Column | Dan Norris, Metro Mayor – 04/07/2023

June has seen a series of scorchingly hot days. No doubt there will be more to come before we reach the Autumn.

A hot summer weekend used to be something most smiled about, because it was quite rare and very welcome. We’d be straight outside, lapping it up. Racing to the beach, or the park, chugging cold drinks and ice-creams. They were joyful days to remember. But today greater knowledge and evidence tells us the is also a more serious side to the sun-cream and barbecue season, because days like these are becoming much more common and hotter.

They’re not so much fun any more, because these hot days are regularly becoming really uncomfortable. It’s more than just being too hot to sleep, or too drained to work – it feels different, because it is.

These long hot summer days are telling us something. We had a particularly vivid warning last summer when new record temperatures were set. There’s no running away from the fact that more hot days like these mean we need to act now and quickly to stop the world getting even hotter.

I am totally committed to our ambitious 2030 net zero targets we have set for our region. That’s why, in the last 18 months I have done a huge amount to try to make sure we do all we can to reach them. I set up a £60m Green Recovery fund which is – amongst other things –  planting 113 acre woodlands, creating the tallest wind turbine in the country and training people to work on our housing stock to make it fit for the future.

You’ll hear more about ‘green jobs’ soon – it’s a whole new strand of important, well paid and rewarding work for people to get into.

And I wrote recently about the energy we’re going to gather from water being pumped underground, heated by the earth and back up into our homes to provide warmth. That’s a scheme I am incredibly proud to have championed locally.

I’m doing all this because I believe in it passionately, as does the leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer. He recently gave a speech saying  “We’re going to throw everything at this: planning reform, procurement, long-term finance, R&D, a strategic plan for skills and supply chains … Pulling together for a simple, unifying priority: British power for British jobs. This cannot be a re-run of the 1980s,  this is the race of our lifetime, and the prize is real.”

I’m with him. I want all of us in the West of England to be safe and positive about our future, and we can be – because our region is second to none when it comes to new ideas and being resourceful.

We certainly don’t need to be scared but we do need to be aware. And then we need to act wisely based on the evidence. Let’s make sure we can all enjoy summer to come, by being careful and thoughtful now.