CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Climate Crisis
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Posted 5 years ago #
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“The blank space left on the wall symbolises the void in government policy on the climate emergency,”“
Posted 5 years ago # -
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Boris Johnson urged to make climate change his top priority as UK battles floods and heatwave
Emma Howard Boyd, the chairman of the Environment Agency, and Tony Juniper, the chairman of Natural England, urge PM to take action
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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Attempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week.
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In addition, about half of all emissions of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, come from cattle and rice fields, while deforestation and the removal of peat lands cause further significant levels of carbon emissions. The impact of intensive agriculture – which has helped the world’s population soar from 1.9 billion a century ago to 7.7 billion – has also increased soil erosion and reduced amounts of organic material in the ground.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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FIRES raged, ice sheets melted, nation after nation declared emergencies and children cried.
As people struggled their way through soaring temperatures amid a new chorus demanding action on climate crisis, it was obvious that something frighteningly extraordinary was happening.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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In the last 25 years, the number of animals on the planet has declined by about 20 per cent, with a total decline of about 60 per cent since 1970. The main causes are climate change, logging, mining, agriculture, pollution and over-fishing. There are a million species threatened with extinction and the rate of extinction is accelerating.
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Our transport habits have mostly moved in the wrong direction. Compared to 1994 we drive 30 per cent further, take nearly two and a half times as many flights, take 25 per cent less journeys by local bus but take 75 per cent more train journeys. We are missing our target for cycling by miles. But we also have a great commitment to phasing out fossil-fuelled cars and vans by 2032.
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So are things better or worse? Significantly worse in terms of the state of the planet and nature. Worse in terms of our transport choices. We are doing really well in changing our electricity system, but have a long way to go for the energy we use for heating and transport. There has never been so much public pressure to act on climate change. At least in Scotland, we are doing really well in terms of political interest in climate change. But we are not yet doing nearly well enough in terms of the urgency and strength of action needed.
Twenty-five years on, the runaway train is still accelerating towards the buffers but there has never been more hope that we might actually stop it.
Dr Richard Dixon is director of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
Have I missunderstood this or is the 2032 deadline simply to ensure that all new fossil fuel vehicles have some aspect of electric drive. It's hardly a great commitment.
Posted 5 years ago # -
There must be some way of spinning this to make it a bad story? I thought it seemed worthwhile.
(Our great broadcast media here simply ignored it. Labour's McDonnell's acceptance that Scotland as a country can vote on its own future again has caused Ian Murray to overheat.)
Posted 5 years ago # -
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“What the IPCC highlights is that we urgently need a revolution in the way we currently utilise land,” said Anna Krzywoszynska, of the University of Sheffield. “Food systems today are built not on soil but on the oil needed for chemicals and machinery.”
Clare Oxborrow, of Friends of the Earth, said: “The way land is being used and abused is rebounding on us. The scientific evidence is clear: political leaders must transform the way land and resources are used, otherwise life on Earth just won’t be possible.”
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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According to its lead author, Kelton Minor, the survey finally gives Greenland’s most remote and inaccessible communities a voice on the climate crisis.
He said: “The Arctic is a bellwether for the unequal impact of global warming on social and economic systems. As countries struggle to limit future risks and overall warming to 1.5C [an increase of 2.7F], many Arctic and Greenlandic residents are already living in regional climates that have changed by more than this, in less than a lifetime.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/greenland-residents-traumatised-by-climate-emergency
Posted 5 years ago # -
Non-Green Edinburgh councillors today voted to limit schoolchildren to just one day of 'approved' climate protest annually. Hopefully the schoolchildren will ignore them. Are we all joining the general climate strike on 20/09?
Posted 5 years ago # -
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With an international council now on the brink of declaring the species unsustainable – and Brexit looming – what is the future for one of the nation’s favourite meals?
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Posted 5 years ago # -
@JDP I will be
Posted 5 years ago # -
It gets worse:
Licensing sub-committee have blocked the school strikers from marching along Princes St because...
wait for it...
oh the irony...
"it will disrupt traffic!"
https://twitter.com/SteveAMBurgess/status/1163456215319490562
Posted 5 years ago # -
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In urban areas, heatwaves are exacerbated by vehicles, industrial processes and the presence of heat-retaining concrete and asphalt. And it is in cities – especially in low-lying poorer areas – where record rainfall often accumulates.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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In a scathing parliamentary report, the cross-party science and technology select committee said recent Conservative governments have promised more but done less on the climate crisis, which has left several gaping policy holes that need to be filled.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
Climate Emergncy Response Group - no fossil fuel vehicles in city centres 2030 or else
Posted 5 years ago # -
Today a group of Scottish civic and business leaders have published a 12-Point_Plan to tackle the climate emergency
https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-08/Climate%20Emergency%20Statement.pdf
Posted 5 years ago # -
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Climate change: Big lifestyle changes 'needed to cut emissions'“
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Some ministers were enthusiastic to translate these into firm strategies, but they needed support from the public, he said. He confessed that he was not optimistic about the future of the planet because so many systems of government needed to change in a short time.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
he was not optimistic about the future of the planet because so many systems of government needed to change in a short time
I mean. If there was ever an argument for extreme effort to ensure the necessary changes to those systems, surely THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET would be it?
Posted 5 years ago # -
“surely”
Some people care more about themselves (and perhaps family and maybe socioeconomic ‘clan’).
Posted 5 years ago # -
“not optimistic about the future of the planet”
That’s actually quite extreme.
Presume he is thinking ‘of most, perhaps any, humans’.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Some people care more about themselves (and perhaps family and maybe socioeconomic ‘clan’). But given tat the systems that keep those things going would all be part of this single, extraordinary, potentially unique, planetary system... How is it NOT self-interest to care?
I tend to assume "planet" as shorthand for "a livable planet for humans" (and for the many, many other species we risk as though none but us have any right to exist")
Posted 5 years ago # -
“How is it NOT self-interest to care?”
Good question.
Even more so for Govs with (notional perhaps) responsibility for their citizens.
“as though none but us have any right to exist"
Which is an even bigger problem.
There are some who consider ‘humans more important’ and that is an ‘undeniable fact’.
(Some might really be thinking ‘PLU’.)
Others (according to some anti-environmentalists) ‘think more about wildlife than humans’.
Too many people think that (somehow) ‘things will go on much as they always have’.
So, business as usual, technology will solve all the problem(s) or significant changes enforced on reluctant people or mass realisation of ‘we need to...’ or changes forced by catastrophe(s) or?
Posted 5 years ago # -
Scottish Green New Deal launched today, somewhat overshadowed by the prorogues and wee Ruthie's going away in a huff.
Posted 5 years ago # -
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He said EPA’s methane rollbacks will lead to industry “dumping an additional 1.2m tons of methane into the air in 2025 – which will warm the planet as much as the pollution from 22m cars.”
Janet McCabe, a top air official under Obama, noted that methane has about 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its impacts could be even larger. And methane makes up about 10% of warming pollutants in the US.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
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Eric Cantona speech: humans 'will become eternal' – unless crime or war intervene
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/aug/30/eric-cantona-eternal-war-crime-king-lear
Posted 5 years ago #
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