to think the penny hasn't dropped yet, for many people, that the trade in new petrol and diesel cars is really ending in 6 years

[JadeClade]

I think the price of second hand cars will go through the roof, at first, when new cars are no longer available, and people buying new homes now really do need to be factoring in where they are going to charge an electric car, and all sorts of preparations and plans are simply not being made

YANBU - we need to be planning and preparing, as individuals and society.
YABU- we don't need to think about it.

Denser housing makes public transport infrastructure (and cycling/walking/accessible infrastructure) much easier to create and maintain. High population density coupled with convenient infrastructure renders private cars obsolete. So you're right, the two countries aren't comparable, the UK could do much better in its heavily populated areas.

Same - I am also fed up of being used as a pawn for able bodied people to justify their own car use.

You can guarantee they'll be silent the moment disabled people want some sort of adjustment that doesn't personally benefit them.

My condition fluctuates a great deal, but if it's a rough patch driving is often one of the first things I can't do, but sometimes I can still cycle. At one point I was on crutches with one leg out of action, but could still cycle - the bad leg just sat on a pedal while the good leg did all the work, and my crutches were in the pannier.

Interestingly I found that when I had crutches poking out of the pannier, drivers suddenly gave me a lot more space...!

Another friend can't drive because he's partially sighted and has mild cerebral palsy - he mainly walks but I'm fairly sure he could cycle if he chose to.

If you park along the road, huge amount of space is given to car storage! Have a look at how Lambeth want to transform kerbside useage:
https://lambeth-kerbside.org/

It's easy to transform one single parking space into secure bike storage for several houses - lots of places in London manage this.

I completely agree.

Just to build on your point - here's an example of a very secure bike hangar which can store 6 bikes in half a parking space.
https://cyclehoop.com/product/bikehangar/

12 bikes or one car? I think I know which is a more efficient use of space.

I wouldn't mind one of those bike hangers for the back garden, it would keep all DH's bikes in one place and out of the garage.

Exactly this.

It's like going to the doctor and being told "you have a condition you're definitely going to die from, unless you take the following steps: Give up smoking and alcohol; lose three stone; undergo a risky and invasive surgery with a long, painful recovery period; then attend hospital three times a week after discharge for continued treatment."

Would you sit there and argue with the doctor about how impractical these steps are? Would you list all the reasons you CAN'T do them because of the impact they would have on other areas of your life? Would you refuse to accept his diagnosis because you don't feel he, or the government or someone, has made those steps adequately convenient for you?

No, because he said all that is necessary in the first part: your alternative is death. That's not an alternative, so there's no case to argue. But that's effectively what this entire thread has consisted of . . . people talking about being able to get to the shops without waiting for a bus, about maybe having to change job or where they live, about whether the next car they buy will be affordable.

You know what's not affordable? The alternative.

Well said, bloody brilliant.

So if we don't all buy EV`s or stop using our ICE cars were all going to die 😂😂😂

Do you have an orange jacket to put on and a London road to walk down.

Do you have any idea how many people fail to follow doctors advice?

We've all had decades of warnings about smoking and obesity, for instance, but there's still plenty of smokers and an obesity epidemic to boot.

And yes, I did once delay surgery because (long story short) if I'd taken it I would have ended up jobless and homeless. Sometimes people make decisions they'd prefer not to have to make.

Well actually you are all going to die that's inevitable

But what you are saying is that it is possible that you will get to the end of your life before you die from climate issues and therefore you are happy to ignore the problems?

Let's turn this around

What's the level of likely disaster scenario in your lifetime that you would say is worth acting on ? Then perhaps we could estimate how likely that is - from as likely as a plane crash or as likely that another bbc presenter will be found guilty of rape

Sone examples - but please come up with your own idea of what would be enough to spur you to action

• if you don't act now you will be dead next year , if you don't act now, half the uk population would be dead in ten years Your children / grandchildren will die aged 40 from starvation if you don't act New York and London will be flooded in 15 years and the populations homeless There will be a nuclear war in 5/10/30 years as people fight over resources

Here's a thought the UK could be wiped of the face of the earth over night and the climate will not change course at all because we contribute less than 1%.

For any changes to occur meaning full you need to get the whole world on board, currently they are not. So your preaching to the wrong choir.

I suspect you will find the uk would have a much bigger impact if you remember that most of our impact is stuff made in China

And they will change if you stop buying it

I wont though 😳

I like amazon to much.

PMSL @ @CerberusWoof WTF are you banging on about?! 😆

How can you stop buying stuff you actually need that isn't made anywhere else at the quality/price you want?

That ship has long since sailed in the 60s/70s/80s when we gladly sacrificed our manufacturing industries for cheaper stuff made in the East!

Did you type this on a mobile/electronic device, then your a hypocrite. I can guarantee you it either made in china or has chinese made parts.

All the home security products RING, Eufy, Reolink etc are all chinese. So get the government to cut crime and we wont need Chinese products to defend our homes from crime. Also you want us to use EV cars, have a look at that map and have a ponder for a moment. 🤔

No it's not hypocritical

It's pragmatic and recognising that if other people could shift their position a little no one would have to return to the stone age

You don't have to give up everything to have a low carbon life

You can reduce your mobile phone impact by replacing less often , sharing one device with your partner , getting a refurbished device , or getting a fairphone

Or you could replace your phone every year , but never travel by plane or car and never eat meat or diary

It's your "whole life" footprint that matter

It’s nothing to do with density. It’s to do with government priorities and incentives. There are EV chargers everywhere in Norway and I believe there are also major tax disincentives for buying non EV. Though someone who lives in Norway can probably correct me on that!

Oslo - ok, that is not comparable to London, but it is a capital city with plenty of people living in flats and they seem to be managing the EV transition perfectly well. And it’s really astounding how clean the air feels as a result, compared to similarly sized UK cities.

So can those of us who don't eat meat or fly keep our petrol cars then. Excellent.

Yes you can keep your car provided you get your overall carbon footprint down

Under 2 tonnes co2 per person per year is a final goal

The uk average is about 12 tonnes - so if you get to half that you are doing well

5000 miles in a petrol car is about 1 tonne

This will not happen simply for practical reasons. There is not the infrastructure in place (and won’t be in the next decade or so) and the national grid can’t cope with the inevitable demand for electricity. End of

There is not the infrastructure in place - true

And won’t be in the next decade or so - a very firm statement. What is it based on? Other than your gut feeling, that is.

I mean - I don’t know for sure that the infrastructure will be there, but I do know that a lot of companies are busy installing charge points, applying for grid connections for future installations, and that there are proposals to mandate reliability and customer service standards for charge point operators - all steps in the direction of an adequate infrastructure. I’d prefer to see the deadline stay where it is, to keep the pressure up (on both companies and Government) to continue developing the infrastructure, with the option to slip the deadline only much, much closer to it, if it becomes obvious we can’t get there.

and the national grid can’t cope with the inevitable demand for electricity - the National Grid itself disagrees with you there. Top of the list of myths which they bust in this article: https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/electric-vehicles-myths-misconceptions

@PuzzledObserver
Thankyou for that, a comprehensive answer, for 11 months of the year, an EV would suit me, as would a 900cc Fiat Panda or similar but i take the car and bikes to France for 3 weeks each year and i need a bigger car with longer range, a Skoda Greenline (zero annual tax and 60 to 70 mpg from a 1.6) fits the bill.

My previous car was a diesel Golf. Loved it. In the time I had it, it had an EGR valve failure and a water pump failure, necessitating a cam belt replacement as well (which had already been done on schedule at 60K miles). Expensive things, which EV’s don’t have. When it was 9 years old, at over 80K miles, an injector went. Cost over £500 to fix. It still didn’t run right - turned out two more injectors were failing. Rather than shell out another £1K, I traded it in for my EV

Yes i get this, EGR though rare, is expensive & who ever did the cambelt should of replaced the water pump, its normal practice, though the parts are v cheap, the labour costs to get to the part is expensive, madness not to do the pump at the same time as belt.

Sounds like you were unlucky, injectors are rare to go wrong but again, best to replace them all, if one goes at that mileage.

Its scary to think that National Grid think the ban on new sales of petrol/diesel cars is in 2035.......

..and on EV charging, this pre disposes that there is sufficient capacity to enable "smart charging" and if i need a top up on the M4 on the friday night rush out of London, then it needs to be available and dependent on whether the wind is blowing...

Way to miss the point. How many people fail to follow doctors advice when the alternative is certain death? Some I suppose, maybe when they're so old and infirm they don't have much life worth living to look forward to anything. Not many who have the alternative of a long a happy life ahead of them.

Societies are like people, in that there are occaisional moments, not very often in history, where the normal faf and uncertainty and compromise just won't cut it, literal life-or-death choices are faced and they just have to do what has to be done. The obvious example is war. The British government in WW2 enacted all sorts of measures that would never be tolerated ordinarily, like rationing for example. Nobody jumped up and down about the sacrifices involved or what an affront it was to their civil liberties, because the alternative was that the Nazis win the war and Britain as we know it ceases to exist.

Yet now we face a threat far more existential than Hitler: not to national borders or political agreements, but to the habitability of the Earth itself. And people can't see, or can't accept, that that is a similar (or worse) exceptional crisis that demands exceptional solutions?

The human race really does deserve what's coming to it.