An 11-year-old boy, Jude Walker from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, is to pass through Mansfield on Sunday, 25th July, on a 200-mile walk from his home to Westminster to raise awareness about the need to implement a carbon tax.

The youth activist has spent recent weeks undergoing ten-mile training walks and sending letters to dozens of MPs whose constituencies he plans to walk through on the ambitious challenge.

Two MPs have agreed to join him on the walk when he passes through their constituencies – Holly Lynch, the Labour representative for Halifax, and Milton Keynes Conservative MP Ben Everitt.

A carbon tax would charge companies based on the amount of CO₂ or other greenhouse gases emitted – with more charged for the more they emit. It could help make it profitable for companies to switch to green or renewable alternatives. It could also provide the government with funding to put towards climate change mitigation measures – for example, tree planting and carbon capture technologies  – as well as cushioning households from the costs of the transition to net zero.

A petition for the tax was launched in February by the Zero Carbon Campaign and has already garnered more than 33,000 signatures.

Jude said: “Part of my aim is to raise awareness for the Zero Carbon Campaign’s carbon tax petition. I kept reading IPCC reports, got increasingly concerned about climate change and thought about what I could do to make a difference. One day I read ‘This Is Not A Drill’, in it they said that it doesn’t matter what people do in the provinces, only in the capital city, where all the big businesses are based. And so, the idea struck me, what if rather than doing something in London I could walk to London.”

Jude is asking people and politicians to support his walk by signing the Zero Carbon Campaign’s petition to introduce charges on carbon emissions.

You can keep up to date with Jude’s journey via his Twitter, Facebook and Instagram channels.