The right way to work towards a greener future?

Meg Howarth, Ellington Street, Islington, writes:

With its wryly amusing title - Islington Together: let’s talk about a greener future - this proposed 11-day event seems like an exercise in deflection politics or cognitive dissonance (Islington climate festival set ahead of COP26).

An idea of the Islington Labour Environment Forum, I understand, however the Caledonian-Park festival is to be funded, it will cost our cash-strapped council. Much cheaper would be a guided walk around some specific locations about which residents might well be keen to speak:

Islington Gazette: City of London’s York Way Estate in IslingtonCity of London’s York Way Estate in Islington (Image: James Dunnett)

  1. the boarded-up former site of the Dixon Clark Court (DCC) “little forest” of mature trees, now filled with concrete and building materials in preparation for a six-storey block of leaseholder of flats, together with the estate’s former communal garden at the rear, soon to be the site of 25 Right to Buy council homes;
  2. the York Way Estate: owned by the City of London but lying within Islington, where the council recently granted permission to build on several of its green spaces (letter);
  3. the new Barnsbury Estate: sited within our environment boss’s own ward, a mega CO2-emitting demolish-and-rebuild scheme will mean the felling of more mature trees by Newlon Housing;
  4. the Highbury Corner pedestrianised space with tree-pits again empty of their plantings and a dying hedge. Opened exactly two years ago, the previous environment boss spoke of “a smart new area for people to walk and sit, new access to a botanical collection of trees and green space previously cut off behind traffic”…Reality has bitten, however, and this unfit-for-purpose area demands urgent re-assessment. Just days ago, an environmentally active friend messaged me: “I was virtually floored by a scooter driving straight off the road onto the pedestrian crossing kerb space.”

Cllr Champion opines that “we have one last chance to stop the global temperature increase”, omitting mention of our borough as among six at particularly high risk of flooding (Sadiq Khan warns of flooding threat to Islington from climate emergency).

A simple message to Cllr Champion: stop felling our mature trees and facilitating building on council-estate green spaces.