The public doesn't hate Net Zero as much as RW politicians insist they do

Mules with panniers are the way forward for us then 🙄😁

We need multiple big bags to carry

Don't you know, this is MN where everyone lives in either London, Manchester or Birmingham where you can take your groceries home on a bus which comes along every 5 to 15 minutes.

Apparently there might be some people living in this place called "rural areas" where people sometimes go on holiday, but they probably subsist off road kill and anyway who gives a fuck about them.

I'd much rather speed bumps than pedestrianised high streets. We have 20mph speed limits but with the traffic lights, pedestrians, crossing all day it's a slow process anyway.

Speed bumps are killing the high street?

Unfortunately we may not have the opportunity to have a "gentle, easy transition".

We have had three years of poor harvests, we are seeing record-breaking heat, and France is on fire. We may well be fucked already.

In Central London? Walk like almost everyone else does.

In Aultgrishan? You might still need a car.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in lots of towns, where the council have pedestrianised town centres, imposed one way systems and access only roads, imposed lots of cycle lanes, pedestrian traffic lights, hiked car park charges, etc., it's reduced car use into the centre, but just driven car users to out of town retail parks and supermarkets or onto the internet for shopping, rather than the intention of getting them to walk, cycle or use buses to the town centre, thus leaving the town centres with lots of empty closed down shops etc. It's a nice idea in theory, but in lots of places it's ruined town centres.

Not just town centres either - same has happened in a few "shopping streets" around where we live - previously pretty busy precincts/streets with several shops, but once they were "traffic calmed" with speed humps, pedestrian refuges, chicanes for wider pavements and tree planting, etc., it's just driven away the majority of customers who went by car, who now shop elsewhere. As I say, there are three such streets within a couple of miles of where I live, now barely any shops remaining open and plagued with money laundering shops. Yes, the streets are now more attractive/accessible for pedestrians, but there's nothing for pedestrians to go there for anymore!

I'm all for it along with a gentle realistic easy transition whilst we come off oil and gas which will be a while yet won't it.
Most sensible people including the very intelligent maverick boss of octopus energy agrees.

How am I going to do family groceries without a car?

Actually EVs are typically 200kg to 500kg heavier than average petrol equivalents due to heavy battery packs.

Car parks built in the 1960s and 1970s were designed for much lighter vehicles.

Congestion is inevitable if everyone drives as cars are a very inefficient way of transporting people (as in they take up lot of physical space). The modern trend towards large SUVs is even more inefficient as is seen by large SUVs needing bigger parking spaces. Then there’s the issue of weight: a couple of years ago the Institute of Structural Engineers issued a warning about older car parks not being able to cope with the weight of the heaviest.

If you don’t want congestion, then the traffic needs to be managed to encourage people who can to walk, cycle & take public transport. Cycling & rail are much more efficient ways to transport people from a space perspective.

Blimey, even the Telegraph recognise the issue:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/26/climate-change-real-right-needs-to-get-serious/

It makes no difference that 14,000 people a week fly...out of a population of 8.3 billion...that was my point. That it's pissing in the wind for the UK to hit net zero. It's politically driven rather than driven by the practicality of the situation

And what about poor fucking Tina working 2 jobs...the GMB union reckons that the cost of net zero by 2050 for Tina is £32 a week... probably a little high but per head that's probably in the right ball park...to achieve sweet nothing

You make good points.. Thanks for telling me

Fifty years ago you paid £50 pp for a flight from Manchester to Faro. It was a comfortable experience.

My suggestion stick another £25 pp per flight on short haul to Europe, say £50 per person to USA. And so on.

Pile tax on cheap flights. Spain don't want cheap skating holiday makers, nor other countries. Their housing stock is being eroded.

Channel Tunnel paths from St Pancras are available at 1, 4, 16, 30 and 34 minutes past every hour. Assuming a first departure at 06:01 and a last departure at 20:04, that's 72 departures per day. Today there are 18 departures to Paris, and 11 to Brussels (5 of which continue to Amsterdam). Total 29 departures with about 26,000 seats.

Each e320 can carry 902 passengers, which means the theoretical unused capacity of the infrastructure is 38,786 passengers per day. For context, the number of London-Paris air passengers is around 2,500 per day each way.

Eurostar dominates the London-Paris market (what flights still exist mostly survive for connecting passengers) and would rather take advantage of their monopoly to extract the most profit they can. The Rail Regulator has now forced them to make depot space at Temple Mills available to Virgin, which will bring some competition in. Trenitalia didn't succeed in getting depot space in London, but they are still interested in UK traffic and have a new depot in Paris. Virgin have ordered 12 Avelia Stream units. Trenitalia are ordering units too.

The water is treated and is clean and safe to drink. The food is fine as well. No issues. I'm not worried at all.

im not sure if you are really this ignorant about the food and water we consume? Or just pretending you don’t know

surely you realise that pollution affects the soil, growth of crops and our water. That this in turn affects health long term

For what it's worth, I also agree we need to keep making steel. Its a huge source of carbon dioxide but it is still very necessary so it makes sense to make it within this country rather than buying it all in. Decarbonising steel production is the hardest bit, it should be left till last while the easy things to fix are fixed first. For what it's worth of there is a problem with achieving Net Zero it's going to be in the final 10% of very hard to fix industries.
That's why it's good that the UK Labour government isn't trying to get rid of UK based steel production. On fact they are putting a lot of resources into keeping it open. The actual coke mine is more complicated, the fact is realistically it couldn't continue without massive government subsidies. It is cheaper, overall to buy coke from elsewhere. That's also true of steel blast furnaces to a lesser extent. Of course there is then the issue of supply security, but the main threat to the UK steel plant wasn't an unavailablitly of coke. It was the foreign owners apparently starving it. That problem has nothing to do with net zero and the government are taking a hard line on it.

Likewise the government is not closing down existing fossil fuel power stations for example in the hopes batteries will replace them. That would be stupid. They are instead supposed to be building new infrastructure and adding to the electricity grid. I suspect that consumer choice is going to add to the number of electric cars anyway. Unless we ban them or ban cheap Chinese electric cars. So then you still need to improve the grid. Net Zero aside, electrification (trains, heating etc) is generally considered a development thing and both more efficient than combustion technology and leas polluting to the local environment (not talking about global warming here. Literally just air quality). It's the kind of things countries should be investing in anyway.
The UK makes about a billion a year renting offshore seabed to wind farms by the way. Lithium mines are opening now and they are being funded by private investors not the government. Private investors are more likely to fund lithium mines or battery factories or wind farms if they think there is a market for those things rather than a government ideologically opposed to them out of spite. Whether they generate lots of money or not, new industries can be good. Being opposed to those opportunities purely because renewables=net zero= woke=bad is madness.

Most of the bad things you talk about have nothing to do with net zero. I do also agree with you that carbon capture schemes are a bit of a waste at this point.

You know what. You've perked my interest. I want to read more.

Battery technology has a lot of investment at the moment and is developing rapidly. However it's unwise to pin hopes on it offering better performance and certainly not as a basis for a national energy strategy. Because if it takes 15 years to build a baseload nuclear plant and the amazing new battery technology does not turn up then you are screwed because there is little alternative.

Solid state batteries are a good example of a very interesting technology. They offer better energy density, charging rate and safety which should lead to much more practical electric cars. But the rub is they are very hard to build and that makes them expensive. A lot of manufacturers have been promising them for years and the in service times keep getting pushed back. Will they make it eventually ? Probably. Then once they can be reliably put in service there is the long process of cost engineering the build to try to make them cheap.

It's mostly the difference between building your national energy infrastructure around tried and tested technology and waving your arms in the air saying don't worry we know it's going to be expensive but we are convinced that something will turn up. Which is great right up until the point it doesn't.

I don't know much about lithium mining. I do know that if there is a commercial opportunity that can make money there is normally a huge amount of investors queuing up to "help". I'm guessing there is a lot of government support behind this. Which tells me something. Otherwise it would already be happening and at scale.

We need coking coal (which is what the mine in the NE was proposed to be for) to make steel. That helps secure our defence industry and also jobs in the NE. I think leaving our defence industry dependent on steel (probably mainly China) from our competitors is a bit stupid (especially since they probably use coal to make the steel anyway). There are opportunities to change to electric furnances which could be a good dump for excess energy from renewables in the future. Diversification is probably a better option though for the time being.

Right. So cars don't fit.

No it isn't. RFK Jr. is right about this one (even a broken clock shows the time twice a day)

Microplastics are getting into the food chain. The biggest source of these are tyres.

There are five paths for passenger trains through the tunnel - the equivalent of 25 A320s per hour. Eurostar currently use two of those paths on average (5 A320s). There's plenty of scope for expansion.

The market opening up to competition with Virgin and Trenitalia will be very welcome, it'll stop Eurostar being so complacent.