Three Climate Emergencies Declared – yay! And then ignored. Oh…

Credit: Dilbert/Scott Adams

You know that uncomfortable, jarring feeling you get.

When your body experiences one thing, but your eyes see another?

It’s known in the psychologist trade as cognitive dissonance – when beliefs are contradicted by information.

When it happens our brains get very uncomfortable and have three options – change our beliefs (hard), change our actions (quite hard), change our perception of our actions (easiest).

Well this has been the experience of being on the environmental campaigning beat in Manchester this week.

Extreme cognitive dissonance – as the city revealed we’re way off our carbon targets, rose up to declare a climate emergency – and it all went completely ignored.

It could have been so different – a momentous, landmark, ground-breaking week.

It started with Monday’s revelation at the Manchester Climate Agency’s annual ‘conference’ that the city had only managed 2.5% of our pledged 13% year on year carbon reductions .

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