Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
They could play one of the best wicket keepers in the world and let Bairstow focus on his batting.
A really fit Stokes is like getting 3 players for one. But right now his bowling is so restricted Root is putting in more overs and his batting average is declining. He remains a good fielder if not quite as brilliant as he was. Does he need a rest? He is such a talisman for the team it is hard to imagine but maybe yes.
On a related note, I had my first visit to Lord's yesterday. I'm still buzzing. What a lovely, lovely experience. The finest sporting venue in the world? I can't think of a finer one. It was a different experience from Old Trafford. I love Old Trafford, but its principle virtue is proximity. Watching cricket at Old Trafford (or indeed at Trent Bridge, or, I expect, at Headingley or Edgbaston) is more fun, more raucous; the atmosphere at Lord's at 5.30pm is like that at Old Trafford at 11.10am. The excitement at Lord's rarely gets above an animated hubbub. But don't mistake that for people not enjoying themselves tremendously. I spoke to a lot of interesting people, and what came across in every conversation was a feeling of how fortunate everyone felt to be doing something so giddyingly pleasant.
And what a day's play. First of all, the fact we got a whole day's play. I had been monitoring the forecast all week; the difference between the BBC forecast (rain all day; might get a bit of play after 5) and the Met Office (probably dry from midday) was puzzling. In the even, it was better than both, but the BBC was way out. But the play; a long slog back from England being right out of it to roughly parity. Australia clearly attempted to stifle Bazball with astonishingly defensive fields with everyone out on the boundary; all England needed to do - which they largely did - was tootle along in singles and doubles. Granted the wickets were all down to pointless slogs, but, hey, most wickets are given away. I said at the start of the day that England would rattle through the five remaining wickets before lunch and that the middle order would still be in at the close, but I don't think I really believed it would happen.
The only thing I found to complain about was this. You can buy yourself a place on the Father Time wall. £300, it costs. Imagine spending £300 to commemorate for all time your inability to punctuate:
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
But neither have quite his parsimony in conceding runs, so the net benefit wouldn't be great.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
I don't think Curran is the answer at test match level. An attack containing "enforcer" Robinson and Curran (both on the very slow end of seam bowlers) plus an aging / slowing Broad, when that red cherry has lost a bit of shine and becoming soft, it will be far too easy for batsman.
I would like at least one really quick bowler. Archer, Wood. Woakes used to be pretty quick. Who else is there? My problem with Archer is that his spells are so short - batsmen know all they have to do is shut up shop and he'll soon be off. I'd prefer Wood at his best to Archer at his best. But I'd take anyone who could tickle the 90s for any sort of spell at all right now.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
But neither have quite his parsimony in conceding runs, so the net benefit wouldn't be great.
Something one hears quite a lot in Whitehall. That the PM is uninterested not just in the environment, but also in the quest to build the industries of the future. From US to EU to China, nations are investing in a green industrial revolution. PM seems uninterested in that too
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
This is another potential problem with EVs.
"Sheer weight of electric vehicles could sink our bridges Councils receive notice that EVs are 33 per cent heavier than petrol vehicles - and 1 in 20 bridges are ‘substandard’"
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The journey isn’t really comparable though, is it.
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
Would Woakes be in with a shout if Stokes wasn't the captain ?
Would add to the bowling.
Woakes in English conditions is always useful with bat & ball, but at same time is a bit of a backward step effectively saying we don't have anybody like him who is younger and potentially got upside of being effective both home and away.
Its also yet another fast-medium 85mph right arm seamer.
I'm sure Woakes used to get into the 90s. Am I imagining it?
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
They could play one of the best wicket keepers in the world and let Bairstow focus on his batting.
A really fit Stokes is like getting 3 players for one. But right now his bowling is so restricted Root is putting in more overs and his batting average is declining. He remains a good fielder if not quite as brilliant as he was. Does he need a rest? He is such a talisman for the team it is hard to imagine but maybe yes.
On a related note, I had my first visit to Lord's yesterday. I'm still buzzing. What a lovely, lovely experience. The finest sporting venue in the world? I can't think of a finer one. It was a different experience from Old Trafford. I love Old Trafford, but its principle virtue is proximity. Watching cricket at Old Trafford (or indeed at Trent Bridge, or, I expect, at Headingley or Edgbaston) is more fun, more raucous; the atmosphere at Lord's at 5.30pm is like that at Old Trafford at 11.10am. The excitement at Lord's rarely gets above an animated hubbub. But don't mistake that for people not enjoying themselves tremendously. I spoke to a lot of interesting people, and what came across in every conversation was a feeling of how fortunate everyone felt to be doing something so giddyingly pleasant.
And what a day's play. First of all, the fact we got a whole day's play. I had been monitoring the forecast all week; the difference between the BBC forecast (rain all day; might get a bit of play after 5) and the Met Office (probably dry from midday) was puzzling. In the even, it was better than both, but the BBC was way out. But the play; a long slog back from England being right out of it to roughly parity. Australia clearly attempted to stifle Bazball with astonishingly defensive fields with everyone out on the boundary; all England needed to do - which they largely did - was tootle along in singles and doubles. Granted the wickets were all down to pointless slogs, but, hey, most wickets are given away. I said at the start of the day that England would rattle through the five remaining wickets before lunch and that the middle order would still be in at the close, but I don't think I really believed it would happen.
Really glad you enjoyed your day. Personally, I prefer the Oval which has excellent facilities and if there is a poor viewing point in the entire ground I have yet to find it.
I am more interested in the politics of the policy than the actual policy. HY can quote as many polls as he likes - this is not a moral nor a workable policy and Tory voters are not as amoral as Braverman and HY would like.
Lutz has told the Tories their only remaining lever is go very negative. The 2023 version of Stop The Boats is a law more inhumane than the 2022 Stop The Boats law. So the 2024 edition will go totally tonto. And as we're already seeing, Tory voters have gone past the tipping point where they are no longer prepared to stomach these policies especially when told "these are your priorities"
We can expect the Tory vote to crater even lower than it is now.
We already have a particular sort of society - the one in which 30% of babies born here have a foreign born mother and where there is annual net migration of +500,000. The number of boat people is very small in comparison, and inevitably includes a high number of driven and motivated people.
The “foreign born mother” statistic can be misleading. If two UK citizens spend a short period of time abroad and have a child, who is then raised in the UK, that child is foreign born. There’s a lot of people in the UK who were born in Germany, but they’re not German: it’s just that there have been periods where lots of British people worked in Germany (often with the armed forces). For example, Boris Johnson is foreign (US) born, so he’ll add considerably to the foreign born father statistic!
These rules can create problems too if you're not careful. Two of my children are foreign born - to two British born parents (although one of the parents has two foreign born parents themselves - it's complicated). Now if one of my extremely British kids are themselves abroad when they have a child, if I understand the rules correctly their child won't necessarily have British citizenship. We will need to make sure they understand the rules to prevent some kind of horrific Windrush scenario befalling them. The rules are not really created for mobile people, which is ashame because people are increasingly mobile and this is largely a good thing. I would also add that I would guess a good proportion of the kids I know round here have at least one foreign born parent and they are all *really* English/London. People should be less worried. We have a very dominant and vibrant culture that absorbs most people inside of one generation with remarkable ease.
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
They could play one of the best wicket keepers in the world and let Bairstow focus on his batting.
A really fit Stokes is like getting 3 players for one. But right now his bowling is so restricted Root is putting in more overs and his batting average is declining. He remains a good fielder if not quite as brilliant as he was. Does he need a rest? He is such a talisman for the team it is hard to imagine but maybe yes.
On a related note, I had my first visit to Lord's yesterday. I'm still buzzing. What a lovely, lovely experience. The finest sporting venue in the world? I can't think of a finer one. It was a different experience from Old Trafford. I love Old Trafford, but its principle virtue is proximity. Watching cricket at Old Trafford (or indeed at Trent Bridge, or, I expect, at Headingley or Edgbaston) is more fun, more raucous; the atmosphere at Lord's at 5.30pm is like that at Old Trafford at 11.10am. The excitement at Lord's rarely gets above an animated hubbub. But don't mistake that for people not enjoying themselves tremendously. I spoke to a lot of interesting people, and what came across in every conversation was a feeling of how fortunate everyone felt to be doing something so giddyingly pleasant.
And what a day's play. First of all, the fact we got a whole day's play. I had been monitoring the forecast all week; the difference between the BBC forecast (rain all day; might get a bit of play after 5) and the Met Office (probably dry from midday) was puzzling. In the even, it was better than both, but the BBC was way out. But the play; a long slog back from England being right out of it to roughly parity. Australia clearly attempted to stifle Bazball with astonishingly defensive fields with everyone out on the boundary; all England needed to do - which they largely did - was tootle along in singles and doubles. Granted the wickets were all down to pointless slogs, but, hey, most wickets are given away. I said at the start of the day that England would rattle through the five remaining wickets before lunch and that the middle order would still be in at the close, but I don't think I really believed it would happen.
The only thing I found to complain about was this. You can buy yourself a place on the Father Time wall. £300, it costs. Imagine spending £300 to commemorate for all time your inability to punctuate:
Bad form of the MCC not to advise that the requested message was over the character limit. Now we'll never know what the Muirhead is
Although maybe it's the name for a family of Grocer's
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
But neither have quite his parsimony in conceding runs, so the net benefit wouldn't be great.
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
Would Woakes be in with a shout if Stokes wasn't the captain ?
Would add to the bowling.
Woakes in English conditions is always useful with bat & ball, but at same time is a bit of a backward step effectively saying we don't have anybody like him who is younger and potentially got upside of being effective both home and away.
Its also yet another fast-medium 85mph right arm seamer.
I'm sure Woakes used to get into the 90s. Am I imagining it?
I think his real effort ball can be high 80s maybe touch 90, but his stock is mid 80s. Also he is also getting on in age now and had a number of injuries.
Went to see Stewart Lee last night. He is on excellent form and I'm sure his humour would find fans among the PB demographic. I would heartily recommend getting a ticket to see him if you can.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
But neither have quite his parsimony in conceding runs, so the net benefit wouldn't be great.
Stokes economy is 3.3, Woakes 3.03, Curran 3.23
I think @Nigelb meant Jimmy’s parsimony, which remains ridiculously good.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
Do you really believe that?
And in any case: if you're fleeing, let's say Afghanistan and in the hands of people traffickers and middlemen - how do you even know about the Rwanda thing? And if you do, you'll probably just be told that it won't happen to most people (it won't), nor would it stop you potentially then leaving Rwanda for another go. It is not a deterrent.
Precisely. If months of hazardous and/or uncomfortable travel, living under polythene until you find a people trafficker to take several thousand $ off you and a highly risky boat trip at the end of it isn't a deterrent, a bit of Rwandising isn't going to put you off.
'Rwandising' won't put anyone off. A better than evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination will.
I'm not convinced that people who have already thrown themselves at the mercy of fate are going to be calculating the odds of being sent to Rwanda.
'I thought Destination Kigali was 2/1 against but now its 5/4 on we might as well head back to Murderrapeandtortureania.'
They haven't 'thrown themselves at the mercy of fate'. They've made a decision to come to the UK using a particular method in hopes of a particular outcome. I'm not making a moral judgement on that decision, but I'm also not going to patronise these people as helpless waifs and strays. You have a very peculiar idea of who these people are and their reasons for travelling to the UK.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
Do you really believe that?
And in any case: if you're fleeing, let's say Afghanistan and in the hands of people traffickers and middlemen - how do you even know about the Rwanda thing? And if you do, you'll probably just be told that it won't happen to most people (it won't), nor would it stop you potentially then leaving Rwanda for another go. It is not a deterrent.
Precisely. If months of hazardous and/or uncomfortable travel, living under polythene until you find a people trafficker to take several thousand $ off you and a highly risky boat trip at the end of it isn't a deterrent, a bit of Rwandising isn't going to put you off.
'Rwandising' won't put anyone off. A better than evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination will.
But that's the tell that this isn't a serious policy.
At the moment, even if all the other ducks were in a row, there's currently space for a couple of hundred British boat people in Rwanda. That would fill up faster than word would get out, and what happens then?
I've been in schools that have decided they need to reset behavioural norms, which often boils down to setting detentions for all the things the school has claimed it was setting detentions for all along.
When planning this, wise schools accept that they are going to need massive capacity for the first week or two. Sports halls potentially full of misbehaving children reflecting on their misdemeanours. After that, everything settles down again, but the initial massive capacity is essential.
Foolish schools say "we're going to give detentions for every naughty deed" but don't plan for the temporary surge. The result is that it becomes impossible to give all the promised detentions, the system collapses, and the school is often worse off than before.
If the government really wants to scare people into not crossing the Channel, they need to go big. Otherwise they're better off not trying. And a combination of the grimness of going big and the unwillingness of the government to spend the money means that they aren't going big.
I am not a defender of the Rwanda policy - I agree it is flawed in various areas. I'd imagine the numbers are scaleable though.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
That may be so (I think it's an exaggeration) and by all means encourage people to get fit, get cycling, etc. But "get on your bike" has a long and ignoble history of being wholly inappropriate for the issue it is used for.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
Do you really believe that?
And in any case: if you're fleeing, let's say Afghanistan and in the hands of people traffickers and middlemen - how do you even know about the Rwanda thing? And if you do, you'll probably just be told that it won't happen to most people (it won't), nor would it stop you potentially then leaving Rwanda for another go. It is not a deterrent.
Precisely. If months of hazardous and/or uncomfortable travel, living under polythene until you find a people trafficker to take several thousand $ off you and a highly risky boat trip at the end of it isn't a deterrent, a bit of Rwandising isn't going to put you off.
'Rwandising' won't put anyone off. A better than evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination will.
The Government has not proposed any plan involving anything approaching an evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination, so your comment seems moot.
Neither did Australia at first. Australia did a trial of transferring people, overcame the legal challenges, got the system up and running, then expanded it to all arrivals by boat. By the end of that, the boat journeys stopped and nobody has drowned in Australian waters due to coming across on a dodgy boat since 2012. Many lives have been saved via that policy, as tough as it may be.
The UK is still at the legal challenges stage. Doesn't mean that it can't be as successful in its goals, if rolled out, post-challenges.
The UK Government has not proposed a system like Australia's in terms of either the proportion of people sent elsewhere or, indeed, the proportion of boats intercepted. It is unclear whether such would ever be possible given the narrowness of the English channel versus the sea around Australia.
It is, sure, possible that the UK's approach could evolve towards something matching what Australia did. However, given the UK Government's complete failure to actually resource and carry out its existing policies on this matter, I don't see any reason to believe that they can (a) enact what they have proposed, and then (b) evolve that plan into something matching Australia's approach.
I suggest one should reward political parties for policies that will work, not for policies that won't work but are maybe a small step vaguely in a direction that might work.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
25% of trips in the Netherlands though [1]. In Amsterdam, almmost half commute by bike. We'll never get to that point, I doubt - more hills here. But a lot of people do a lot of short trips that are pretty flat. We should be able to do a lot better than the 2-3% (eyeballed from report) we do in the UK. It would, however, require serious investment in infrastructure.
Well Bairstow and Brook will need to put on plenty of runs. Has there ever been a sharper batting gap between No 7 Bairstow and No 8 (Broad) in test match history ?
8 is too high for Broad these days, that is for sure. I also fear this is finally looking a series too far for Jimmy. Sacrilege, I know. But replacing him with Woakes or Curran would help.
But neither have quite his parsimony in conceding runs, so the net benefit wouldn't be great.
Anderson would be fine on the right pitches, but England wanted pitches for Bazball - good batting tracks, in essence. Anderson is never going to get you out with pace, but his control and ability to vary the delivery work wonders.
Its hard to omit a player of his record, but the time comes to everyone.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
Do you really believe that?
And in any case: if you're fleeing, let's say Afghanistan and in the hands of people traffickers and middlemen - how do you even know about the Rwanda thing? And if you do, you'll probably just be told that it won't happen to most people (it won't), nor would it stop you potentially then leaving Rwanda for another go. It is not a deterrent.
Precisely. If months of hazardous and/or uncomfortable travel, living under polythene until you find a people trafficker to take several thousand $ off you and a highly risky boat trip at the end of it isn't a deterrent, a bit of Rwandising isn't going to put you off.
'Rwandising' won't put anyone off. A better than evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination will.
The Government has not proposed any plan involving anything approaching an evens chance that Rwanda will be your final destination, so your comment seems moot.
Neither did Australia at first. Australia did a trial of transferring people, overcame the legal challenges, got the system up and running, then expanded it to all arrivals by boat. By the end of that, the boat journeys stopped and nobody has drowned in Australian waters due to coming across on a dodgy boat since 2012. Many lives have been saved via that policy, as tough as it may be.
The UK is still at the legal challenges stage. Doesn't mean that it can't be as successful in its goals, if rolled out, post-challenges.
The UK Government has not proposed a system like Australia's in terms of either the proportion of people sent elsewhere or, indeed, the proportion of boats intercepted. It is unclear whether such would ever be possible given the narrowness of the English channel versus the sea around Australia.
It is, sure, possible that the UK's approach could evolve towards something matching what Australia did. However, given the UK Government's complete failure to actually resource and carry out its existing policies on this matter, I don't see any reason to believe that they can (a) enact what they have proposed, and then (b) evolve that plan into something matching Australia's approach.
I suggest one should reward political parties for policies that will work, not for policies that won't work but are maybe a small step vaguely in a direction that might work.
This is the point. The UK is manifestly and absolutely not going to start employing a policy of turnbacks. Can you imagine the media scrum for example as the flotilla sailed out to intercept its first boat.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
Something one hears quite a lot in Whitehall. That the PM is uninterested not just in the environment, but also in the quest to build the industries of the future. From US to EU to China, nations are investing in a green industrial revolution. PM seems uninterested in that too
What is Sunak interested in? What is his strategic goal with respect to the country, as opposed to his career? If he's just doing technocratic managerialism, there's no point in the job.
"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” - Sun Tzu
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
That may be so (I think it's an exaggeration) and by all means encourage people to get fit, get cycling, etc. But "get on your bike" has a long and ignoble history of being wholly inappropriate for the issue it is used for.
I blame Tebbit (unfairly, of course, given what he actually said)
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
Really? How many middle class German loss adjusters are queuing up on the beaches of Calais ready to come over here by cover of night in a small boat?
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
PB has done this many times over, but in brief weight management is complicated. Avoid anyone who says things like calories in/calories out - the human body doesn't work like that. Many studies show that if you consume more calories than you use, you do not gain anything like the expected amount of 'fat'. And similar for calorie restriction - losing weight is hard too.
I can recommend a podcast that explores a lot of diet/exercise/health myths - Maintenance Phase. If you can get past the annoying accents (American) there is a lot of good stuff digging into the 'evidence' behind such goodies as '10,000 steps', 'the French paradox' and 'The Obesity epidemic'.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
"Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does" - but there are far more short journeys than long ones. Something like 50% of trips are less than 2km (can't remember exactly the stat). There's a lot to go at there. If many of those can be shifted to other modes it also has the advantage that you significantly reduce congestion (which also reduces emissions.) I've used my bike most days in the past week. It's an easy habit to get into. I wouldn't cycle if I was doing a big shop, but so many of my trips are to buy one or two items from shops less than 2km away, or to go to the optician or the leisure centre or the post office. Quicker and easier to cycle than to drive, once you get into the habit, and have a bike and a rucksack in an accessible location (the latter needs a bit of thought and planning - cycling is rarely an attractive choice for a journey if you need to take 5 minutes extracting your bike from a shed at the bottom of your garden).
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
Really? How many middle class German loss adjusters are queuing up on the beaches of Calais ready to come over here by cover of night in a small boat?
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
Its not Farage-y because I believe in migration. I encourage it. I don't want people dying while doing the journey though. Germans funnily enough can afford a plane ticket or a safe ferry ticket to get here rather than travelling here on an inflatable dinghy. A far higher proportion of Germans than Ethiopians travel to the UK.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
I don't think it's quite that bad but yes people could be healthier. But a 20 minute walk per day is going to do a lot of good to someone who is sedentary and overweight.
A diet would be great but plenty of people can't be doing with diets so gentle encouragement there is probably the way forward also.
Telling all those people to go and buy a *google* Canyon Exceed CF SLX @ £4k just ain't going to work. And neither is telling them to go and buy a £300 bike (the alternative) plus kit, etc.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
It's not massively clear cut that EVs are always massively better for the environment, once you take into account issues like environmental costs of construction (which are greater for EVs) and particulate emissions (which are greater for EVs).
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
Universal free healthcare is as much curse as blessing.
Sub contracting individual well being to the state has led to too many bad habits.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
I don't think it's quite that bad but yes people could be healthier. But a 20 minute walk per day is going to do a lot of good to someone who is sedentary and overweight.
A diet would be great but plenty of people can't be doing with diets so gentle encouragement there is probably the way forward also.
Telling all those people to go and buy a *google* Canyon Exceed CF SLX @ £4k just ain't going to work. And neither is telling them to go and buy a £300 bike (the alternative) plus kit, etc.
Let's not try to cycle before we can walk.
Exactly, those sub-2 mile journeys are all within walking distance too.
But replacing sub-2 miles with a clean alternative isn't good enough for the environment. The environment needs all our journeys to be clean, and that can only be achieved by clean vehicles - not an intermittent cycle ride to make you feel you're doing your bit for the planet while you're driving your diesel down the M6.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
Being overweight is mostly diet, but it's a little bit exercise. More physical activity will help with obesity. OLB described us as "a country of decrepit fat people", so not enough physical activity is also related to the "decrepit" bit!
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
That may be so (I think it's an exaggeration) and by all means encourage people to get fit, get cycling, etc. But "get on your bike" has a long and ignoble history of being wholly inappropriate for the issue it is used for.
I blame Tebbit (unfairly, of course, given what he actually said)
I have to say that despite being a lefty I have some sympathy for the sentiment Tebbit was expressing there. (Certainly more than for his cricket test comment, which I think was nonsense). The reality is that in this world nobody owes you a living, people need to take responsibility for themselves including for their own health. But - an important follow up point - government should support people to make good choices, not simply blame them for making bad ones. That means making it easier to cycle than to drive, making it easier to eat healthy food than junk food, making sure people have leisure time and facilities to exercise, making sure people have knowledge and skills to empower themselves. The correct balance of rights and responsibilities in other words.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
There is a connection with the thread header.
Environmental change is going to be a major drive for refugees this century as large parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa become less habitable and descend into bitter conflict over dwindling resources. It is an interconnected world.
We cannot stop all the conflicts in the world* but we should aim for a more just and stable world if we want to keep migration to a minimum.
*the current conflict in Sudan, a former part of our Empire with long connection to the UK, has created a million refugees in a few months. As far as I can tell it is not an ideological conflict so much as two rival kleptocrat factions fighting for the ability to loot the place. Its hard to see how we could stop it, but should we not take refugees from there?
We do take refugees from Sudan.
At the moment, but the government policy is to ban them.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
It is very noticeable that many more are obese and as someone who is actively losing weight it is very difficult to avoid all the sweet things on offer, but also restaurant portions seem to me to be far too generous
I am following a strict soup/salad and fruit diet and it is very effective and, maybe due to my age, I find many plates rather off putting and amazed at how most plates are left empty . When we were in the Isle of Man recently we sat outside at a tearoom that served the most wonderful fruit scone with strawberries and jam and cream, indeed it was a meal in itself
A very obsese woman and her partner sat at the table next to us with these scones, but waited until they were served the most enormous plate of ham and cheese toastie with chips each, with a third one as well
Unbelievable they consumed the lot with not a crumb left in sight
I really do not know how you change this overeating
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
Universal free healthcare is as much curse as blessing.
Sub contracting individual well being to the state has led to too many bad habits.
I don't think free medical treatment twenty years down the road when bad choices have their consequence is front and centre when people make bad lifestyle choices. It's more to do with a lack of knowledge and resources and the immediate incentives they face.
Something one hears quite a lot in Whitehall. That the PM is uninterested not just in the environment, but also in the quest to build the industries of the future. From US to EU to China, nations are investing in a green industrial revolution. PM seems uninterested in that too
What is Sunak interested in? What is his strategic goal with respect to the country, as opposed to his career? If he's just doing technocratic managerialism, there's no point in the job.
"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” - Sun Tzu
He is utterly uninspiring, in a tiggerish way.
Which Tory members knew, of course. Why they chose Liz over him.
Sadly, AFAICS he seemed relatively competent to MPs - but he's failing on his own measures.
I've seen lots of tiggerish types before, in consulting; they launch big change programmes, and set up attractive dashboards upon which to measure their programmes. They expect stakeholders to understand when they fail to meet their own targets. They are surprised when they're replaced with effective, get the job done types.
If there were a get the job done type waiting in the wings of the Tory party, he would be toast....
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
That may be so (I think it's an exaggeration) and by all means encourage people to get fit, get cycling, etc. But "get on your bike" has a long and ignoble history of being wholly inappropriate for the issue it is used for.
I blame Tebbit (unfairly, of course, given what he actually said)
I have to say that despite being a lefty I have some sympathy for the sentiment Tebbit was expressing there. (Certainly more than for his cricket test comment, which I think was nonsense). The reality is that in this world nobody owes you a living, people need to take responsibility for themselves including for their own health. But - an important follow up point - government should support people to make good choices, not simply blame them for making bad ones. That means making it easier to cycle than to drive, making it easier to eat healthy food than junk food, making sure people have leisure time and facilities to exercise, making sure people have knowledge and skills to empower themselves. The correct balance of rights and responsibilities in other words.
Ask London motorists what they think of the Cycle Superhighways. But don't ask them heading east on the Embankment as you would be putting yourself in danger as they would get out of their stationary car and tell you!
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
It is very noticeable that many more are obese and as someone who is actively losing weight it is very difficult to avoid all the sweet things on offer, but also restaurant portions seem to me to be far too generous
I am following a strict soup/salad and fruit diet and it is very effective and, maybe due to my age, I find many plates rather off putting and amazed at how most plates are left empty . When we were in the Isle of Man recently we sat outside at a tearoom that served the most wonderful fruit scone with strawberries and jam and cream, indeed it was a meal in itself
A very obsese woman and her partner sat at the table next to us with these scones, but waited until they were served the most enormous plate of ham and cheese toastie with chips each, with a third one as well
Unbelievable they consumed the lot with not a crumb left in sight
I really do not know how you change this overeating
That does sound awful but is also making me feel hungry! Good luck with your efforts BigG.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
It's not massively clear cut that EVs are always massively better for the environment, once you take into account issues like environmental costs of construction (which are greater for EVs) and particulate emissions (which are greater for EVs).
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
It is massively clear cut that EVs are massively better for the environment. Particulate emissions are far lower for EVs.
As we reach net zero we need clean construction costs too, as well as clean energy costs.
Occasional use of a bicycle then getting into your diesel to make the long journeys emits massively more CO2 and particulates than replacing your vehicle with an EV and using it as you did before.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
That may be so (I think it's an exaggeration) and by all means encourage people to get fit, get cycling, etc. But "get on your bike" has a long and ignoble history of being wholly inappropriate for the issue it is used for.
I blame Tebbit (unfairly, of course, given what he actually said)
I have to say that despite being a lefty I have some sympathy for the sentiment Tebbit was expressing there. (Certainly more than for his cricket test comment, which I think was nonsense). The reality is that in this world nobody owes you a living, people need to take responsibility for themselves including for their own health. But - an important follow up point - government should support people to make good choices, not simply blame them for making bad ones. That means making it easier to cycle than to drive, making it easier to eat healthy food than junk food, making sure people have leisure time and facilities to exercise, making sure people have knowledge and skills to empower themselves. The correct balance of rights and responsibilities in other words.
Ask London motorists what they think of the Cycle Superhighways. But don't ask them heading east on the Embankment as you would be putting yourself in danger as they would get out of their stationary car and tell you!
London has an embarrassment of public transport and cycling options available. Anyone who commutes into work in London by car is nuts.
I'm not sure the Winviz predictor took full account of the remainder of the English batting lineup. However Australia are now 1 down for the third innings too.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
There is a connection with the thread header.
Environmental change is going to be a major drive for refugees this century as large parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa become less habitable and descend into bitter conflict over dwindling resources. It is an interconnected world.
We cannot stop all the conflicts in the world* but we should aim for a more just and stable world if we want to keep migration to a minimum.
*the current conflict in Sudan, a former part of our Empire with long connection to the UK, has created a million refugees in a few months. As far as I can tell it is not an ideological conflict so much as two rival kleptocrat factions fighting for the ability to loot the place. Its hard to see how we could stop it, but should we not take refugees from there?
We do take refugees from Sudan.
At the moment, but the government policy is to ban them.
Host them in a refugee camp mear Sudan. We can not take in millions of refugees and we can help more of them that way.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
My mobility has worsened this last year with several balance issues which rules out my bike
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
It's not massively clear cut that EVs are always massively better for the environment, once you take into account issues like environmental costs of construction (which are greater for EVs) and particulate emissions (which are greater for EVs).
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
It is massively clear cut that EVs are massively better for the environment. Particulate emissions are far lower for EVs.
As we reach net zero we need clean construction costs too, as well as clean energy costs.
Occasional use of a bicycle then getting into your diesel to make the long journeys emits massively more CO2 and particulates than replacing your vehicle with an EV and using it as you did before.
I don't think that's right Bart. My understanding is that particulate emissions (which come from tire and brake matter - not engines) are higher for EVs because EVs are heavier. Though a quick Google suggests there is at least a grey area there. But I don't see how particulates could be lower.
NOx emissions are clearly lower for EVs, of course. I don't think there is much doubt there.
The environmental cost of manufacturing EVs is higher - what isn't yet clear is how long EVs last. It could be that the environmental cost is offset by longer-lasting vehicles. Or it could be that there is an environmental cost in replacement of batteries.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
God I hate this. There is a huge number of people who are simply never going to get on a bike. Take a trip to your local high street and look at the people there. How many have come from two miles away and would get on a bike. Not too many. Are they shopping, for example. No one's going on a bike to go shopping that's for sure. Plus are they older, carrying some sort of an injury, overweight, unfit, disabled, etc.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
This is true but causation goes the other way too. We are a country of decrepit fat people in part because we can't be arsed to cycle or indeed take any form of exercise.
We are a country of fat people because we eat too much and eat unhealthy, sugary food.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
The two go together. Exercise is good for keeping in shape, but it's good for staying healthy more broadly (there is more to bring healthy than BMI). The health situation in this country right now is disastrous - I would argue that it is perhaps the biggest threat we face as a country. The NHS will collapse under the weight (no pun intended) of it. People are too unfit to work. We make it so hard to be healthy and do easy to be unhealthy. It's complete madness.
It is very noticeable that many more are obese and as someone who is actively losing weight it is very difficult to avoid all the sweet things on offer, but also restaurant portions seem to me to be far too generous
I am following a strict soup/salad and fruit diet and it is very effective and, maybe due to my age, I find many plates rather off putting and amazed at how most plates are left empty . When we were in the Isle of Man recently we sat outside at a tearoom that served the most wonderful fruit scone with strawberries and jam and cream, indeed it was a meal in itself
A very obsese woman and her partner sat at the table next to us with these scones, but waited until they were served the most enormous plate of ham and cheese toastie with chips each, with a third one as well
Unbelievable they consumed the lot with not a crumb left in sight
I really do not know how you change this overeating
That does sound awful but is also making me feel hungry! Good luck with your efforts BigG.
Thank you
I have been quite disiciplined in the past not least when I stopped smoking 20 years ago (it was really difficult but I cannot stand cigarette smoke now)
The present situation is very unfair IMO. It penalises not particularly well-off people who are careful with their money. I wouldn't have a problem with the very wealthy contributing more.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
My mobility has worsened this last year with several balance issues which rules out my bike
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
I’ve been told to use a Zimmer frame in the house and a wheelchair outside. If I fall and damage my neck again I’ll probably be paralysed. Which isn’t a nice prospect.
Something one hears quite a lot in Whitehall. That the PM is uninterested not just in the environment, but also in the quest to build the industries of the future. From US to EU to China, nations are investing in a green industrial revolution. PM seems uninterested in that too
What is Sunak interested in? What is his strategic goal with respect to the country, as opposed to his career? If he's just doing technocratic managerialism, there's no point in the job.
"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” - Sun Tzu
He is utterly uninspiring, in a tiggerish way.
Which Tory members knew, of course. Why they chose Liz over him.
Sadly, AFAICS he seemed relatively competent to MPs - but he's failing on his own measures.
I've seen lots of tiggerish types before, in consulting; they launch big change programmes, and set up attractive dashboards upon which to measure their programmes. They expect stakeholders to understand when they fail to meet their own targets. They are surprised when they're replaced with effective, get the job done types.
If there were a get the job done type waiting in the wings of the Tory party, he would be toast....
The entire point of Sunak was that he was unpleasant medicine but vital to keep the markets onside and borrowing costs down. He hasn't. 'The grown ups' are back in the room and doing demonstrably worse than 'the kids' did.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
It's not massively clear cut that EVs are always massively better for the environment, once you take into account issues like environmental costs of construction (which are greater for EVs) and particulate emissions (which are greater for EVs).
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
It is massively clear cut that EVs are massively better for the environment. Particulate emissions are far lower for EVs.
As we reach net zero we need clean construction costs too, as well as clean energy costs.
Occasional use of a bicycle then getting into your diesel to make the long journeys emits massively more CO2 and particulates than replacing your vehicle with an EV and using it as you did before.
I don't think that's right Bart. My understanding is that particulate emissions (which come from tire and brake matter - not engines) are higher for EVs because EVs are heavier. Though a quick Google suggests there is at least a grey area there. But I don't see how particulates could be lower.
NOx emissions are clearly lower for EVs, of course. I don't think there is much doubt there.
The environmental cost of manufacturing EVs is higher - what isn't yet clear is how long EVs last. It could be that the environmental cost is offset by longer-lasting vehicles. Or it could be that there is an environmental cost in replacement of batteries.
There's also particulate emissions from the ICE (although modern systems reduce those). Re braking, regenerative braking in EVs reduces the particulate emissions from brake pads etc. The interesting part is the tyres and non-regenerative braking - EVs heavier, so takes more braking to stop them.
I've not seen an overall analysis that I have great confidence in - in most cases the authors seem to know the answer they want before they start.
But all that is to ignore the other, non-particulate emissions from combustion which are - at the car - zero for EVs (possible emissions at other locations depending on the grid power mix).
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
My mobility has worsened this last year with several balance issues which rules out my bike
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
I’ve been told to use a Zimmer frame in the house and a wheelchair outside. If I fall and damage my neck again I’ll probably be paralysed. Which isn’t a nice prospect.
Best of luck and wishes - take care and do not take chances
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
What anti-cycling stance? I have my own bike, I'm teaching my kids to ride theirs, and I have no qualms with people riding a bike.
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Replacing car journeys with bicycle journeys or public transport is self-evidently good for the environment. Of course not all car journeys can be replaced, and then EVs are a good solution.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
Its not remotely self-evident.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment. Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
It's not massively clear cut that EVs are always massively better for the environment, once you take into account issues like environmental costs of construction (which are greater for EVs) and particulate emissions (which are greater for EVs).
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
It is massively clear cut that EVs are massively better for the environment. Particulate emissions are far lower for EVs.
As we reach net zero we need clean construction costs too, as well as clean energy costs.
Occasional use of a bicycle then getting into your diesel to make the long journeys emits massively more CO2 and particulates than replacing your vehicle with an EV and using it as you did before.
I don't think that's right Bart. My understanding is that particulate emissions (which come from tire and brake matter - not engines) are higher for EVs because EVs are heavier. Though a quick Google suggests there is at least a grey area there. But I don't see how particulates could be lower.
NOx emissions are clearly lower for EVs, of course. I don't think there is much doubt there.
The environmental cost of manufacturing EVs is higher - what isn't yet clear is how long EVs last. It could be that the environmental cost is offset by longer-lasting vehicles. Or it could be that there is an environmental cost in replacement of batteries.
Particulate emissions being higher for EVs is a myth spread by those who are anti-EV.
If you want to save the environment from climate change then we need to eliminate all petrol and diesel journeys. Not just replace a few that are in walking distance anyway with a bike ride instead.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
My mobility has worsened this last year with several balance issues which rules out my bike
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
I’ve been told to use a Zimmer frame in the house and a wheelchair outside. If I fall and damage my neck again I’ll probably be paralysed. Which isn’t a nice prospect.
As well as the WTF button - which has its merits in the current circs - we need a commiserations button ... but nice to see you posting.
Comments
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpgVzeZmGF4
Clifnotes, his stats aren't that good (and he is expensive). Whereas Boland's, especially in England, are.
I would still pick him, as left arm, can bowl spells of real pace and hostility. And the other two right armers are top class anyway.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/most-consecutive-matches-for-a-team-283693
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
My problem with Archer is that his spells are so short - batsmen know all they have to do is shut up shop and he'll soon be off. I'd prefer Wood at his best to Archer at his best. But I'd take anyone who could tickle the 90s for any sort of spell at all right now.
That the PM is uninterested not just in the environment, but also in the quest to build the industries of the future.
From US to EU to China, nations are investing in a green industrial revolution.
PM seems uninterested in that too
https://twitter.com/edconwaysky/status/1674696188698804224?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg
"Sheer weight of electric vehicles could sink our bridges
Councils receive notice that EVs are 33 per cent heavier than petrol vehicles - and 1 in 20 bridges are ‘substandard’"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/07/electric-vehicles-33-per-cent-heavier-bridges-collapse/
I would also add that I would guess a good proportion of the kids I know round here have at least one foreign born parent and they are all *really* English/London. People should be less worried. We have a very dominant and vibrant culture that absorbs most people inside of one generation with remarkable ease.
Although maybe it's the name for a family of Grocer's
But bicycles have the square root of sod all to do with dealing with climate change.
In order to reach net zero emissions, reducing car journeys by replacing a tiny fraction of car journeys with cycling does absolutely nothing. It is fiddling while the planet burns.
In order to reach net zero emissions, having clean car journeys is the only valid solution.
Ride a bike because its good to ride a bike. Not for the environment. It has nothing to do with the environment.
Clearly has a weakness with short & quick stuff tbh - even before he got out his shots were mince.
Then where do you get your bike. And lock. And where do you put it. And then all the kit. And then it starts to rain.
And so on.
Cycling is fantastic but only ever for a (small I would say, perhaps very small) subset of the population.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
Cycling is fun and healthy but being overweight is diet not exercise.
It is, sure, possible that the UK's approach could evolve towards something matching what Australia did. However, given the UK Government's complete failure to actually resource and carry out its existing policies on this matter, I don't see any reason to believe that they can (a) enact what they have proposed, and then (b) evolve that plan into something matching Australia's approach.
I suggest one should reward political parties for policies that will work, not for policies that won't work but are maybe a small step vaguely in a direction that might work.
FWIW, we have 3 cars in our household: My old petrol city car, which I've kept for teaching the kids to drive, my Leaf for local use where public transport isn't an option, and the missus's older diesel for long distances. That hardly makes me "hysterically anti-car". But I use a bike as much as possible for shorter journeys.
[1] https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/reports/2018/04/01/cycling-facts-2018/Cycling+facts+2018.pdf
Its hard to omit a player of his record, but the time comes to everyone.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
How is replacing clean car journeys good for the environment?
If you replace only a small number of dirty car journeys with a clean alternative, that is not good enough for the planet. All dirty car journeys have to be replaced with a clean alternative, and only EVs achieve that.
Using a diesel for long journeys and a bicycle for short ones is terrible for the environment.
Using an EV for car journeys is far, far better for the environment.
Use a bicycle because you want to use a bicycle, not for the environment.
"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” - Sun Tzu
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
I can recommend a podcast that explores a lot of diet/exercise/health myths - Maintenance Phase. If you can get past the annoying accents (American) there is a lot of good stuff digging into the 'evidence' behind such goodies as '10,000 steps', 'the French paradox' and 'The Obesity epidemic'.
https://maintenancephase.com/
In poor countries, emigration tends to rise along with development. Countries that have sustainably grown from low income (like Mali or Afghanistan) to upper middle income (like Colombia or Turkey) have seen their emigration rate, on average, almost triple.
https://voxdev.org/topic/labour-markets-migration/how-economic-development-shapes-emigration
A diet would be great but plenty of people can't be doing with diets so gentle encouragement there is probably the way forward also.
Telling all those people to go and buy a *google* Canyon Exceed CF SLX @ £4k just ain't going to work. And neither is telling them to go and buy a £300 bike (the alternative) plus kit, etc.
Let's not try to cycle before we can walk.
I think small, low range EVs are probably quite a positive, environmentally, on balance. But with large EVs like Teslas the calculus looks a lot more marginal.
https://www.ft.com/content/26dd530b-1e33-488d-9619-e53e6f0b6262?emailId=3fea4d8a-74d0-40e8-b5a8-9f92fb58d270&segmentId=3d08be62-315f-7330-5bbd-af33dc531acb
Sub contracting individual well being to the state has led to too many bad habits.
But replacing sub-2 miles with a clean alternative isn't good enough for the environment. The environment needs all our journeys to be clean, and that can only be achieved by clean vehicles - not an intermittent cycle ride to make you feel you're doing your bit for the planet while you're driving your diesel down the M6.
I am following a strict soup/salad and fruit diet and it is very effective and, maybe due to my age, I find many plates rather off putting and amazed at how most plates are left empty
.
When we were in the Isle of Man recently we sat outside at a tearoom that served the most wonderful fruit scone with strawberries and jam and cream, indeed it was a meal in itself
A very obsese woman and her partner sat at the table next to us with these scones, but waited until they were served the most enormous plate of ham and cheese toastie with chips each, with a third one as well
Unbelievable they consumed the lot with not a crumb left in sight
I really do not know how you change this overeating
Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
Which Tory members knew, of course. Why they chose Liz over him.
Sadly, AFAICS he seemed relatively competent to MPs - but he's failing on his own measures.
I've seen lots of tiggerish types before, in consulting; they launch big change programmes, and set up attractive dashboards upon which to measure their programmes. They expect stakeholders to understand when they fail to meet their own targets. They are surprised when they're replaced with effective, get the job done types.
If there were a get the job done type waiting in the wings of the Tory party, he would be toast....
Good luck with your efforts BigG.
As we reach net zero we need clean construction costs too, as well as clean energy costs.
Occasional use of a bicycle then getting into your diesel to make the long journeys emits massively more CO2 and particulates than replacing your vehicle with an EV and using it as you did before.
https://apnews.com/article/psg-galtier-soccer-racism-47b9ec13af41e4840ccf867f4ca30951
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
Without that huge problems remain .
NOx emissions are clearly lower for EVs, of course. I don't think there is much doubt there.
The environmental cost of manufacturing EVs is higher - what isn't yet clear is how long EVs last. It could be that the environmental cost is offset by longer-lasting vehicles. Or it could be that there is an environmental cost in replacement of batteries.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/cricket/test-matches/england-v-australia-betting-32425691
I have been quite disiciplined in the past not least when I stopped smoking 20 years ago (it was really difficult but I cannot stand cigarette smoke now)
Which isn’t a nice prospect.
I've not seen an overall analysis that I have great confidence in - in most cases the authors seem to know the answer they want before they start.
But all that is to ignore the other, non-particulate emissions from combustion which are - at the car - zero for EVs (possible emissions at other locations depending on the grid power mix).
https://www.ft.com/content/1ca945fd-dbc9-400f-a753-a1653c235e91
"German inflation surges more than expected to 6.8%"
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/26/again-electric-cars-do-not-emit-more-particulate-matter-than-gasoline-cars/
If you want to save the environment from climate change then we need to eliminate all petrol and diesel journeys. Not just replace a few that are in walking distance anyway with a bike ride instead.
(There is tension though - when you look at Spain's figure. But we're doing worse with the BoE only having the UK to worry about)