"11th hour" showing for World Environment Day

3rd June 2008

Sheffield City Green Party Councillor and Parliamentary Candidate
Bernard Little said "World Environment Day was set up by the United Nations to stimulate worldwide awareness of the state of the environment and what can be done to preserve our planet for future generations. Well researched report after report says that if we continue to live the way we do human-kind is on a collision course with the planet. Evidence shows that our children face the prospect of an uninhabitable planet while what is
happening now is that many millions of people across the world have seen
their lives wreaked because the environment can no longer support them.

We have always said the environment is not a luxury. Continually rising
fuel and food prices are the inevitable result of us failing to live
within environmental limits. As a result more and more among us are
facing poverty, social chaos and a frightening future. Sadly government
continues to say it is concerned about issues like dangerous climate
change and the rapid destruction of the environment. The reality is that
the governments have their heads in the sand and a political programme
full of contradictions. Policies like airport, road, coal, nuclear
power, industrialisation of food production and global trade are
expanding. Spending on arms continues to escalate. Nothing has really
changed. We continue down the same destructive path.

Yes of course individuals should be doing what they can by cutting their
environmental impact. But why should individuals take environmental
concerns seriously when government is not prepared to take the lead?
Instead we are continually sold the same old failed economic idea that
says each year we need more growth and must produce and consume more to be run a successful economy.

The Green Party will continue to present a positive political programme
of social, environmental and economic policies that respects the earth
and all its people. Short term political fixes and the treadmill of
consumerism are not the answer. Government must take the lead. We take
seriously our responsibilities of caring for the environment on which
our very lives depend. We have a duty of care to protect the rights of
generations yet unborn.

Here in Sheffield we start with our three Green Party councillors and a
local party of around three hundred members to show what can be done.
Our policies of affordable low carbon homes, support for the local
economy, public transport and opposition to privatisation of public
services are good for the environment, social justice and a resilient
economy.

Sheffield Green Party members and I shall be attending a special
screening of Leonardo Di Caprio's film "The 11^th Hour" at 7pm at the
Sheffield Showroom on World Environment Day 5th June. I will be happy to
talk to people afterwards about the lessons that we must learn and what
practical political action we must now take."