The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
It would certainly be great to see Mali, and other desperately poor countries become like Germany, but it would require a radical transformation in outlook, on the part of their ruling classes.
Mali is basically Western Europe 1,000 years ago, with guns and better technology.
South Korea and Mali had very similar gdp per capita in 1950. South Korea is now broadly close to the UK.
Five more years under the Tories and the UK will have a similar GDP to Mali.
Five years under Labour and Mali will look like a well run balanced economy.
Indeed, already almost back to Trussian levels of UK Gilt Yields today. I suspect it will take Labour/LDs a while to return us to a first world economy.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
The Norfolk Broads will become the Norfolk Bay.
That should suit them, don't a lot of them have webbed fingers already?
We've been on holiday in North Norfolk this week. Nice but... it does feel a little bit like the land that time forgot. And I live in Dorset!
That is a massive fightback from Team Sunak. Crossover in a fortnight!
After adding the latest Savanta to the EMA, the trend is as follows:
It gives the Tories 108 seats and puts the Lib Dems in third place ahead of SNP.
Extrapolating the trend (for fun) puts Labour on 50% and the Tories on 20% . The Tories have 11 seats! The lib Dems are the official opposition ahead of the SNP with the Tories in 4th place.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
The Norfolk Broads will become the Norfolk Bay.
That should suit them, don't a lot of them have webbed fingers already?
We've been on holiday in North Norfolk this week. Nice but... it does feel a little bit like the land that time forgot. And I live in Dorset!
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
Projected vs actual sea level rise in 1990.
I know it's not easy to measure - but NASA is good at this stuff so it's as close to a ground truth source as you'll find.
That is a massive fightback from Team Sunak. Crossover in a fortnight!
After adding the latest Savanta to the EMA, the trend is as follows:
It gives the Tories 108 seats and puts the Lib Dems in third place ahead of SNP.
Extrapolating the trend (for fun) puts Labour on 50% and the Tories on 20% . The Tories have 11 seats! The lib Dems are the official opposition ahead of the SNP with the Tories in 4th place.
This is PB. We only accept the most recent decent Conservative poll.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
I think that is an important insight.
Human beings follow the easiest path, so it is partly about making the desirable easier - by whatever criteria are chosen.
The issue is far less tractable in North America, where the thing has been set up to make it impossible not to have a private vehicle.
eg Zoning Law that prevents shops, restaurants, schools and businesses being set up in housing areas, whilst making the housing area uniform largish plots for detached dwellings that means it is not dense enough to support public transport, and too expensive for many types of people - which then drives societal divisions.
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
As I implied before, the problem is that many British people already have a problem affording somewhere to live. The fact that a small number of people can afford to buy places for refugees is irrelevant to that problem.
I was simply responding to Leon's claim that no lefty PBer would ever actually do anything to help refugees by eg providing them with somewhere to live. I sympathise with those who can't find somewhere affordable to live, but like you I think the fact that I've bought a flat for a refugee family to live in is pretty much irrelevant to that problem. I've tried to do my bit by voting for politicians like Sadiq Khan who have built large amounts of social housing. There is plenty more housing that can be built near me, eg right up the Old Kent Road if the government will fund the transport infrastructure to make it happen. Unlike in the Tory shires Labour voting Londoners are mostly not nimbyists and would be happy to see more housing built.
That is a massive fightback from Team Sunak. Crossover in a fortnight!
After adding the latest Savanta to the EMA, the trend is as follows:
It gives the Tories 108 seats and puts the Lib Dems in third place ahead of SNP.
Extrapolating the trend (for fun) puts Labour on 50% and the Tories on 20% . The Tories have 11 seats! The lib Dems are the official opposition ahead of the SNP with the Tories in 4th place.
It really, really, really could happen Yes, it really, really, really could happen
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
No climate scientists were forecasting 10 meters by now in 1993.
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
I didn't say that it can be made as convenient as a car...
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your 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.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
I think that is an important insight.
Human beings follow the easiest path, so it is partly about making the desirable easier - by whatever criteria are chosen.
The issue is far less tractable in North America, where the thing has been set up to make it impossible not to have a private vehicle.
eg Zoning Law that prevents shops, restaurants, schools and businesses being set up in housing areas, whilst making the housing area uniform largish plots for detached dwellings that means it is not dense enough to support public transport, and too expensive for many types of people - which then drives societal divisions.
Yes people do what is easiest however that does not mean you can make public transport easiest.
For example I probably have 5-10 places I go when I leave home and go out. Assuming that is about normal for most. Then to make a bus the easiest you would have to provide me a nearby bus stop that is convenient (less than 5min walk) and from that bus stop you would have to run a bus directly to all those places I want to go. I shouldn't have to wait more than 5min for a bus and that bus should be guaranteed to turn up. Now multiply that by 100,000 people for a town all of whom may have non overlapping routes from any particular bus stop.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
You may not have noticed, but at the moment Canada is indeed heating up . . . due to record numbers of forest fires . . . which are one consequence of . . . wait for it . . . "significant global warning"
wiki - On June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre declared the 2023 wildfire season was the worst in Canada's recorded history, surpassing the 1989 fire season. As of June 28, 3,003 fires had burned 7,974,000 hectares (19,704,183 acres) and there were 487 active wildfires, 253 of which were deemed "uncontrolled".
SSI - as I type this, large sections of Canada plus US Midwest and Northeast are - and have been - experiencing unparalleled levels of wood smoke. Here in Seattle, where wildfire smoke has become a BIG PROBLEM in just the past few years, skies are currently clear. However, we are bracing for yet another round of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" later this summer, which appears inevitable given the Canadian situation PLUS our own potential for wildfires in WA State, based on current forecast.
Supreme Court decision in the bullshit "wedding designer" case today meshes well with the earlier college admissions decision.
Apparently you are not allowed to discriminate in favour of a protected class - but it's fine to discriminate against them. Which is pretty well the worldview of today's GOP.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
I bet we see a lot more involvement by private firms providing capacity to the NHS. Its what happened under Blair and proved effective at getting waiting lists for routine easy stuff like cateracts down.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
The Supreme Court rejects the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan. The HEROES Act does NOT authorize student loan cancelation, Roberts holds for the 6-3 court, finding that Missouri has standing. Kagan writes the dissent. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
The Labour left have been accusing Streeting of being in hock to American health corporations for a while, so maybe he feels that he might as well be a bit bolder.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
No climate scientists were forecasting 10 meters by now in 1993.
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
Just make a straw man 50-100 times bigger than what has happened, and claim that was what was predicted. It passes for debate on the Internet these days.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
I've checked doing all my necessary usual daily journeys by public transport. It'd take me 6 hrs 35 mins assuming I can line everything up perfectly and I'd be 2 hrs late to work every day. Now my workplace is fairly easy going but that'd be taking the piss a stretch too far.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Edit: FWIW, I'm middle-aged and not exactly Mr. Skinny myself, but I'd usually much rather cycle than rely on public transport, up to about 4 or 5 miles or so. Though not so keen if it's raining.
I've checked doing all my neccesary usual daily journeys by public transport. It'd take me 6 hrs 35 mins assuming I can line everything up perfectly and I'd be 2 hrs late to work every day.
I am not at all against public transport, just I find the idea you could ever make it convenient enough outside major city centres to get people out of cars is in my view wishful thinking
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
I bet we see a lot more involvement by private firms providing capacity to the NHS. Its what happened under Blair and proved effective at getting waiting lists for routine easy stuff like cateracts down.
The outcome depends on how you outsource.
If you outsource an activity but retain excellent expertise in house and a tight reversible contract dependent on performance, outsourcing can work very well.
What normally happens is that the expertise goes to the outsourced supplier, the contract is hard to enforce and very difficult to switch suppliers. This is what usually happens with outsourcing and it is disastrous.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
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.
Also EV's are much heavier so will cause more wear and tear on roads and so more pollution for repairs
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
I've checked doing all my necessary usual daily journeys by public transport. It'd take me 6 hrs 35 mins assuming I can line everything up perfectly and I'd be 2 hrs late to work every day.
Outside of major city centres, there’s not the population density for anything approaching adequate public transport. Hence the arguments in the outer reaches of London, where most households have at least one car, and even people who work from home face the daily ULEZ charges for taking their kids to school.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
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.
Not great news for you OKC but best wishes for what it is worth.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month. Too hot tends to have a bigger impact, contrary to what a lot of people think
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
Projected vs actual sea level rise in 1990.
I know it's not easy to measure - but NASA is good at this stuff so it's as close to a ground truth source as you'll find.
he does not understand difference between mm and M.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
No climate scientists were forecasting 10 meters by now in 1993.
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
I originally studied climate science (only to bachelors degree level) back in the early 1980s before I changed career path, so I am reasonably informed thanks, though far from being an expert.
For what little it is worth I am part of the consensus that believes in anthropomorphic climate change, but I get very frustrated by the hyperbole that is essentially non-scientific and politically driven, and undermines scientific credibility. I can tell you that back in the early 80s (if not the 90s when I had changed career) 10 meters and more was regularly discussed by climate scientists, often those that one might question their motivations when it was a very underfunded area of academic endeavour. You will note that even the article you link to they state that "key processes that determine the future rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are poorly understood, which leads to deep uncertainty in future projections". Indeed! I can also tell you that the measurement of eustatic sea level rise continues to also be contentious. This is because of deep variations due to gravity abnormality and also the accuracy of past measurement that rely on geological extrapolations that also have to be offset by isostatic (localised and relative) sea level change.
Claims of the veracity of predictions of catastrophic sea level rise should be taken with a large pinch of sea salt.
The Supreme Court rejects the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan. The HEROES Act does NOT authorize student loan cancelation, Roberts holds for the 6-3 court, finding that Missouri has standing. Kagan writes the dissent. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
The Kagan dissent explains why the right wing court members are not conservatives. This case ought to have been thrown out for lack of standing; that ought not even to have been a difficult decision.
...Some 20 years ago, Congress enacted legislation, called the HEROES Act, authorizing the Secretary of Education to provide relief to student-loan borrowers when a national emergency struck. The Secretary’s authority was bounded: He could do only what was “necessary” to alleviate the emergency’s impact on affected borrowers’ ability to repay their student loans. 20 U. S. C. §1098bb(a)(2). But within that bounded area, Congress gave discretion to the Secre- tary. He could “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” applying to federal student-loan programs, in- cluding provisions relating to loan repayment and for- giveness. And in so doing, he could replace the old provi- sions with new “terms and conditions.” §§1098bb(a)(1), (b)(2). The Secretary, that is, could give the relief that was needed, in the form he deemed most appropriate, to coun- teract the effects of a national emergency on borrowers’ ca- pacity to repay. That may have been a good idea, or it may have been a bad idea. Either way, it was what Congress said...
...In establishing the loan forgiveness plan, the current Secretary scratched the pre-existing conditions for loan discharge, and specified different conditions, opening loan forgiveness to more borrowers. So he “waive[d]” and “modif[ied]” stat- utory and regulatory provisions and applied other “terms and conditions” in their stead. That may have been a good idea, or it may have been a bad idea. Either way, the Sec- retary did only what Congress had told him he could.
The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984). They keep courts acting like courts. Or stated the other way around, they prevent courts from acting like this Court does today. The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. They are classic ide- ological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs. In giving those States a forum—in adjudicating their complaint— the Court forgets its proper role. The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies...
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
Did Streeting say anything about the care system? Because reforming the NHS will not work, whatever the plan is, unless someone actually fecking does something about the care system.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Thanks. I don't much like cycling in the rain either, but I find that temperature isn't usually an issue. I just wear a jacket and gloves if it's cold. Yes, true, keeping a bike securely can be tricky and yes, health issues can be a problem, but I personally find that I feel a lot better after a bike ride, especially after I been hunched at the computer all day. As for dressing, I wear pretty much the same clothes on a bike as I do otherwise, and I wouldn't ride a bike either if I was dressed for some special occasion. But of course I accept that cycling isn't for everyone.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, sorts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
I've checked doing all my necessary usual daily journeys by public transport. It'd take me 6 hrs 35 mins assuming I can line everything up perfectly and I'd be 2 hrs late to work every day.
Outside of major city centres, there’s not the population density for anything approaching adequate public transport. Hence the arguments in the outer reaches of London, where most households have at least one car, and even people who work from home face the daily ULEZ charges for taking their kids to school.
For the record, you should really add "if by any chance their car is one of the small minority that isn't ULEZ compliant".
You make it sound as if everybody has to pay the ULEZ charge, which is rather disingenuous.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
No climate scientists were forecasting 10 meters by now in 1993.
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
I originally studied climate science (only to bachelors degree level) back in the early 1980s before I changed career path, so I am reasonably informed thanks, though far from being an expert.
For what little it is worth I am part of the consensus that believes in anthropomorphic climate change, but I get very frustrated by the hyperbole that is essentially non-scientific and politically driven, and undermines scientific credibility. I can tell you that back in the early 80s (if not the 90s when I had changed career) 10 meters and more was regularly discussed by climate scientists, often those that one might question their motivations when it was a very underfunded area of academic endeavour. You will note that even the article you link to they state that "key processes that determine the future rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are poorly understood, which leads to deep uncertainty in future projections". Indeed! I can also tell you that the measurement of eustatic sea level rise continues to also be contentious. This is because of deep variations due to gravity abnormality and also the accuracy of past measurement that rely on geological extrapolations that also have to be offset by isostatic (localised and relative) sea level change.
Claims of the veracity of predictions of catastrophic sea level rise should be taken with a large pinch of sea salt.
More like your verbal diahorrea should be taken with buckets of salt. You could not get a degree in potato peeling.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
I don't like to be rude to another poster, but the post you're replying to - well... Where's Malc to let loose some invective when you need him?
Your wish is my Command. I bet the idiot is not let out on his own.
Oh dear. Please go back to the playground, oh sorry the geriatric home for the terminally stupid. I do wish you would let us know when your shift at Halfords finishes so I can avoid 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.
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.
Also EV's are much heavier so will cause more wear and tear on roads and so more pollution for repairs
More simplistic analysis from PB's resident simpleton
Indeed, already had this discussion with one family member.
Tom Chivers @TomChivers · 5h Increasingly of the opinion that this aspartame thing is an absolute public-information catastrophe. Most people won't read past the headlines, so "diet drinks possibly carcinogenic" is all they'll read. How many will decide that actual sugary Coke is therefore better?
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
I don't think it's entirely about "secretly wanting to" (though moderate exercise is pretty good for endorphins).
But drawing some strands together... The chain from overuse of fossil fuels to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to bad and worsening climatic effects is pretty damn convincing. Science is never fully settled, sure, but the projections made in 1990 are coming in pretty well and they do not end in a good place.
There are going to be difficult choices to be made in decades to come. Hopefully improved tech can smooth off the sharper edges, but at an order-of-magnitude level, burning hydrocarbons at the rate we currently do in the West simply isn't on.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
Well your chums at the Mail, Express and Sun will hang him over immigration whether he succeeds or fails on more reasonable measurements.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then...
I don't like to be rude to another poster, but the post you're replying to - well... Where's Malc to let loose some invective when you need him?
See my later post dipshit
If we're playing qualification top trumps then I did a PhD at one of the UK's two main climate research centres in the 2000s. Sorry about that
(Still doesn't mean I know shit about climate science, having been on the periphery then - a small part of a small part - and inactive since. But I think you'll find that the understanding and modelling and observations capability has moved on a bit since your degree and, indeed, since mine)
I'll not resort to name calling. I'll leave that to Malc and 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.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
I don't think it's entirely about "secretly wanting to" (though moderate exercise is pretty good for endorphins).
But drawing some strands together... The chain from overuse of fossil fuels to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to bad and worsening climatic effects is pretty damn convincing. Science is never fully settled, sure, but the projections made in 1990 are coming in pretty well and they do not end in a good place.
There are going to be difficult choices to be made in decades to come. Hopefully improved tech can smooth off the sharper edges, but at an order-of-magnitude level, burning hydrocarbons at the rate we currently do in the West simply isn't on.
You need a better reason than "I don't want to".
I have not claimed climate change is untrue not sure where you got that from.
I don't own a car. If I go out I use a bus or train.
I fly rarely this year will be my third time in since 2000
I think I do my bit frankly so yes I don't want to ride a bike is perfectly valid for me to say so don't fucking lecture me about it because I am pretty sure I put a lot less carbon in the atmosphere than most of you cycling zealots
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
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.
Also EV's are much heavier so will cause more wear and tear on roads and so more pollution for repairs
Nope, they are not. At the moment, EVs are a couple hundred kilos (out of tons) heavier than their ICE equivalents. And the gap is narrowing, rapidly.
98% of emissions by a car are driving emissions. The manufacturing emissions are a rounding error.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
Well your chums at the Mail, Express and Sun will hang him over immigration whether he succeeds or fails on more reasonable measurements.
Don't menton the Mail. Gone right off them snce they invaded my laptop
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
I’ve always said if there was going to be radical change in the health service it would have to be by Labour. They are trusted in respect of the NHS in a way the Tories never will be. Therefore they get the benefit of the doubt when taking on the enormous vested interests in a way no Tory ever would be.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
Well your chums at the Mail, Express and Sun will hang him over immigration whether he succeeds or fails on more reasonable measurements.
Don't menton the Mal. Gone rght off them snce they nvaded my laptop
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
I think that will be the case in the cities. But it won’t be universal. A lot of my friends in Edinburgh are already members of car clubs for the odd time they actually need one. They are not self driving of course but that will come in the cities.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
I don't think it's entirely about "secretly wanting to" (though moderate exercise is pretty good for endorphins).
But drawing some strands together... The chain from overuse of fossil fuels to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to bad and worsening climatic effects is pretty damn convincing. Science is never fully settled, sure, but the projections made in 1990 are coming in pretty well and they do not end in a good place.
There are going to be difficult choices to be made in decades to come. Hopefully improved tech can smooth off the sharper edges, but at an order-of-magnitude level, burning hydrocarbons at the rate we currently do in the West simply isn't on.
You need a better reason than "I don't want to".
I have not claimed climate change is untrue not sure where you got that from.
I don't own a car. If I go out I use a bus or train.
I fly rarely this year will be my third time in since 2000
I think I do my bit frankly so yes I don't want to ride a bike is perfectly valid for me to say so don't fucking lecture me about it because I am pretty sure I put a lot less carbon in the atmosphere than most of you cycling zealots
That does sound a very low-carbon lifestyle. I'm impressed. Sorry if I can over as being a cycling zealot; I'm really not. I enjoy cycling myself, but I certainly don't expect necessarily others to; I was just curious about your reasons.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
Well your chums at the Mail, Express and Sun will hang him over immigration whether he succeeds or fails on more reasonable measurements.
Don't menton the Mal. Gone rght off them snce they nvaded my laptop
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
I don't think it's entirely about "secretly wanting to" (though moderate exercise is pretty good for endorphins).
But drawing some strands together... The chain from overuse of fossil fuels to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to bad and worsening climatic effects is pretty damn convincing. Science is never fully settled, sure, but the projections made in 1990 are coming in pretty well and they do not end in a good place.
There are going to be difficult choices to be made in decades to come. Hopefully improved tech can smooth off the sharper edges, but at an order-of-magnitude level, burning hydrocarbons at the rate we currently do in the West simply isn't on.
You need a better reason than "I don't want to".
I have not claimed climate change is untrue not sure where you got that from.
I don't own a car. If I go out I use a bus or train.
I fly rarely this year will be my third time in since 2000
I think I do my bit frankly so yes I don't want to ride a bike is perfectly valid for me to say so don't fucking lecture me about it because I am pretty sure I put a lot less carbon in the atmosphere than most of you cycling zealots
That does sound a very low-carbon lifestyle. I'm impressed. Sorry if I can over as being a cycling zealot; I'm really not. I enjoy cycling myself, but I certainly don't expect necessarily others to; I was just curious about your reasons.
I had listed 4 concrete reasons ahead of I don't want to as well
and the dont lecture me comment was directed at Stuartinromford
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
A decade ago you were fapping yourself off over the *fact* there would be no lorry drivers in a decade...
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
That’s an impressive thing for Streeting to actually say.
He has also said "It took Nixon to go to China, it will take Labour to reform the NHS"
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
I don't think that there's any question that Starmer is smart, or that he's a steady learner. (I wouldn't say "quick", I don't think SKS does anything quickly, but he has evolved and improved since becoming Labour leader. Johnson, whatever his talents, hasn't changed since he was about thirteen.)
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
If he smooths trade with the EU, actually reforms the NHS, osrts out the water companies, and doesn't screw up our progress with AI, that will be a pretty good government by itself. I've no doubt he will do Woke shit which will utterly infuriate me, and might damage the country, but the Tories seem incapable of rowing back Woke, they just talk about it and do nowt. It will take a Thatcher type figure to really push back, one day
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
If Suella's performance is the immigration metric baseline, the bar for Starmer is very low.
A fair and illuminating point. The Tories have achieved record net migration AND they haven't stopped the boats. Double whammy
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
Well your chums at the Mail, Express and Sun will hang him over immigration whether he succeeds or fails on more reasonable measurements.
Don't menton the Mal. Gone rght off them snce they nvaded my laptop
Plagiarising your content? Barstewards!
Check out your "i" key.
That is quite odd. Missing three i's
iiiii
Back now
Tbf you only missed three. Perhaps the Daily Mail hacked 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.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
A decade ago you were fapping yourself off over the *fact* there would be no lorry drivers in a decade...
A decade ago you were adamant that machine translation would always be rubbish
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
I guess CCS will become the European standard though? Bit of a pain, it would have been good to have agreed a global standard.
Foul weather cycling is the highest expression of the sport and its true theology. It seperates the flahutes from the others.
I raced in some wonderful kermesse in the sleet in Belgium. Skidding across the pavé covered in a thin partially frozen slurry of mud and cow shit (Flemish toothpaste) I don't think I've ever been happier.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ A huge opportunity for @RishiSunak . Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
I guess CCS will become the European standard though? Bit of a pain, it would have been good to have agreed a global standard.
Fortunately we don't have to align with the eu standard for uk bound cars....oh my a brexit benefit
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ A huge opportunity for @RishiSunak . Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ A huge opportunity for @RishiSunak . Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ A huge opportunity for @RishiSunak . Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
A decade ago you were fapping yourself off over the *fact* there would be no lorry drivers in a decade...
A decade ago you were adamant that machine translation would always be rubbish
To German and back with ChatGPT:
"A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
It still has the sense of the original, but doesn't sound as crisp.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ A huge opportunity for @RishiSunak . Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
You may recall that I've been banging on about the difference between syntactic and semantic information (the phenomena we observe and the meaning we put on it), and about how people don't believe statistics until you produce a story to go with it
You may be interested in a real life example of this. Apparently, over the past two centuries the base human body temperature has dropped very slightly by a few tenths of a degree, from 98.6 to 98.5 degrees C. We don't know why. It's believed to be a real phenomenon (ie it's not a measurement error), so we know the syntactic info (98.6 to 98.5) but we don't have a semantic explanation.
So we're puzzled.
In the two YouTubes below, we have two reasonably intelligent people trying to explain the phenomenon. They settle on stories - "we have antibiotics so the need for inflammation is reduced" or "we live in heated houses", although one vid debunks them. There are other possible explanations - there may be a change in the mix of people measured, the measurements may be in differently temperatured places - but that's just me imposing a story on the phenom. People will continue to be a bit upset until a consensus story emerges, and then we'll go onto the next puzzle.
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
I guess CCS will become the European standard though? Bit of a pain, it would have been good to have agreed a global standard.
Fortunately we don't have to align with the eu standard for uk bound cars....oh my a brexit benefit
I hope we do though! It'll be even more of a pain if we end up using a different standard to the EU. Imagine a future where UK drivers can't charge in the EU and vice versa.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
A decade ago you were fapping yourself off over the *fact* there would be no lorry drivers in a decade...
A decade ago you were adamant that machine translation would always be rubbish
To German and back with ChatGPT:
"A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
It still has the sense of the original, but doesn't sound as crisp.
Given the stochastic nature of ChatGPT you can't base it on a single run of a task. Run it again and you will get a different result.
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
I guess CCS will become the European standard though? Bit of a pain, it would have been good to have agreed a global standard.
Fortunately we don't have to align with the eu standard for uk bound cars....oh my a brexit benefit
So that's a benefit? There are three accepted aligned standards, North America, the EU and the Asian Pacific. Why would we want to plough our own furrow unless we are thinking of reintroducing the Morris Minor Traveller for the full 1950s effect?
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
However, if the journey by bus (or bike) took 2/3 of the time of the journey by car, and cost half as much?
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
No I don't go out much because almost everywhere I want to get to means take a bus to the town centre then wait for another bus that goes to where I actually want to go. Each bus is only likely to actually turn up and because bus routes tend to be circuitous they take an age so a journey I can do in a car in 10minutes usually takes an hour or more. Hence why I am often put off when I think about going out.
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
Why? I'm genuinely intrigued. Because you're worried about falling off? Because you feel you'd look silly? Don't want to get sweaty?
Weather for starters, most of the year it is either too hot or too cold or too wet to want to use a bike. Secondly nowhere to keep a bike, thirdly I have back issues and the risk of them kicking in when about and not being able to cycle back, fourthly when I go out I want to dress the way I want to and not how I have to in order to ride a bike.
Stats on cycling show that isn't much variance by weather or month.
There are currently plans to roll out cycle storage (cyclehoop) across most cities and towns
Sorry about the back issue. Not much you can do about that, though cycling tends to be a pretty low impact activity (unless you get hit by a driver)
You don't have to wear lycra. I cycle in my work stuff
Stats on cycling show that there isn't much variance for people who already like to cycle for those that don't I am betting its a major factor
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
In about ten years there will be thousands of tiny electric self driving cabs which will be perfect for people like you. Summon them with your phone, they turn up at your door, chauffeur you to yout desrination (cheaply) then they tootle off to the next job
No there really won't, you are living in your fantasy world again.
There really will. It's obvious. Indeed, it is already happening in China
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
A decade ago you were fapping yourself off over the *fact* there would be no lorry drivers in a decade...
A decade ago you were adamant that machine translation would always be rubbish
To German and back with ChatGPT:
"A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
It still has the sense of the original, but doesn't sound as crisp.
Given the stochastic nature of ChatGPT you can't base it on a single run of a task. Run it again and you will get a different result.
I just did this with ChatGPT4
User Translate this into French: "A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
ChatGPT "Il y a une décennie, vous étiez fermement convaincu que les traductions automatiques seraient toujours terribles."
Translate that into Soanish ChatGPT "Hace una década, estabas convencido sin vacilar de que las traducciones automáticas siempre serían terribles."
Translate that into Russian ChatGPT "Десять лет назад вы были непоколебимо убеждены, что машинные переводы всегда будут ужасными."
Translate that into Arabic ChatGPT "قبل عقد من الزمن، كنت مقتنعاً بشكل لا يتزعزع بأن الترجمات الآلية ستكون دائماً سيئة."
Translate that into Mandarin Chinese: ChatGPT "十年前，你坚定地相信机器翻译永远都会很糟糕。"
Translate that into English ChatGPT "A decade ago, you were firmly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
That's pretty phenomenal (if it is correct, and I'm guessing it is). And it did that in seconds. It even ignored my mis-spelling of Soanish, and correctly assumed I meant "Spanish"
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
No climate scientists were forecasting 10 meters by now in 1993.
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
I originally studied climate science (only to bachelors degree level) back in the early 1980s before I changed career path, so I am reasonably informed thanks, though far from being an expert.
For what little it is worth I am part of the consensus that believes in anthropomorphic climate change, but I get very frustrated by the hyperbole that is essentially non-scientific and politically driven, and undermines scientific credibility. I can tell you that back in the early 80s (if not the 90s when I had changed career) 10 meters and more was regularly discussed by climate scientists, often those that one might question their motivations when it was a very underfunded area of academic endeavour. You will note that even the article you link to they state that "key processes that determine the future rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are poorly understood, which leads to deep uncertainty in future projections". Indeed! I can also tell you that the measurement of eustatic sea level rise continues to also be contentious. This is because of deep variations due to gravity abnormality and also the accuracy of past measurement that rely on geological extrapolations that also have to be offset by isostatic (localised and relative) sea level change.
Claims of the veracity of predictions of catastrophic sea level rise should be taken with a large pinch of sea salt.
Source for you contention, for your claim that 10 meter rise in eustatic sea levels was forecast in early 1980s/
Comments
You seem to be talking bollocks, as the actual forecasts from around 1990 have reportedly proven pretty good.
https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/gd/2017/09/13/modern-day-sea-level-rise/
It gives the Tories 108 seats and puts the Lib Dems in third place ahead of SNP.
Extrapolating the trend (for fun) puts Labour on 50% and the Tories on 20% . The Tories have 11 seats! The lib Dems are the official opposition ahead of the SNP with the Tories in 4th place.
I know it's not easy to measure - but NASA is good at this stuff so it's as close to a ground truth source as you'll find.
Human beings follow the easiest path, so it is partly about making the desirable easier - by whatever criteria are chosen.
The issue is far less tractable in North America, where the thing has been set up to make it impossible not to have a private vehicle.
eg Zoning Law that prevents shops, restaurants, schools and businesses being set up in housing areas, whilst making the housing area uniform largish plots for detached dwellings that means it is not dense enough to support public transport, and too expensive for many types of people - which then drives societal divisions.
In the USA, the Motor Industry and related companies even set up a corporation to buy up city tram systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
The mean sea level has risen by about 20 cm since preindustrial times and is expect to have risen by between 50 and 100 cm by the end of the century. It won't stop then though, and is likely to be of the order of a few meters by 2300, depending on what we do about emissions and how the Antarctic ice sheet behaves.
See, for example: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/organisations-and-reports/past-and-future-sea-level-rise
"“The NHS is not the envy of the world. It’s a service not a shrine. We’ve got to stop thinking of it as a national religion."
Shadow health secretary
@WesStreeting
tells #TimesRadio the NHS is in need of reform."
https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1674679345640505345?s=20
At this rate I might actually end up voting Labour, for the first time EVER
(Agree - that would be dependent on area.)
I've noticed people change their habits whilst we have the current £2 bus fare cap. Has that affected your habits?
For example I probably have 5-10 places I go when I leave home and go out. Assuming that is about normal for most. Then to make a bus the easiest you would have to provide me a nearby bus stop that is convenient (less than 5min walk) and from that bus stop you would have to run a bus directly to all those places I want to go. I shouldn't have to wait more than 5min for a bus and that bus should be guaranteed to turn up. Now multiply that by 100,000 people for a town all of whom may have non overlapping routes from any particular bus stop.
Car will always be easier
wiki - On June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre declared the 2023 wildfire season was the worst in Canada's recorded history, surpassing the 1989 fire season. As of June 28, 3,003 fires had burned 7,974,000 hectares (19,704,183 acres) and there were 487 active wildfires, 253 of which were deemed "uncontrolled".
SSI - as I type this, large sections of Canada plus US Midwest and Northeast are - and have been - experiencing unparalleled levels of wood smoke. Here in Seattle, where wildfire smoke has become a BIG PROBLEM in just the past few years, skies are currently clear. However, we are bracing for yet another round of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" later this summer, which appears inevitable given the Canadian situation PLUS our own potential for wildfires in WA State, based on current forecast.
Apparently you are not allowed to discriminate in favour of a protected class - but it's fine to discriminate against them.
Which is pretty well the worldview of today's GOP.
Good for him. He is despised by Corbynite lefties, of course
Is it actually possible Keir Starmer will provide a clever, reforming government? God knows we need some optimism
You couldn't pay me to ride a bike even if you turned all the roads to cycle lanes and removed all the cars
The Supreme Court rejects the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan. The HEROES Act does NOT authorize student loan cancelation, Roberts holds for the 6-3 court, finding that Missouri has standing. Kagan writes the dissent. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Now my workplace is fairly easy going but that'd be taking the piss a stretch too far.
Edit: FWIW, I'm middle-aged and not exactly Mr. Skinny myself, but I'd usually much rather cycle than rely on public transport, up to about 4 or 5 miles or so. Though not so keen if it's raining.
If you outsource an activity but retain excellent expertise in house and a tight reversible contract dependent on performance, outsourcing can work very well.
What normally happens is that the expertise goes to the outsourced supplier, the contract is hard to enforce and very difficult to switch suppliers. This is what usually happens with outsourcing and it is disastrous.
He's picking the right problems to tackle, seems shrewd at knowing when to leave alone.
There's no getting away from him being an uptight leftie. But in the absence of a socially liberal, capitalism with social responsibility, Christian Democrat style Conservative party, he'll have to do.
I doubt he will do anything stupid, and that gives him a solid base to Surprise On The Upside(TM).
For what little it is worth I am part of the consensus that believes in anthropomorphic climate change, but I get very frustrated by the hyperbole that is essentially non-scientific and politically driven, and undermines scientific credibility. I can tell you that back in the early 80s (if not the 90s when I had changed career) 10 meters and more was regularly discussed by climate scientists, often those that one might question their motivations when it was a very underfunded area of academic endeavour. You will note that even the article you link to they state that "key processes that determine the future rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are poorly understood, which leads to deep uncertainty in future projections". Indeed! I can also tell you that the measurement of eustatic sea level rise continues to also be contentious. This is because of deep variations due to gravity abnormality and also the accuracy of past measurement that rely on geological extrapolations that also have to be offset by isostatic (localised and relative) sea level change.
Claims of the veracity of predictions of catastrophic sea level rise should be taken with a large pinch of sea salt.
This case ought to have been thrown out for lack of standing; that ought not even to have been a difficult decision.
...Some 20 years ago, Congress enacted legislation, called the HEROES Act, authorizing the Secretary of Education to provide relief to student-loan borrowers when a national emergency struck. The Secretary’s authority was bounded: He could do only what was “necessary” to alleviate the emergency’s impact on affected borrowers’ ability to repay their student loans. 20 U. S. C. §1098bb(a)(2). But within that bounded area, Congress gave discretion to the Secre- tary. He could “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” applying to federal student-loan programs, in- cluding provisions relating to loan repayment and for- giveness. And in so doing, he could replace the old provi- sions with new “terms and conditions.” §§1098bb(a)(1), (b)(2). The Secretary, that is, could give the relief that was needed, in the form he deemed most appropriate, to coun- teract the effects of a national emergency on borrowers’ ca- pacity to repay. That may have been a good idea, or it may have been a bad idea. Either way, it was what Congress said...
...In establishing the loan forgiveness plan, the current Secretary scratched the pre-existing conditions for loan discharge, and specified different conditions, opening loan forgiveness to more borrowers. So he “waive[d]” and “modif[ied]” stat- utory and regulatory provisions and applied other “terms and conditions” in their stead. That may have been a good idea, or it may have been a bad idea. Either way, the Sec- retary did only what Congress had told him he could.
The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984). They keep courts acting like courts. Or stated the other way around, they prevent courts from acting like this Court does today. The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. They are classic ide- ological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs. In giving those States a forum—in adjudicating their complaint— the Court forgets its proper role. The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies...
I meant to store at my home so cyclehoop is totally irrelevant
I didn't imagine I had to wear lycra, however all my coats are too long to be safe wearing while cycling and I have no intention of changing that to get on something I don't want to get on in the first place. The whole idea of even getting on a cycle is anathema for large numbers of the population.
You seem to be of the opinion that everyone secretly wants to cycle and its just a matter of assuaging external reasons. Frankly I would rather go out wearing a lime green mankini than get on a bike. I have zero interest in cycling and didn't before my back issues.
Lord knows what Starmer will do about immigration, tho. That could be the end of him, by itself
You make it sound as if everybody has to pay the ULEZ charge, which is rather disingenuous.
Indeed, already had this discussion with one family member.
Tom Chivers
@TomChivers
·
5h
Increasingly of the opinion that this aspartame thing is an absolute public-information catastrophe. Most people won't read past the headlines, so "diet drinks possibly carcinogenic" is all they'll read. How many will decide that actual sugary Coke is therefore better?
But drawing some strands together... The chain from overuse of fossil fuels to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to bad and worsening climatic effects is pretty damn convincing. Science is never fully settled, sure, but the projections made in 1990 are coming in pretty well and they do not end in a good place.
There are going to be difficult choices to be made in decades to come. Hopefully improved tech can smooth off the sharper edges, but at an order-of-magnitude level, burning hydrocarbons at the rate we currently do in the West simply isn't on.
You need a better reason than "I don't want to".
Nonetheless immigration is always a minefield for Labour, and I predict the pressures will get worse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RITkJ318osI
He's not best pleased.
(Still doesn't mean I know shit about climate science, having been on the periphery then - a small part of a small part - and inactive since. But I think you'll find that the understanding and modelling and observations capability has moved on a bit since your degree and, indeed, since mine)
I'll not resort to name calling. I'll leave that to Malc and you
I don't own a car. If I go out I use a bus or train.
I fly rarely this year will be my third time in since 2000
I think I do my bit frankly so yes I don't want to ride a bike is perfectly valid for me to say so don't fucking lecture me about it because I am pretty sure I put a lot less carbon in the atmosphere than most of you cycling zealots
"Driverless vehicles may sound like something from science fiction, but they are racing into daily life sooner than many people expected, experts said.
These vehicles have immense potential to be a revolutionary technology to transform lives and open a new chapter in intelligent transportation, they added.
In some Chinese cities, robotaxis can now be hailed through ride-hailing apps for travel to destinations such as subway stations, commercial areas and residential communities. Users only need to input the pickup and drop-off points and the number of passengers. A few minutes later, a self-driving taxi approaches."
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/29/WS649cbee9a310bf8a75d6c2c9.html
That's NOW. Imagine where we wil be in a decade
Also, why be so miserably pessimistic about it! This technology will be perfect and transformative for people who are in exactly your position, with limited public transport, who can't afford to get wildly expensive normal cabs everywhere, and who don't want to cycle.
The taxis will be small little things, podules almost. Cheap and cheerful
Never liked riding a bike even as a child.
98% of emissions by a car are driving emissions. The manufacturing emissions are a rounding error.
Particulate emissions aren't greater for EVs.
Check out your "i" key.
iiiii
Back now
and the dont lecture me comment was directed at Stuartinromford
The Test is lost
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/tesla-style-nacs-charging-plugs-are-coming-to-electrify-america-blink/
Lesson - If you want to dominate an industry - yes, line up the government, the unions and the other manufacturers. But it really, really helps to build some actual product.
I raced in some wonderful kermesse in the sleet in Belgium. Skidding across the pavé covered in a thin partially frozen slurry of mud and cow shit (Flemish toothpaste) I don't think I've ever been happier.
Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
A huge opportunity for
@RishiSunak
. Turn the volume up all the way to 10 on "Stop The Boats". Cast iron pledge to Leave ECHR. "I'll do whatever it takes to complete the Brexit Project, oppose The Blob & finally give the British people what they want --full control of their own borders". Go hard. And keep going.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1674384966363250688
(Goodwin, not you of course).
(The Test is still lost, I fear)
Everyone knows you turn up the volume to '11'.
"A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
It still has the sense of the original, but doesn't sound as crisp.
According to CricViz's models for expected runs and wickets, Australia should currently be 111-4.
Still giving England 25% chance.
You may be interested in a real life example of this. Apparently, over the past two centuries the base human body temperature has dropped very slightly by a few tenths of a degree, from 98.6 to 98.5 degrees C. We don't know why. It's believed to be a real phenomenon (ie it's not a measurement error), so we know the syntactic info (98.6 to 98.5) but we don't have a semantic explanation.
So we're puzzled.
In the two YouTubes below, we have two reasonably intelligent people trying to explain the phenomenon. They settle on stories - "we have antibiotics so the need for inflammation is reduced" or "we live in heated houses", although one vid debunks them. There are other possible explanations - there may be a change in the mix of people measured, the measurements may be in differently temperatured places - but that's just me imposing a story on the phenom. People will continue to be a bit upset until a consensus story emerges, and then we'll go onto the next puzzle.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HqNcgLskf3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73BnjfeI-Tc
User
Translate this into French: "A decade ago, you were unwaveringly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
ChatGPT
"Il y a une décennie, vous étiez fermement convaincu que les traductions automatiques seraient toujours terribles."
Translate that into Soanish
ChatGPT
"Hace una década, estabas convencido sin vacilar de que las traducciones automáticas siempre serían terribles."
Translate that into Russian
ChatGPT
"Десять лет назад вы были непоколебимо убеждены, что машинные переводы всегда будут ужасными."
Translate that into Arabic
ChatGPT
"قبل عقد من الزمن، كنت مقتنعاً بشكل لا يتزعزع بأن الترجمات الآلية ستكون دائماً سيئة."
Translate that into Mandarin Chinese:
ChatGPT
"十年前，你坚定地相信机器翻译永远都会很糟糕。"
Translate that into English
ChatGPT
"A decade ago, you were firmly convinced that machine translations would always be terrible."
That's pretty phenomenal (if it is correct, and I'm guessing it is). And it did that in seconds. It even ignored my mis-spelling of Soanish, and correctly assumed I meant "Spanish"
BTW (and FYI):
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42192/did-climate-scientists-in-the-1980s-predict-a-1-meter-sea-level-rise-by-now