This week marks the fifth anniversary of the motion I proposed to Bristol City Council that saw Bristol declare a Climate Emergency and commit to go carbon neutral by 2030; the first such declaration in Europe. I developed and promoted it with support of my fellow Green Party councillors in Bristol, and the wider environmental movement in Bristol.

The motion passed with support from all parties, despite similar Green motions having been roundly dismissed by the same parties for the preceding 10 years. I had no idea that it would even pass, let alone start a tidal wave of similar declarations across the country - at the time of writing 570 UK councils have declared, along with Parliament.

I had been inspired by a handful of previous Climate Emergency declarations - Darebin in Australia, and Berkeley and Hoboken in the US. But within weeks, Green Party councillors across the UK were following suit, including Green London Assembly members who even got the Mayor of London on board.

The Zeitgeist was with us, thanks to some combination of that alarmingly hot summer (since exceeded), the early actions of the Extinction Rebellion movement (whose first actions had taken place between me starting to draft the motion and the vote taking place), and the IPCC report describing the impacts of just 1.5° warming. People outside the scientific community and environmental movements were finally starting to get that climate change is not just ‘an issue’, it’s the most serious threat facing humanity.

So how has it been going since then?

In Bristol - mixed. The recently published Council Climate Action Scorecards, assessed by Climate Emergency UK, measure and compare the performance of councils across the UK in their progress towards Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bristol has ranked joint 7th on a list of 182 single-tier councils, which the Greens believe is a reason to be proud of this city, and a cause for celebration.

However, the Climate Action Scorecard is clear that in a few key areas, under the current Labour administration, Bristol City Council could still do better. Transport, planning, land use and biodiversity stand out as areas where much more must be done. After May 2024, in the new collaborative committee system, Bristol’s Green Councillor group intend to get working on all of these areas.

Progress on tackling the Climate Emergency nationally is a substantially less positive picture.

Sunak seems to have decided that when in a climate hole, keep digging. His ill-advised U-turns on measures to tackle climate change, air pollution and road safety must have been done because he thought there were votes in it, but he was dead wrong. Polling after the announcements showed his popularity sank to the lowest level ever. Yet his King’s Speech made things worse, paving the way for even more oil and gas licences.

But while we might not have expected better from the Tories, what has disappointed many in the last few months is the lack of opposition provided by the Labour Party. We hoped they would pledge to undo the damage inflicted on the environment by this Conservative government - because if Labour were to confirm now that they would rescind new oil and gas licences on day one of a Labour government, the writing would be on the wall for those projects, they would fail to get funding and would not be built.

But Labour frontbenchers have said repeatedly and clearly that they have no intention of stopping the new oil and gas projects being granted licences now, and they have cut back their £28bn climate investment pledge not once but twice in the last few months. This is despite the fact that in 2019 a Climate Emergency declaration was made by Parliament, supported by votes from Labour MPs.

This gap between declaration and action must be closed. And it underlines the point that I have always made about declaring a Climate Emergency since the start – of course it is not sufficient on its own, it is just the first step, and it must change everything that follows it.

Declaring a Climate Emergency is acknowledging this crisis, committing to urgently change course and mobilise resources commensurate with an emergency. It deliberately doesn’t lay out exactly how carbon neutrality will be achieved, because if we wait until we know that before getting started, we will never get started in time.

Conservatives and Labour have demonstrated with alarming clarity that they are not prepared to show the leadership we need on the Climate Emergency.

So whoever forms the government after the next general election, we are going to need more Green MPs pushing legislation that will lead to a greener, fairer, healthier and safer country.