On Saturday 6th July, Catherine Rowett MEP, addressed the Streets for Life Extinction Rebellion Action in Cambridge. She said:
“Ensuring that our streets are safe and our air
is clean are two of my key priorities as an elected representative for this
region and so I am delighted to support this action.
“Almost 20years ago the EU
introduced legislation to take action on countries where air pollution
regularly reaches dangerous levels.
“Improving the health and
welfare of its citizens is a core duty of any government and so it is a major
indictment of our own government and indeed other governments around the world
that last year the European Commission took Germany, Britain, France and three
other countries to the bloc’s highest court for failing to comply with air
quality standards.
“If our leaders in Westminster
won’t take action to tackle this problem and indeed the even bigger problem of
climate breakdown, then it is up to all citizens to do so and that’s why I am
delighted to support the action taken by XR in Cambridge on Saturday.
“As an MEP I will work with my
EU colleagues to improve air quality across Europe, but especially here in the
UK. I will also champion alternatives to the car and seek to ensure that the
Eastern region gets the funding it deserves to improve public transport
infrastructure.
“I am deeply concerned that so
many people are trapped into car dependency especially across Cambridgeshire,
because of the lack of public transport alternatives. It is a disgrace, for
instance, that there are towns as large as Wisbech, with a population of
30,000, which do not have a railway station. If the government is to make
tackling climate change and air pollution a real priority, then it simply has
to invest far more in cleaner buses, new rail links and rolling stock for our
railways and provide better walking and cycling alternatives to cars in our cities.”