Four members of Ayers Explorer Scout Unit from Carlisle travelled down to London on Monday for a meeting with Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, to discuss the Copenhagen Accord and the next steps.
Ed Miliband met with campaigners, stakeholders and youth groups to answer questions following the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The Prime Minister linked up via a video conference stream. Ed Miliband was also joined in London by Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander and Minister of State for Climate Change, Joan Ruddock. The gathered guests also included numerous Ambassadors and High Commissioners keen to hear Ed’s first analysis of the conference.
The event was a direct opportunity for the Scouts to ask Ed about the progress or indeed lack of progress made and question him on what it meant for the UK and for the future.
The whole event was transmitted live on Sky News and the Scouts present were given the opportunity to raise a number of pertinent questions. James Ferguson, aged 17, from Carlisle asked the Secretary of State, “what changes are we going to see in the UK rather than on a global scale… for example public transport?”
Ed Miliband responded by saying that “this emphasises need to redouble our efforts in the UK, we have very ambitious plans in energy trying to build 10,000 wind turbines across UK and moving forward with a variety of forms of low carbon energy. In the household sector we need a much bigger push on energy efficiency in the household sector, we will be saying a lot more about this in January about how people can insulating their homes and move to renewable energy in their homes and then thirdly with transport it is about cycle lanes, it is about high speed rail, its about those things moving forward and part of the road from Copenhagen is for us is to redouble our efforts.”
After the meeting, Andy Clare, also aged 17 from Carlisle said that “the meeting was a great opportunity to share what Scouting does to raise awareness of climate change and environmental issues. It was pleasing to see the government giving a voice to young people through the Scouts at the meeting. The route taken after the summit will have major implications for all young people in our region and it is great that we had an opportunity to question the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change directly.”
Thom Lawson, aged 18 from Carlisle added, “Scouts have always cared about and participated in a variety of environmental and community projects to help make the world a better place. With a global membership of 28 million Scouts in nearly every country in the world, we are ideally placed to spread the environmental message and it is our future after all.”
Written by Eddie Ward of Ayers Extreme Explorer Scouts for eXtremescouting.co.uk
Thanks guys, sounds like a worthwhile trip !
Russell @ eXtreme !
