Professor Barry McMullin:

I wish to express my appreciation for the opportunity and the kind words. The committee members' engagement both yesterday and today and from previous sessions has been amazing. It sends a signal. The signal is not quite getting through yet, but all these things will mutually reinforce one another.

Covid has masked this challenge. Covid has so dominated public discourse for the past two years that it has been very difficult to carve out the space for public discussion of other things. Fingers crossed, however, that space will open up over the coming short months. The debate on the sectoral emissions ceilings, on the one hand, will be technical but, on the other, will affect many people's lives in very real ways, regardless of whether the budgets, as proposed by the council, or the further reductions that some of us have advocated today are taken. Either way, in no way do I counsel delay on any of this. Members should get on with it, come to their conclusions, adopt budgets and move on to the sectoral emissions ceilings. We need much more action on facilitating citizens all over the country to engage with these discussions to understand that they are going on, to understand the implications they have for them and, particularly, to engage and give the space to younger people - from my perspective, that means anyone under 40, incidentally - to have their voices heard and to negotiate this very difficult and challenging future with solidarity, community and collaboration rather than all the other possibilities, which would be hugely damaging to everybody.