18 July 2019

Briefly, I should also mention the progress that Hythe Town Council is now making towards building a sustainable future for all our young people in Hythe and for future generations.  The Climate Emergency working group is now starting work on reducing HTC’s carbon footprint to zero by 2025. This will involve examining all direct and indirect sources of carbon emissions such as heating, lighting and fuel and putting in place measures to change the ways we do things.  In addition, Cllr Hawkins Plastics working group is engaging businesses, schools and other organisations in Hythe to plan for an end to all throwaway plastics in Hythe, and Cllr Martin has decided to double HTC’s carbon offsetting target for this year by applying for another 500 saplings to be planted in Hythe by organisations other than HTC.

On Monday, the work to set up the Hythe Wildlife Trust will begin and as soon as it’s incorporated fundraising will get underway with a view to commissioning expert studies of our ecosystems in Hythe and what we can do to protect and strengthen them.  I know I keep banging on about the Climate and Ecological Crisis facing us but that really is my duty as Mayor as I see it. I stand to be corrected by our local historians but I doubt that previous mayors remained silent for fear of boring everyone when we were faced with the threat of the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, or Mr Hitler.

The current crisis is many orders of magnitude greater than any of those we faced before, or, indeed, than any crisis ever previously faced by Humankind – so I promise to go on and on and on about it till we’ve finally overcome this challenge just as we did all those in the past.