To think people are going to have to be inconvenienced to actually stop climate change?

[Confrontayshunme]

A road near our home was closed to create a Low Traffic Neighbourhood during the first lockdown. Children at the local junior and high schools have benefitted hugely in road safety, the cycle and scooter racks were overflowing and the pollution was measured recently as 40% less (in an area with 3 schools).

And yet they reopened the road because enough drivers wanted to save 10 minutes in the morning. The day after it reopened, half of the bikes and scooters were gone due to safety concerns. Even my coworker who said it made her cycle to work easier and safer was hugely relieved that she doesn't have to go an extra 10 minutes out of her way when driving.

Anyway, I just despair for the planet if adults and people riding in heated, air conditioned, comfortable, waterproof music players can't possibly leave the house 10 minutes earlier to allow our community's children just one intersection's worth of safety and convenience. Plus, the level of pollution driving our children all these miles (when they could be exercising or improving their mental health) inside a car shortens their lives so there isn't any time saved overall anyway!

And before the pile on commences, I realise many people are not able to use alternate transport or active travel due to physical disability or huge distances and I wouldn't include them in this.

@Frazzled2207 there was some politician going on about more people car sharing and forgetting this idea of private car ownership. That’s all fine and well if people work at the same place/leave at the same time/only have appointments they can get to on time via foot or bus/children go to the same school etc.

The crux is though these politicians won’t be giving up their gas guzzling range rovers/Bentleys or car sharing so why should the little people? Car sharing could work in built up areas not in rural areas like mine.

There needs to be better, cheaper and more reliable public transport. Where I live it's too hilly for all but the most determined cyclist, and the bus into the city centre comes about every 40 minutes, but is completely unreliable.
There is no bus between my home and where I work at all. I don't want to rely on the car but have no choice.

@AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii
Totally agree that politicians should be leading By example and in the main they…don’t.

I used to live rurally and totally understand that in many parts of the country the idea of not having access to a car is non-starter

However we as a society have been far too used to the convenience of having cars. People I know won’t walk 10-15 minutes down the road for example, even in good weather. The future (if we want one) is not swapping our cars for electrical models it’s finding a way to cope with LESS CARS. In cities, car pool clubs could help an awful lot.

@Maireas

There needs to be better, cheaper and more reliable public transport. Where I live it's too hilly for all but the most determined cyclist, and the bus into the city centre comes about every 40 minutes, but is completely unreliable. There is no bus between my home and where I work at all. I don't want to rely on the car but have no choice.

Bikes as you say are not going to be suitable for all geographies (or people) but at this stage in the game there is no excuse for lack or investment in public transport.

I actually found out today that a nearby fairly important town has literally no train or bus service AT ALL. No wonder it’s traffic gridlocked!

@Frazzled2207 yes I agree but those in charge take a tar everyone approach so we could all be forced with the same restrictions on car use as often those who make these decisions have no clue about rural living, I rely on my car for my job and my family life, if I lived in a city (which I don’t want to) I wouldn’t rely on my car outside of work much. I think towns and cities should be looked at first, as I said above the buses here are regular but it’s the time it takes to get to anywhere with shops/hospital etc, nearest main hospital 30 mins by car, 45-50 mins by bus etc

Until a plane ticket to Croatia is £4 and it's cheaper to fly there than to go on tube to Dagenham there is no hope.

That's crazy, Frazzled!
I recently waited 1.5 hours for a bus.
I'm just going to have to use the car.

@LarryTheLurker

The idea that anything humans can do either changes the climate or can stop the climate changing would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

Another one with their fingers in their ears. Experts, what do they know eh? Who needs all those plants, insects and animals anyway?

Don't worry.
We're well overdue a pole swap, which will take at least tens of years during which the earth will loose a lot of its protection (normally there due to the magnetic field) to solar and galactic radiation.
There's signs (greater movement of the poles and weaking of them) which show it could start to happen imminently. (although this sort of imminent is many years-after all it's normally about 500k years between pole swaps)

Quite interesting to think about, but may well be fatal to a lot of species including our own.

@Maireas I used to live somewhere incredibly hilly. That can be solved with an electric bike.

It was just so incredibly dangerous that I didn't even have a bike . Shame because there was a lovely tow path that could have been a great cycle route but it never got any investment.

I know what you mean. There are so many barriers to make effective changes.

10 minutes is a long time extra each way, it could be the difference between making a school pick up or being able to take a job. Until there's good 24 hour public transport people need cars - in their wisdom our local bus company is stopping or bus from the end of the month, I have a car but plenty of other are completely stuck 30+ mins from the nearest pubic transport with not even a shop (new development)

@Theunamedcat

You aren't the only one who can't cycle, my work is 6 miles away over a ridge that's 1:4 hill each side narrow and windy with several fatalities in the stretch in last 10 years. There's 2 buses a day, one at 10 and one at 2

I do agree, but to be fair, Holland is flatter. Where I live, it's incredibly hilly, and the only cyclists are those sporty endurance types.

That's an endlessly repeated excuse. There are hills across the lowlands (thinking of the Benelux, all of which countries are better at promoting cycling than the UK). There are flat areas across Britain. The flat areas of Britain are not more cycling-friendly than the UK on the whole.

The Netherlands got where they have by having the will to do so, and legislating for it, and doing it bit by bit. It didn't happen overnight. It will never happen here because it will never start. Britain's poverty of mind and culture is disgusting.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

And yet they reopened the road because enough drivers wanted to save 10 minutes in the morning.

That's exactly what the government has pushed ahead with - in the face of huge opposition and hardly a groundswell of public support - with HS2. Carve up miles and miles of countryside for the sake of saving people half an hour (or whatever) when travelling between London and Birmingham.

Occasional travellers have no real need to be bothered about an extra half hour every now and then. Anybody living in one city and working in the other - and commuting in every day - really must see the futility and massive waste (of time, money and resources) in not moving home nearer work or getting a job nearer their home. Meanwhile, millions of us who are now in the position to do so (especially those in the kind of job where it's financially viable to live so far away from where you work) now work remotely from home (or somewhere else nearby).... so what on earth is the desperate, urgent need for it all in the first place?

You are very much misinformed. By cutting London-Scotland journey times by around an hour, it brings them to within the threshold where rail can make serious inroads into the airlines' slice of the market. Airlines are particularly bad polluters. The potential has been demonstrated by Eurostar. When services to the continent first commenced, there was a drop in airline demand. When HS1 was finally completed in 2007, demand fell to less than half. Eurostar's figures meanwhile soared far above the numbers poached from the skies, generating economic activity. www.airlineratings.com/news/trains-versus-plane-eurostar-almost-halved-airline-demand/

In order to reduce carbon emissions, we need to entice motorists from the roads onto trains. Why might these motorists not want to move? High prices will be the main factor, because prices have been pushed up to suppress demand where there isn't capacity available to satisfy it. Increase the capacity (and the WCML is particularly congested) and you can drop prices, thus encouraging more modal shift.

By the way, half of the capital the government spent on HS1 was recovered in one go by selling a 30 year operating concession to a Canadian pension fund. There will of course be further concessions sold within the lifespan of the infrastructure, plus the tax receipts from the extra economic activity. A nice return for the Treasury.

The WCML is congested only twice a week @DdraigGoch

@Joined4this

Op I agree. Trying to do zero waste/recycle walk etc as much as possible. Yes, big companies do account for the majority of the damage. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try our hardest too.

It's worth noting that almost all of the top 100 biggest polluters are oil giants. So if you reduce your petrol consumption, not only are you reducing the emissions from your tailpipe, but you are also reducing the emissions generated when getting the stuff out of the ground in the first place.

Only consumers can force change in the companies they buy from.

Where I am the traffic just increased in other (less leafy) areas so the route planning for road closures definitely needs to be looked at in relation to the network as a whole

@Magnited

The WCML is congested only twice a week *@DdraigGoch*

Care to elaborate? Exactly when is "twice a week"? Because I only travel off peak (I go to London to see shows) and Avanti's trains are busy at most times.

Network Rail have designated the stretch between Camden South Junction and Ledburn Junction to be officially "congested infrastructure". Avanti are asking for an extra Liverpool path, and LNW are asking for an extra Northampton path. This is in spite of prices being set to stifle demand. Network Rail cannot fulfil these requests. HS2 changes that.

Look at Prince Harry. Fixing climate change, one private jet at a time.

Absolutely. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, 'when somebody clearly shows you what they really believe, understand them'.

Even aside from actually travelling from across the world to Glasgow, instead of doing it all online, Joe Biden temporarily importing multiple vehicles from another continent makes it obvious that he doesn't personally believe a single word of it. When the various royals urge us to all live sustainably, irony dies a thousand deaths.

Talking of royalty, Prince Philip went on for decades about how we urgently had to reduce the population otherwise it was curtains for us all. He even made a 'joke' in very poor taste about wanting to be reincarnated as a virus that killed millions of people. James Lovelock was exactly the same. Both the fathers of four children, so they obviously sincerely believed what they passionately preached to others about....

You are very much misinformed. By cutting London-Scotland journey times by around an hour, it brings them to within the threshold where rail can make serious inroads into the airlines' slice of the market. Airlines are particularly bad polluters. The potential has been demonstrated by Eurostar. When services to the continent first commenced, there was a drop in airline demand. When HS1 was finally completed in 2007, demand fell to less than half. Eurostar's figures meanwhile soared far above the numbers poached from the skies, generating economic activity. www.airlineratings.com/news/trains-versus-plane-eurostar-almost-halved-airline-demand/

I'm no expert, as I haven't flown anywhere for 24 years, but have airports now moved into convenient city/town centre locations and got rid of all of the requirement to turn up a long time before your flight and go through rigorous security checks?

My point is why are people regularly travelling that far at all, though? I know that a lot of journeys are necessary or desirable; but so many people seem to travel hundreds of miles for work every single week - mostly for office/executive-type roles. It's like the internet and Zoom had never been invented.

One anomaly with common thinking, though, is that public transport is good whereas private transport is bad; but taxis are always included in 'public transport', with the frequent perception that taxi-users are self-regulating and only travelling in cars when the journey necessitates it.

20 years from now - maybe even 10 - personal car ownership will seem like such a laughably bizarre relic of history. If you don't need to drive a car yourself, you don't need to park it particularly close by - or actually own it.

Car travel will consist of an app ordering a car to come to you, take you where you're going and then disappear afterwards. Yes, they will all be electric, but all of that electricity still has to be generated - often via very dirty methods.

Although it may be better overall, proclamations of 'zero emission' transport aren't much different from describing 2-for-£4 jumpers as '100% child/cheap labour exploitation-free' - just because the person who served you in the UK supermarket isn't a child or personally being paid pennies per hour.

If the top 100 polluting companies of fossil fuels did their part, that would be enough.

Yes and no, it depends how inconvenient. If greener tech is cheaper and better than the less sustainable altermative then it's a no-brainer for people to use it/buy it due to convenience and cost.

My point is why are people regularly travelling that far at all, though? I know that a lot of journeys are necessary or desirable; but so many people seem to travel hundreds of miles for work every single week - mostly for office/executive-type roles. It's like the internet and Zoom had never been invented

If anything the last two years has shown us that there is nothing like being there in person, and that there is real value in seeing people face to face. We may not travel as much for work and the tech certainly has its own benefits, but we will still travel.