Firstly we should all be appalled at Donald Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris agreement, fortunately most Americans and certainly the people and businesses I know and work with in California are concerned for the environment.
At a more local level I hope that if there’s one good thing to come out of Brexit it will be an increase in locally produced food and goods as this will both help our local economy in North East Somerset and our carbon footprint, supermarkets need to be held to account as shipping meat from places such as New Zealand or Argentina cannot be sensible.
As our City house prices increase and demand to cut pollution from cars in our city’s also rise. I am concerned that the problems are being pushed out of the city to areas like NES with commuter towns being built and park and ride ruin the landscape outside of Bath.
The continued drive to build vast new housing estates and ruin our green areas will have a negative impact in years to come, we cannot criticize poorer counties for De-forestation when we can’t protect our own environment.
We need to review the transport systems within our towns and cities, particularly diesel engines, and look at more radical solutions rather than schemes like the park & ride that will just move the pollution.
New rail links maybe be very expensive but no viable alternative.
UK Farming.
Farming is vital not only to our economy but for the protection of our environment, our farmers are the front line in defending habitat for our birds and wildlife, around 3 quarters of the land in England and Wales is managed by Farmers.
UK’s largest manufacturing industry – food and drink – which is worth £108billion and employs 3.9million people. We are only 61% self-sufficient in food so there plenty of room for improvement.
The more we invest in protecting our farming industry the better it is for the economy and the environment therefore I hope the subsides will continue from the UK government after we leave the EU.