Climate change – the political divide – politicalbetting.com
Climate change – the political divide – politicalbetting.com
I suppose that it should not come as too much of a surprise to look at the Opinium poll table above with the party split on views of climate change – an issue that has been in the news following the Tory by-election campaign in Uxbridge.
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That's because they are measuring two feet different things: the Bloomberg chart is showing economic growth since the start of the Euro, where Germany has done surprisingly poorly - albeit if you rebased to 2005, it would show a very different story.
Your chart is about relative levels of individual consumption, and which shows Germany to be doing extremely well.
The two are not contradictory.
"Petrol cars that meet the ULEZ standards are generally those first registered with the DVLA after 2005, although cars that meet the standards have been available since 2001
Diesel cars that meet the standards are generally those first registered with the DVLA after September 2015."
The RAC website states that:
"At 8.4 years old (the average age of cars on UK roads is) the highest since records began in 2000, with almost 10 million vehicles from 2008 and earlier still in action. The average car was built in 2011."
In the last week I have only seen five cars to which the charge will apply, and two of those were diesel.
How on earth have the Conservatives made this such a big issue?
He's also attempting to get out and meet the voters - he's just not very good at it.
His supporters are frustrated, but at the same time can't even agree on what he should do.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/desantis-trump-campaign-strategy-2024-00108647
Last year’s decision left Philip Cato, who moved ‘home’ in 1990s after 30 years working in the UK, cut off from his state pension
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/06/92-year-old-debanked-natwest-jamaica
https://twitter.com/l_ghmn/status/1688272961445478400
Would you think that if the policy were something like Section 28?
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
Yet more human arrogance.
Agreed
Drivers of polluting cars have the option of upgrading to a less polluting car. Are you suggesting homosexual people had a similar choice?
ULEZ is the catalyst for the wider argument about the speed and personal costs of net zero, and expect it to be a growing political divide as the months roll on to GE24
That's not right. Nearly two to one say it's not only a real issue but also "as bad as often described". Only 7% say it's not a real issue!
The polling figures only go to show that a Tory policy of trying to appeal to climate change sceptics is doomed to failure. It's at least as likely to alienate current Tory supporters as it is to attract current supporters of other parties.
Are you saying that there is nothing we can do about AGW, or that it doesn't exist anyway because it is arrogant to think we have any effect on the climate, or both?
*Source: guess
Also it's a slight nudge, if you make someone sell their 2015 diesel they might swap it for electric earlier than they other wise would. Admittedly not much of a nudge because if you drive a pre 2015 diesel you probably can't afford an EV
I may be wrong of course…
The unproven question is if we can geoengineer the planet in a way we want to, without unintended consequences.
In other words, it may already be too late.
I would say that more broadly one of the pieces that's wrong right now is that banks have been turned into defacto arms of the state with broad, vaguely-defined obligations to filter their customers and do surveillance on them, but they're technically still private businesses so this is done with no accountability, and in some cases the system is designed to specifically resist accountability. Governments should either stop requiring private businesses to do all this uncosted pseudo-law-enforcement for them or just nationalize the banks and guarantee everyone a basic level of service.
Strong majority for taking anthropogenic climate change seriously, notably even 46% of Tories.
A bit cool here still, but forecast is to be dry all week. I might need to water my hanging baskets, I haven't done so since June. Simply not needed to do so.
To answer your point. Just because we have the capacity to cause global warming does not de facto mean we have the capacity to cause global cooling.
It's proven remarkable easy to heat up the planet. Cooling it down would be a whole heap harder. It may indeed be nigh-impossible.
I'm sure I don't really need to explain all the global economic and scientific reasons for that?
The working poor don't necessarily and they're the ones facing this very regressive tax.
Now I have no problem whatsoever with a polluter pays tax, and if its needed then yes this may be a way of doing it - but then defend it on that basis, not that is only a very regressive tax on a minority of poor people who can't afford to upgrade their cars. If I'm not paying this tax, but my friend/relative is hurt by it and can't change their behaviour because they need their vehicle to work and can't upgrade, then I can oppose it not on the basis that I'm paying but because of feeling its wrong that my friend/relative is hurt. Just as I can oppose Section 28 not on the basis that it hurts me, but because it hurts others.
Empathy is real and exists, unlike what @strawbrick seems to think with that twisted logic.
https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment
Contrails are cooling in the day, warming at night. So tax night flights, subsidise daytime, job done
It is possible to cause cooling, or warming. Both are scientifically achievable.
To do so at a rate significant enough to cause change, and at a rate we can afford, and at a rate we can control, and without risking going too far and cooling it too much, and without unintended consequences - that may be another question.
The reason we've warmed the planet as a species is not because its easier to warm the planet, its because warming the planet was an unintended side-effect of that which we wanted to do anyway rather than done intentionally. That's why we're not going to cool the planet, not because we can't, but because we're not going to try to. Nor should we try to IMO, we shouldn't be deliberately trying to pollute the planet IMO.
It's when you look at forecasts for 3°or more of global temperature rise that things start to look scary.
Quite apart from the humanitarian and environmental consequences, those sorts of temperature rises are going to be a major drag on economic growth. The "pro-growth" critics of net zero have very short horizons, longer term is a different kettle of fish.
That burden falls hardest on the poor too, something that those crying crocodile tears over owners of older diesels should consider.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66424582
There is no guarantee that we humans have the current capability to cool the planet. It's not like flicking a switch. The runaway train of AGW would take a huge amount of global concerted effort and it may well be that all it can do is slow the rate of warming not make the planet cooler. I'm hesitant to introduce a new analogy but inflation is something world economies endure. We take steps to keep it as low as we can but prices still go on rising. Actual deflation? Rarer than a hen's teeth.
I am, I admit, pessimistic about the state of the planet. 8 billion people, mostly all polluting, is too much.
Short of a mass extinction I think planet earth is now doomed for future generations.
Anyway, in hopefully happier news, I'm off to watch the lionesses.
I can't see any reference to ULEZ in Magna Carta either.
So I can see why the person in Barclays was told the only thing we can suggest is speak to friends or visit a food bank and why there is today's story about Natwest (alongside other banks but the Telegraph miss that bit out) restricting the amount of cash you can pay into an account.
We've been geoengineering the climate since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
And cooling the planet is certainly possible. My minor concerns about it are not that it will not work; like the recent SO2 studies from shipping, it is about the unintended side consequences. But the So2 story also shows we can trial stuff in a limited manner quite effectively.
I do think some climate activists (not you...) are against climate engineering not because they don't think it will work, but because it isn't political enough. It's engineering.
It's all very complicated so you just have to defer to the experts writing things like CCRA3 or the IPCC reports.
The main criticism is it's all happening far faster than they predicted.
The imagination and leadership required to mitigate the effects of climate change - let alone start to reverse it - is just not there. We have failed.
Exterminating midgies would have a huge, positive impact on the Scottish economy. But...
The potential benefits if the scheme far outweigh (for example) those from the billions Sunak is planning to spend on carbon capture - which is effectively just a massive subsidy to fossil fuel burning.
Nonetheless, I don’t think the dangers of the conspiratorial extremes are taken seriously enough. In an age of diverse media (including news) consumption, the ‘left behind’ can find easy succour in the fringes; much more easily than even a decade ago. It creates a sizeable minority of people for whom mistrust of the state - which can be anything from the PM to a teaching assistant, depending what your axe to grind is - the ‘MSM’ and large institutions simply becomes axiomatic. That’s a legitimate threat to democracy.
Honestly, I think there’s a touch of arrogance in media and politics that these people are all crackpots and therefore people who follow them are morons. They aren’t. I have a QAnon follower in my family - he is otherwise a bright and compassionate person, but his mistrust of the mainstream brought him into that world.
Mistrust of authority is quite often justified (Post Office, Met Police, I mean the list is very large). The idea of wrapping that diffuse mistrust into a neat package (even one that collapses at the most basic scrutiny) is seductive.
I don’t know what the answer is. But it does bother me.
- it only effects a tiny minority
- he’s a retired British pensioner living abroad. We’ve been told they are all Fascist Gammons. So why care?
- Living abroad? A citizen of nowhere!
- I bet he has a car and it’s not ULEZ compliant.
And it seems very likely to have been caused by the ban on marine SO2 emissions which has taken place in the last couple of years.
The experiment with generating salt water must to replace the SO2 clouds could be conducted within a very few years.
It seems perverse to me not to try it.
And that others choose to fake mental health.
That's having an opinion, yes, but its not exceptionally opinionated, its a reasonable middle ground. Not everyone who says they have mental health issues is faking it, many seriously do. Not everyone who says they have mental health issues is telling the truth, some people are lying. That's not an extreme thing to say, its simply reality. Mental health is a very serious problem for those afflicted with it and some other people are liars, whose despicable lies make things harder for people with genuine mental health problems.
I never said we have the current capacity to cool the planet. We don't have the current capacity to prevent climate change either. We have the ingenuity as a species to change our capacity over time. So over time we will have the capacity to end CO2 emissions by reaching net zero. That won't reverse the damage already inflicted though. And if we wanted to, we could have the ingenuity to change the climate in other ways, but I think terraforming is a very dangerous and risky thing to engage in and we shouldn't try to do it personally, just my humble opinion.
To take your example, which is something I'm very strong in understanding, yes deflation is rare but deflation is very possible, indeed it can become endemic in eg places like Japan. And if it weren't for the Bank of England printing money it would have become endemic in the UK post 2007 too. The reason it hasn't, isn't because deflation is hard to achieve, but because given the choice of suffering deflation or printing money, the Government will almost inevitably choose printing money. We don't have deflation by choice, not because its impossible to achieve.
Actually, and especially given the wet weather, they have been at very low levels rouind where I live, on a subjective impression of this summer. So too have been swallows and swifts.
I still opposed it [not when introduced, far too young for that, but when I found out about it] and was glad it was repealed.
I oppose picking on minorities not because its against the law, but because its generally the wrong thing to do.
Now saying that you want to do something because its the right thing to do, despite harming a minority, then that is reasonable. Saying that something is right, because it only harms a minority, that is not.
About as anecdotal as you get ... a friend of mine makes biscuits and was trying to sell them to whoever runs the Inverness sleeper service, to be given to you with your cup of tea in the morning. The guy who declined his pitch, said that they have noted an UPtick in insect windscreen splatter on their trains over the past 3 years.
As for swallows I think absolutely everything has suffered from bird flu this year.
The world is in transition away from the petrodollar economy to the sustainable economy - that is also self-evident. The response to supply shocks is to accelerate the technologies which make us less reliant on the energy which had the shock.
I know that some people have a libertarian streak and that is their choice. But personal freedom isn't universal. When rights trample on others they are not rights. And society collectively has the right to impose rules and standards on how we behave.
Motoring is trying to be a thing politically. "I demand my right to drive a polluting car on the grounds of liberty!" But we have removed your right to drink and drive. Or not wear a seatbelt. Or use leaded fuel. The push against diesel engines has reduced the percentage of cars sold to less than 10% being diesel. It will soon be zero as manufacturers withdraw them from sale as not being economical.
How we adequately compensate the few people caught on the fringe of this change is the issue, not the change itself. And if you drive a 10 year old diesel on a 4 mile daily commute in London you're going to want to change the car anyway. It will break.
Do you think minorities without protected characteristics should be fair game for abuse?
The interesting question as ever is who is spreading this stuff? There do seem to be well-financed misinformation campaigns at work (eg around ULEZ) that someone is paying for. It is plausible that enemies of Western liberal democracy are poisoning the well of informed rational debate that allows it to function. Or is that a conspiracy theory in itself?
A breach of Article 2 & 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Taxing them and encouraging a replacement in their vehicle may be the right thing to do, I've said that all along, but simply because they're a minority doesn't make it right. If its right, it'd still be right, even if they were a majority. And if its wrong, its still wrong, even if they're a minority.
I just think the particular large scale plans the government are advancing are a waste of money.
Far more cost effective to use those resources (for example) on keeping up the investment in offshore wind power (which inflation and interest rate increases have stalled).
There is more cash being made available for transitioning vehicles for the few who are involved. And again again, these cars are wholly unsuitable mechanically for the "daily driver" doing an average short commute in London. Diesels are not designed for repeated short trips - they break.
So a car a decade old or more being driven on trips that will progressively wreck the engine. People will need to change their cars anyway. How did people who can't afford to replace their vehicles do so when they got old and knackered before ULEZ? You talk like this is something new and dangerous.
Apparently the government is increasing the fines for employers of undocumented workers to £60,000. Per worker.
See Telegraph
We should be a leading designer and manufacturer of renewable energy generating equipment. We make blades for some turbines, but import the rest. Why? Because we made the environment a political football and investment on the long term scale needed is massively risky.
Having solutions for that minority isn't a problem in my view, if its done fair and reasonably and only for them. On a national level iterating better and higher standards for new vehicles is typically better to iterate higher standards nationwide.
So in that respect, quite literally a fossil fuel subsidy.
1. How many of the drivers of non ULEZ compliant diesels have claimed privately, or would have a claim privately, to court compensation over their purchase of that car? Does that apply to second hand drivers?
2. How many bought those vehicles in outer London after the rules came in in inner London?
3. How often do those who drive old cars typically replace them? If, on the petrol side particularly, these are people buying old cars every 2-3 years to run them to scrap, ULEZ replacement may fall into their natural car buying cycle. (btw, my previous car was bought new and owned for 16 years, so I'm not pre-supposing an answer that argues for ULEZ).
Be interesting to know what the (government?) research said that underpinned ULEZ and whether it looked into such factors in assessing likely impacts.
I went looking for some long term tracking surveys. There’s one prominent study from last year across both American and European populations suggesting no increase in conspiracy thinking over the last 50 years.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9299316/
History certainly provides plenty of cases of mass delusion, perhaps greater than we see now. Interesting paper here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1750698017701615
Yes there’s plenty of readily available conspiracy material online now for people to get into, but there’s also plenty of scientific debunking online too. If I’m seeing the nutty stuff, I assume the believers are seeing the non-nutty stuff too.
So, sure, there are deliberate misinformation campaigns, but they’re only part of the problem.
At least two people said to have declined resignation honours from Liz Truss
Ex-prime minister seeking to hand out peerages and other honours but one person reportedly felt too ‘humiliated’ to accept anything
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/06/at-least-two-people-said-to-have-declined-resignation-honours-from-liz-truss
I compared an attitude displayed by @strawbrick saying essentially "so what, its only a minority affected" with other times minorities have been picked on by the state.
Picking on minorities because they're minorities is not normally reasonable.
If ULEZ is right because its the right thing to do then that is reasonable. If the only defence for it is "it only harms a minority" then that is not a defence. Harming minorities because they're minorities is not OK. Harming them because its the right thing to do is a different matter.
Over time people with old vehicles will replace their vehicles, yes. Which is why targeting new vehicles with higher standards is normally the right thing to do.
However a person who can only afford an old vehicle won't generally replace their old vehicle with a new one. They will typically replace it with another old, just somewhat less-old option as others sell off their vehicle to get a new one.
An 8 year old car in good working order is not something that is broken down and needs replacing yet.
So yes, the people saying no are truly above the grifter spivocracy that has infested the Conservative Party. Did we hear of Boris! nominees turning him down for similar reasons?
Nights notably drawing in, too.
How and why people are helped and harmed matters, not the number of people affected.
Indeed most times the state gets involved its by harming more people not very much each, in order to help fewer people more.
Those towards the top, who get enough followers (like RFK Jr.), can make a very good living off of it.
Incidentally, the current fuel cost per mile of running my diesel (10-11p/mile) is comparable to the cost of charging your electric car at home, and a fraction of the cost of running an electric car on public chargers. And I've no real depreciation costs as my diesel cost me less than £1k on the road. If your Tesla with a probable life (you seem to think) of ten years cost you £50k new, that's £13.69 every single day of it's life just in depreciation. If I lived in the utter dump that is London, it would actually be cheaper to keep the diesel and pay the ULEZ charge. Which does show that ULEZ is a tax on the poor and/or prudent as even if I was to do as they want and buy a Tesla I'd actually be worse off. So the problem is solved anyway as manufacturers are stopping selling diesel cars (although the Euro 6 stuff is generally cleaner than the equivalent petrol, and miles better on Co2). All that ULEZ type scheme do is accelerate this process by 5 years or so, by very unfairly dumping the entire cost onto a modest subset of drivers.
Of course, those of us with brains realize that it's important to stop the sort of thing now even though it doesn't affect us, because "if you tolerate this, your children will be next" - if we let them get away with ULEZ now, it will be ZEZs imposed in city centres before we know it, and ULEZ's covering the whole country.
It is therefore not surprising Sunak is shifting to oppose ULEZ and LTN schemes, allow more new oil and gas licenses and maybe even consider extending the date at which petrol cars will be banned from 2030 while still keeping a longer term net zero target
BR's concern for "minorities" suddenly dissipates.
Below a set number for emissions, a car is completely exempt from ULEZ. Above it, full wack.
So a car which is at 99% of the levels is fine. One that is at 101% gets the full tax.
All car models nave their emissions (theoretical) assessed. It would be perfectly possible to come up with a pollution tax based on how much CO2, Nitrogen oxides, Sulphur oxides, particulates etc your vehicle emits.
It isn't a winning strategy. Particularly if the RSPB membership shift to the Lib Dems.
(They are just banning new ICE cars, not existing ones).