Green Politics compared to Labour’s not-so-green politics, Bristol style
Bristol Green councillor for Clifton Down, Carla Denyer, has been elected co-leader of the national Green Party, along with Adrian Ramsay.
(credit: Carla Denyer’s Twitter)
It feels uplifting to have a local councillor recognised nationally, and given the chance to lead, especially after the negative and, frankly, in my opinion, aggressive behaviour she has received over the years in City Hall from Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees.
But don’t just take my word for it; so you can judge for yourselves, I’m posting one of the latest interactions, below. The following video is an edited clip of how the mayor talked to Denyer when she asked him a question in Members Forum, his reply about his own behaviour when asked about it at his fortnightly press conference, and how he waxed lyrical about billionaire Bloomberg and his book Climate of Hope.
This should provide a big clue about what our mayor thinks in relation to money and climate change.
When talking to Bristol247 about the mayor’s response to her in Members Forum, Denyer said: “Last night I asked Bristol’s elected mayor to support a couple of national and international initiatives that will help tackle climate change. These are proposals that other cities, and other Labour council leaders, have already backed, so I hoped they would not be controversial.
“The mayor declined to endorse the Climate & Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill tabled to Parliament, on the basis that it’s a Private Members’ Bill and not supported by the Government so he thinks it will not pass.
“But the same was true of the Private Members Bill that eventually led to the Climate Change Act 2008, and other Labour council leaders and MPs have endorsed the CEE bill.
“I think a lot of Labour voters will be disappointed to learn that our Labour mayor doesn’t think it’s worth proposing something if the Tories won’t agree with it.”
Denyer added that “there is a wider issue about how Marvin Rees responds to Bristol’s elected councillors and engages with full council”.
She said: “Member Forum is a rare opportunity for all councillors to make requests to or ask our mayor questions.
“Bristol is ill served by the mayor using it as a podium to attack opposition councillors for doing just that.
“It is strange that although Bristol has declared climate and ecological emergencies, the mayor seems to resent councillors — or even residents — who ask him to take decisive action, or express a clear position, on issues related to the climate crisis.”
Bristol became the first council in the country to declare a climate emergency in 2018 because of a motion proposed by Carla Denyer.
While showing himself to be hostile to Green party members, Rees has been very positive about billionaires. In an interview in September 2021 with Catapult UK, run by ex-Bristol City Council chief executive Nicola Yates, Rees praised the pro-fracking ex-mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg and his book Climate of Hope. Bloomberg seeks to pursue economic growth, on our finite planet, and he writes “instead of pitting the environment versus the economy, let’s consider market principles and economic growth.” This is in contract, of course, to degrowth and acknowledging our limitations in a post-capitalist world.
Bloomberg is a committed capitalist on the other hand, and looking through his book, it’s easy to see why a fellow politician might appreciate thoughts such as “mayors everywhere tend to be more pragmatic and less ideological” because “most are directly responsible for people’s well-being”. An example Bloomberg keeps coming back to is about children suffering from asthma attacks because of dirty air.
“People call on the mayor to do something about it,” says Bloomberg.
This should resonate with the mayor of Bristol because children are suffering from asthma attacks from Bristol’s constantly illegal and polluted air. Some families have had to move away, other streets have had their trees cut down (ironically, it’s ones that are going to have their pollution increase after the CAZ is implemented), and every single one of the mayor’s own taxpayer-funded social media monitoring mentions air quality, apart from one that mentions the mayor’s air miles.
“If a mayor improves the life of a community,” Bloomberg writes, “people don’t much care what party he or she belongs to.” Well, Rees did not improve the community’s life. He had a chance to implement a clean air zone but delayed it for as long as possible, which so far has been five years.
A transport officer was questioned in a meeting of the overview and scrutiny management board by the chair, who happens to be Green councillor Carla Denyer, if the council had estimated whether there was any “substantial harm to health” from the delay.
The council’s strategic city transport service manager, Adam Crowther, replied: “No, we haven’t assessed that in any detail.”
But he said delaying the zone would mean “a bit of pollution…that wouldn’t have been there otherwise”.
While Denyer is staying local and fighting nationally to bring about environmental change, the mayor of Bristol has joined 40 other mayors by flying to New York for the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative . He is there to learn about “enhancing communications in order to inspire action among residents”.
If the mayor had asked, we would have said stay here and focus on cleaning up our air and sorting out school places, not praising pro-fracking billionaires who want to prioritise economic growth.
(You can see the mayor’s entire reply to Cllr Denyer at the following link but be warned, it’s rather disheartening.)
Note: I am not a member of any political party, and I do not intend to join a political party while I write about politics (or ever).