politicians can either hold us back or enable a whole community to do things differently. Ada Salter not only planted an urban forest, she planted ideas. What do you want your politicians to do?