World Environment Day 2020

That this House celebrates World Environment Day on 5 June 2020; notes that it is time to recognise the nature emergency; calls for the UK to become carbon negative not neutral; notes that young people, given that they will have to carry the main burden, should be involved in the decision-making process for achieving that goal; calls for a Young Citizens’ Assembly to be formed to make this a reality; acknowledges the part that biodiversity catastrophe plays in pandemics; recognises that to build resilience there needs to be talk about habitat as well as carbon; calls on the Government to implement green bailouts such as rescuing the car industry by incentivising electric vehicle purchases; further calls for a ban on new fossil fuel cars by 2030, taking such cars off the road completely by 2045, alongside the introduction of a green scrappage scheme to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles; further recognises that many people may be reluctant to use public transport after the covid-19 outbreak and that further encouragement for the use of electric vehicles will be needed; and calls on the Government to improve the use of subsidies for buyers of electric vehicles, bring in stricter regulation of Vehicle Excise Duty and company car taxation, invest in charging points and provide direct help to car companies.