Saturday 8th September Horsham Market saw climate leadership rising from the grassroots. Volunteers from Sussex Green Living and the Horsham Repair Café took part in the global Rise for Climate mobilisation. Together with tens of thousands of people from 7 continents, in 95 countries, people worldwide demanded real climate action from their local leaders.
The Rise for Climate market stand included volunteers from Sussex Green Living, the Horsham Repair Café, two Climate Reality Leaders – climate activist trained by Al Gore and leading climate change scientist and a supporter from 350.org. This was part of a global mobilisation of distributed actions in towns, institutions, cities and states around the world.
The Horsham group have been campaigning with Jeremy Quin Horsham’s MP and Horsham District Council for greater action on the fight against climate change and a faster transition away from fossil fuel to 100% clean energy. Carrie Cort founder of Sussex Green Living and co-founder of the Horsham Repair Café said “Many local people have been campaigning for more action from our leaders in Horsham District” Carrie continues “On 8th July I organised a Climate Coalition Speak Up event when we asked Jeremy Quin to sign the Climate Coalition cross party zero emissions by 2050 letter. 127 MPs have come together to jointly start a letter asking the Prime Minister to back a UK net zero emissions target ahead of 2050. We ask people in the Horsham District to write to Jeremy Quin too”.
This campaign is part of a larger wave of global mobilisations unfolding this year – together these actions will help to build a groundswell of support for real climate leadership, pile the pressure on national leaders that are falling short of their commitments, and create the right momentum to secure a fast and just transition to an equitable world by 2020.
Jill Shuker the co-founder of the Horsham Repair Café said “We work in collaboration with many other local, national and international climate action community groups. On Saturday there was a Rise for Climate event in Dorking and Worthing, these towns plus Chichester have followed Horsham’s lead launching Repair Cafes, energy cafes and plastic bottle refill services”. Jill added “We are doing our bit, now we want local and national governments to take more action, at this critical juncture where people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake due to the growing impacts of the climate crisis”.
Carrie concluded “Some people think the small changes they take won’t make a different, while it may seem small, the ripple effect of small things is extraordinary. The Horsham Repair Café is a fine example of the ripple effect”.