In response to members comments at the last Leeds Met Unison AGM meeting a Environmental representative post has been created with James Appleby taking up post.

In support of our members, relevent information on addressing environmentally friendly practices at work and home will be made available at this site.

The goals of Leeds Met Green Unison reflect those of UNISON’s green principles :

We are a member led, organisation with a strong commitment to campaigning for measures to tackle climate change.

We support an energy policy based on renewables, such as wind, solar and wave power and clean coal and carbon sequestration.

We believe that greater energy efficiency at work and at home can help tackle climate change and that trade unions should be at the centre of efforts to green the workplace.

UNISON does not believe that new nuclear build is the right solution to our need for secure, low carbon energy.

Tackling climate change will require a sustainable, integrated transport policy. This should include a new environmentally friendly fleet of buses, quality bus contracts for urban and rural areas and revitalisation of our inland waterways for freight and passenger transport. We also support measures to reduce emissions from the aviation sector.

Regular updates and web links to help are members in their environmentally friendly practices will be posted here. Also a FaceBook group will be created to allow our members to add directly their experiences, thoughts, and views on Green Issuses.

Please Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any issues relating to environmentally friendly practices at the work place or at home. My email address is: J.Appleby@Leedsmet.ac.uk

Visit Green Unison for comprehesive guides and resources on Greening the work place etc, and to also sign up to Unisons environment at work network and receive regular newsletters from Green UNISON please send an email to greenunison@unison.co.uk

 

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The SERA Regional Reception on Friday 11th July 2008
Leeds Civic Hall Council Chamber

(Socialist Environment and Resources Association – SERA)

A lively debate took place on the Environment and Resource Management for Yorkshire and Greater Manchester area and beyond.  The Question Time style Panel comprised of Rosie Winterton, the Minister of State for Transport, Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Linda McAvan MEP, Richard Corbett MEP, Benet Northcote (Greenpeace) and Louise Marix Evans (Consultant, Quantum Strategy & Technology).
A number of regional Environmental issues were discussed. The event started with the two main speakers, Hilary Benn MP and Rosie Winterton MP. The range of subjects included G8, Wind turbines, Public Transport and the Energy industries.
A lot of questions were raised on enabling businesses to implement Green initiatives.  A positive note was the Kirklees Warm Zone which offers free loft and cavity wall insulation to every home in the Kirklees area.  The question why this is not happening everywhere was not really addressed except to say the cost was an issue.
Coal, gas and oil were high on the agenda for obvious reasons.  A number of questions addressed the issues of rail Vs plane in relation to fast links to Yorkshire and the cost differences between flight and rail.
On behalf of Leeds Met Unison I was lucky enough to ask the following question to the Sera Question Time Panel:
“The Panel has spoken of Social and Environmental justice and yet the government is planning to build more nuclear power stations. My question is why?
The only member of the Panel to address my question was the Right Honorable Hilary Benn MP; the response was a door salesman’s answer -  the amount of energy that could be gleaned from a very small amount of material.  It is a shame that I did not have time to quote another Benn who wrote this on the subject:
“I was told, believed and argued publicly that civil nuclear power was cheap, safe and peaceful and it was only later that I learned that this was all untrue since, if the full cost of development and the cost of storing long-term nuclear waste is included in the calculations nuclear power is three times the cost of coal when the pits were being closed on economic grounds.
Nuclear power is certainly not safe as we know from accidents at Windscale (now renamed Sellafield), from Three Mile Island in America and Chernobyl in the Ukraine, dangers which the authorities have always been determined to downplay.
Nor are Britain's civil nuclear power stations peaceful as for many years, and still possibly today, the plutonium they produce was sent to fuel the American nuclear weapons programme, making them into - what were in effect - bomb factories.
At no stage, as a minister, could I rely on being told the truth either by the Industry itself, or by my own civil servants who may or may not have known it themselves.
Some dramatic examples of misinformation which made a deep impression on me converted me from being a supporter to a very strong opponent of the whole nuclear power programme.
Once, in Japan, a Japanese minister asked me how we were getting on with the task of clearing up the fire at Windscale years before, of which I was wholly unaware.

When I raised this with my officials they replied that as it had occurred before I took office they had not wanted to 'bother me' with it, all this at a time when I was arguing that nuclear power was safe.
The same excuse, that it was 'before my time', was offered when I discovered that stolen plutonium had gone to Israel forming the basis of their own atomic weapons programme.” – Tony Benn      11/1/02     http://www.tonybenn.com/nucl.html
Tony Benn’s quote does address the real fears of Social and Environmental justice.  I hope to attend further environmental debates like this one. Thanks to Hugh Goulbourne at SERA for the great work on the SERA Labour Environment Campaign letter to John Hutton, (Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform), regarding this subject (14 January 2008). http://www.sera.org.uk/SERAlettertoJHutton.pdf
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James Appleby
Environmental Officer
Leeds Met Unison