Victoria's Green Matters - 9th March 2011

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has warned that the UK must move quickly away from oil dependency and embrace ‘clean, green and secure energy from low-carbon sources’. The Department of Transport has been charged with producing a nation wide strategy to promote infrastructure for electric cars by June. New deadlines for the building of low carbon homes will be set and the new ‘green investment bank’ will be established and operational by September 2012. Non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace will be asked to monitor the progress of individual government departments that, in some cases, have not been taking their green responsibilities seriously enough.

At last, it seems that the government has seen the light! Rapidly rising oil prices, with the spectre of the £2 litre of petrol not far away, has galvanised them into action. Well, we will wait and see. Even if you do not accept that climate change is man-made, oil scarcity and price increase is sufficient to encourage you to use less of it.

A new report is published tomorrow which shows that rising sea levels are becoming a serious problem and residents have seen coastlines retreating during the last few years. Coastal regions that already experience social and economic problems will have the additional threat of climate change to cope with. The east of England will be the most vulnerable because of its low-lying shores.

For whatever reason you choose to limit your use of oil, or maybe price will limit it for you, the result will be the same. Hopefully, you care enough about our lovely coastline to want to keep it, if possible. We can attempt to halt the warming of our planet by keeping our use of fossil fuels to a minimum and adopting a low carbon lifestyle for the future.