The Big Ask

Stage 1

Colchester Friends of the Earth members (from left to right) Adam Smith, Paula Whitney and James Sarek at the Five Parishes show, (6-08-2006)

Since summer 2005 local members of Friends of the Earth have been around Essex with stalls asking members of the general public to sign Big Ask postcards calling on their local MPs to sign Early Day Motion (EDM) 178. The EDM asked that a Bill be brought before Parliament to bring in a law to reduce CO₂ by 3% year on year.

80,000 postcards and emails later with 412 MPs' signatures on the EDM we were ready to move into the next stage (over a year earlier than planned).

Now it was the job of local members and the general public to visit their MPs and firstly ask them to sign the EDM if they were one of the few that hadn't yet (Bernard Jenkin, MP for North Essex was among them). Then secondly ask them to write a letter to Tony Blair and David Miliband MP asking them to include the Bill in the Queen's Speech in November.

As a result of our personal visits, Colchester's LibDem MP Bob Russell, who had already signed the EDM agreed to write, and we convinced Bernard Jenkin MP to sign the EDM during our visit and write the letters.

Due to all the hard work from thousands of people all around the country, 614 MPs were lobbied and a Bill included in the Queen's Speech but there is still much to do. If you want to find out more about The Big Ask and other related issues then use the links below.

The next stage of the Big Ask is to make sure it is brought into law as soon as possible. The year on year 3% reduction of CO₂ has been removed from the Bill at the moment. It is also imperative that the 3% figure is not watered down.

Stage 2

On 13 March the Government published a draft Climate Change Bill. There was then a public consultation on the Bill which was open to interested organisations and individuals. We want a Bill which makes governments, now and in the future, properly accountable for cutting emissions and which ensures that Britain does its fair share to prevent dangerous climate change. The draft Bill goes some way towards achieving these aims, but we feel that there are key ways that it could be improved.

The consultation has now ended and we will wait and see what comes out of that. The next stage will be to get in contact with local MPs to urge them to support a strong Climate Change Law in Parliament.

Stage 3

The Big Ask and Friends of the Earth is calling on you! Please visit www.thebigask.com, where the current actions can be found, and get involved.

Page reformatted 6/7/08