Richard Knight

Parliamentary candidate for East Hampshire

I was born in Singapore to British parents and spent my childhood in Greece and Switzerland with a four-year period at boarding school in the
UK.

I studied architecture at university in London. After I qualified, I changed tack and have been creating custom software for specialised businesses. I now focus on businesses working on handling the climate crisis.

I am a father to a daughter (12) and a son (8); my wife died of cancer in
2023. I first stood as the Green Party Candidate for East Hampshire at the 2017 elections.

On the 8th May, The Guardian reported a survey from leading climate scientists predicting that global temperatures will break through the 1.5°C target for this century, likely reaching between 2.5°C and 3°C. We’re already seeing the impacts through forest fires, floods, rising sea levels, and extreme weather. The consequences are dire. Working on this should be our main focus in all that we do next.

The UK has an oversized influence on world opinion and what we do matters. It matters not only to the UK but also in terms of what other governments feel empowered to do. Our domestic failure to take the Climate Crisis seriously gives permission to others to follow our poor example.

We are told that the government is working hard on the issue but that other priorities are more pressing. If that was true, then we would not have multiple crisis’s affecting our lives. These include the state of the NHS, social services, schools, the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, the depletion of the natural environment and immigration. All of these are starved of the essential funds needed. At the same time we see a continued failure to ensure that the tax burden is shared by everyone who make profits from doing business in the UK.

We have had years of failure in leadership and vision – from both the leading parties. We know the solutions, but little to no action has been taken to meet the challenges we face. Instead of being world leaders for good we are world leaders in delay, backtracking and u-turns.

I feel we are in the last years of being able to solve or at least mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis for the world and the consequential effects it will have in the UK. What we need is massive focus and action. We know that it will cost us but we also know that the cost of inaction will be counted in lives. I believe the Green Party has the vision and the policies needed to solve the issues we face.

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