Campaigners have urged local politicians to support a bill in Parliament committing the UK to achieve key climate and nature targets.

Councillor Bridget Petty (Backwell, Green) has urged North Somerset Council to show its support for the Climate and Nature Bill, after joining with activists from XR, Greenpeace, and Nailsea Litter Pickers to call on local MP Sadik Al-Hassan to vote for the legislation.

She said: “This is part of a national Zero Hour Campaign. We call on the government to take the climate emergency seriously. Each year seems to set a new record as the hottest year. And we now seem to be beyond the UN and international communities Red Line of 1.5 degree increase in core temperatures.

“We can no longer sit on our hands and do nothing, hoping that this issue will go away. We need to do something not just for us, but for our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. So we call on our and all MPs to answer the call to save us. And to make a real difference to the world we live in.”

First tabled in 2020 by Green MP Caroline Lucas, the bill was tabled in the current parliament by Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswold Roz Savage. It would require the UK to achieve climate and nature targets and set up a Climate and Nature Assembly to advise the government on creating a strategy to do so.

Addressing the council executive at a full meeting of North Somerset Council on January 14, Ms Petty said: “Please could you write to support this campaign and copy in our local MPs, and place our support of it on the council website because this is all in line with our current work regarding the climate emergency and our response to the nature emergency.”

The council’s executive member for climate, waste, and sustainability Annemieke Waite (Winford, also Green) said: “I am very much in favour of this and I would very much like to be able to sign this on behalf of the council.

“The CAN Bill as it is sometimes called is something that has been spoken about for quite a long time and it has cross party support in Westminster as well. It’s something that individuals can also join and I supported it some time ago.”

“I am very much in favour of this and I would very much like to be able to sign this on behalf of the council assuming others don’t have a problem with this.”

Local man Ben Moss said: “I travelled to Nailsea on the morning of Saturday, January 4, to demonstrate that my MP Sadik Al-Hassan needs to vote for the Climate and Nature act. The Bill is a truly cross-party piece of legislation, and would work definitively to ensure we are meeting our commitments and responsibilities to the interdependent climate and nature crises.

“Until we have this in place we will continue to fall short of our commitments as future generations burden the cost of successive and ongoing government failures.”