About

Chesterfield Climate Alliance was formed in 2015 just before COP 21 and the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. It was the idea of Paul King who had recently come home from Paris where everything was proclaiming the coming of COP 21. He thought that people in Chesterfield should be made aware of climate issues.

We made a willow Eiffel Tower and walked from Rykneld Square to the gardens below the Town Hall. We used the slogan "Crooked Spire to Eiffel Tower". There were speeches, bands and singing and we got some coverage in the Derbyshire Times. We set up the Facebook page.

The alliance was always an informal coming together of individuals and groups who were concerned about climate change including Transition Chesterfield, faith groups, trade unions and anti open cast mining and anti-fracking protesters.

Fracking soon became a main focus of attention and we supported the setting up of local anti-fracking groups including Eckington against Fracking and Clay Cross against Fracking. We raised awareness of fracking and other climate issues by leafleting and supporting local meetings. We also took part in the peaceful protests at Ineos public relations meetings and at Marriotts Drilling, the Clay Cross company who provide the rigs for fracking. We submitted objections to the drilling at Marsh Lane and gave evidence at the public inquiry.

We attracted new supporters by holding public meetings where we showed films and hosted talks and discussions including guest speakers Alan Simpson and Natalie Bennett.

We had a splendid banner, which came out for events such as May Day, The Climate Marches, anti-fracking demos, and actions at the Town Hall and County Offices where we urged our local authorities to declare a climate emergency. Unfortunately that banner got lost last year.

When a moratorium on fracking was called and other environmental groups such as the Derbyshire Climate Coalition and Extinction Rebellion Chesterfield and North East Derbyshire were formed a lot of the energy from the Climate Alliance was transferred to the new groups and we stopped having regular meetings. We continued to send out emails to the 100 or so people on our list and kept posting news on our Facebook page.

In 2020, despite Covid, there was a great deal of activity on climate including two discussions with Toby Perkins MP, a Just Mingle meeting of Links CVS on the topic of climate, the publication of the Chesterfield Climate Plan, the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill.

Some of our members have done a lot of work making connections between all the various local climate and environmental initiatives and working with national groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Green and Fair Recovery programme.

It was clear we needed a coordinating group and a member suggested reviving Chesterfield Climate Alliance. On 24 September 2020 we relaunched Chesterfield Climate Alliance at a meeting on Zoom. We have continued with monthly meetings since then. We have set up working groups in the areas of biodiversity, food, energy, transport, waste reduction. We welcomed Will Rolls the Climate Officer to our November meeting and continued our conversations with him in smaller groups and by email. We also meet with Sandra Pink from Links CVS.

We set out our principles and began to look at our processes. We also formed a comms group and produced a strategy for the borough as a whole.

In 2021 our attention turned to COP 26, the climate summit which should have been held in 2020 but was postponed because of Covid.

Our new banner at May Day 2021 - it's double-sided!