CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Climate Crisis
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Posted 5 years ago #
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A contributory factor as to why ‘it’s difficult to change things’ -
Posted 5 years ago # -
Well, this is worrying:
Arctic sea ice extent is plummeting into truly uncharted territory for mid-April.
Posted 5 years ago # -
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The commonest current excuse is this: “I bet those protesters have phones/go on holiday/wear leather shoes.” In other words, we won’t listen to anyone who is not living naked in a barrel, subsisting only on murky water. Of course, if you are living naked in a barrel we will dismiss you too, because you’re a hippie weirdo. Every messenger, and every message they bear, is disqualified on the grounds of either impurity or purity.
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Our system – characterised by perpetual economic growth on a planet that is not growing – will inevitably implode. The only question is whether the transformation is planned or unplanned.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
That's exactly the attitude someone I thought knew better has taken to the school climate strikes. "They all have smartphones and wear clothes from shops that sell fast fashion so they are just hypocrites" - because apparently only 14 year olds who are able to procure clothes exclusively made of organic homespun and who eschew the everyday (& increasingly necessary to access information & services) trappings of the society they were born into are allowed to have a say on the future. Right. Okay then.
Posted 5 years ago # -
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The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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Climate Change: The Facts is on BBC One on Thursday 18 April at 9pm.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
No mention of transport -
Posted 5 years ago # -
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Is forcing ships to slow down an easy way of cutting shipping emissions? Just a year ago the 173 countries represented at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed that shipping would reduce its carbon emissions by at least a half by 2050.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
I guess they could build a few more nuclear ships
Posted 5 years ago # -
Posted 4 years ago #
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We live in a time of loss. Wild places dwindle, the animals and plants that live in them disappear. Climate change is now a certainty, and it will without a doubt lead to the loss of land, species, and ways of life. In the abstract this is disconcerting. Up close it is devastating. I worked on the BBC’s Climate Change: The Facts, presented by David Attenborough, and have felt this pain first-hand.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
We think these things are well understood and accepted, but they arent. See the trolls posting on the BBC story about soil erosion for example. The white van man I've just tackled at work seemed to genuinely think it was OK to sit with his engine running for 15 minutes while he ate his lunch 'because he needed to charge his phone' (as if a transit would lose its whole battery charge to a 15 minute top up to a mobile).
Posted 4 years ago # -
Massive growth in aviation predicted by IATA/"Tourism Economics" in the US and China by 2038.
See "Passenger Journeys" graph in:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47689386
How does that fit with reducing emissions?
Posted 4 years ago # -
How does that fit with reducing emissions?
Somebody else's emissions will just have to be reduced more.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Tragedy of the commons, on a global scale. Entitlement will eventually kill the planet. It's not even debatable.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Just watched Patrick Harvie leader of Scottish Greens on STV's Scotland Tonight.
Main topic after chat with Kezia but before the Spanish Election result was the acknowledgement by SNP that they recognise there is a climate emergency.
I think this statement made at SNP conference has mainly been ignored as Nicola not the right kind of celebrity politician for our media owners.
Anyway... politics aside you would think the media might like to engage with big political party 'up here'. Using words like emergency suggests we should be doing radical steps right now. Know forumers like @roibeard and others did human cycle lane and PoP did loads of initiatives.
Crux of argument is going to come up as Greens are a force in our parliament in Edinburgh - budgets can only be passed with their support. In London there will be no chance of any meaningful anything imho.
So Patrick forcibly made his point that we can't offset / tech fix persistent overuse of resources. Being thrifty and trying to not use three planets worth of energy use is a start. Former climate change minister Struan Stevenson tried to defend airline growth. Scots tend to fly a lot as we have no direct ferries or trains to Europe and flights are cheap.
Patrick made good point about public transport and connectivity. Glasgow metro plan came up today.
Think things will get heated in Holyrood (yes that building wastes energy too).
We'll know it's an emergency when the open street / leave your car at home events become normal.
(As a final aside I saw two (Bak. registered) Lamborghinis, and two Porsches all with solo occupants whilst waiting at Lucas yesterday. Many in Musselburgh were impressed at these, never questioning why such vehicles exist.)Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm still reading my dog-eared and yellowed copy of Lanark. It is dazzling and seems to be the foundation of large parts of my adult mind.
One of the ideas is the notion that wealth is the ability to draw work from elsewhere. Gray has a credit card that allows the user to draw energy from their own future life. We draw energy from Carboniferous sunshine.
Scotland used to draw wealth from Caribbean slavery, the byproduct being misery and bones and a history of racism. We stopped that and compensated the slave owners.
The byproduct of our Carboniferous sunshine is a tiny steepening of this line and, maybe, the end of human life.
I find it very hard to imagine any elected representative voting to leave the UK's oil and gas under the ground. As long as wheat and potatoes can be cultivated here things will seem alright to most people and then when they can't be there will be a perceived need for massive adaptation and that will require fossil fuels.
The present Scottish parliament can't do much more than tinker and make sonorous declarations. The British parliament is busy hammering nails into its own head. I'm very tempted just to enjoy the credit card in the years I have left.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“As long as wheat and potatoes can be cultivated here things will seem alright to most people”
Some truth in that, but I wonder how many people really have much idea of what is grown here - or could/should be.
A bigger problem is the (probable) assumption of ‘oh well if it doesn’t grow here anymore we’ll just get it from somewhere else’.
People (especially politicians) are happy to proclaim that we are world leaders in reducing carbon use - without acknowledging that it’s been exported elsewhere (mostly the coal fired power stations of China).
Now the ‘resistance’ (John Humphrys et al) is that the demands for rapid moves to zero carbon are unrealistic/impossible so ‘why bother’.
This is partly based on the idea that ‘people’ won’t give things up - cars/flying/meat etc.
Once again the arguments are made from the point of view of people who have these things or are working to make sure more people can.
Posted 4 years ago # -
This is almost infinitely depressing.
The mainstream politician says North Sea oil and gas is 'an economic value that will pay for the climate change agenda' which is a Blockchain unicorn level of magical thinking.
And the green politician seems not to have sufficient grasp of chemistry to point out that you can't prevent organic matter from being oxidised to carbon dioxide once it's exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. It doesn't matter if you set fire to it or not, it's going to wind up as carbon dioxide.
Posted 4 years ago # -
We'll know it's an emergency when they immediately cancel all traffic-inducing road-building schemes i.e. all of them. The A9 / A96 are not a done deal yet.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“you can't prevent organic matter from being oxidised to carbon dioxide once it's exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. It doesn't matter if you set fire to it or not, it's going to wind up as carbon dioxide“
Mmm, not exactly.
Depends on what timescale you are thinking about.
If you ‘lock’ it into a tree there is a lot of difference between whether it becomes timber and is used for houses, furniture etc or falls to the ground and decays.
Recently there has been quite a bit of media interest in soil and its carbon capturing abilities (and how they are being damaged).
Also the value of grassland (with or without animals) v crops.
“We should also be demanding massive reforestation” (other thread).
Yes, but what I want to know, given the ‘Emergency’, is this best done (initially at least) with fast growing ones (eg willow)?
Is using this crop for energy ok (replacing fossil fuels)? If not what is the best way to minimise decay and the re-creation of CO2?
Posted 4 years ago # -
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Road space should be preferentially allocated away from cars and towards the lowest energy types of transport, and those which are healthiest, prioritising walking and cycling.
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https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/climatemanifesto/public-transport/
Posted 4 years ago # -
I've said it elsewhere but I'm not sure how the word "Emergency" and a 31 year plan to do more of the same with less CO2 emissions can be contained in the same speech.
Nicola seems to have given herself less than 2 years to prove Scotland has an economic case to go independent while stopping Fossil Fuel consumption. If it can't be planned in 2 years I can't see it being delivered in 30.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Does anyone actually believe this climate emergency declaration will be followed by actual measures? Not even the Nicultists seem to believe this.
So it's there with her statements on 10% of journeys to be made by cycle by 2020 for which she had "commitment and determination" while the active travel budget hovered between 1 and 3.5% of the transport budget.
Posted 4 years ago #
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