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Dealing with Climate Change & Justice
(1280 posts)- Started 2 years ago by chdot
- Latest reply from gembo
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Posted 1 year ago #
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Carbon emissions from global SUV fleet outweighs most countries
Popularity of sport utility vehicles driving higher oil demand and climate crisis, say experts
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that the UK Government risks not meeting its ambition to decarbonise power by 2035 because it lacks a delivery plan.
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https://renews.biz/84151/nao-says-uk-needs-strategy-or-it-may-miss-green-power-goals/
Posted 1 year ago # -
It's been declared an emergency.
Climate damage is irreversible. It's caused by burning fossil fuels.
Climate damage will lead to mass migration like we've never seen before, and ultimately fighting and starvation.
But people continue to drive everywhere and fly everywhere...
Why is that?
Posted 1 year ago # -
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EU could fine Finland €7bn bill over carbon sink collapse
Finland is facing a "national emergency", Jyri Seppälä of the the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) says.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
"But people continue to drive everywhere and fly everywhere...
Why is that?"
For the same reason they refuse to get rid of their gas boilers, or put in heat pumps or solar panels.
Because they expect the Govt to fix it.
They can't see that everyone has has a duty to replace their heating systems, and transport for low carbon equivalents....
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ah “duty”, that’s ‘so 20th C’.
But yes.
Trouble is that ‘most people’ seem to just want ‘more of the same’ or ‘a way out of where we are now’.
In some ways it’s sort of surprising they expect anything from Govs.
Added to which, the political ‘leadership’ that says ‘not sure about charging for parking at work - might inconvenience people who can afford cars’ hardly demonstrates that there’s a big problem that needs some serious attempts to reduce the effects.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"But people continue to drive everywhere and fly everywhere...
Why is that?"
For the same reason they refuse to get rid of their gas boilers, or put in heat pumps or solar panels.
I would disagree with that. At least with flying it's a luxury which people could live without, but with heating a lot of it comes down to cost.
Installing a heat pump will cost more than a replacement boiler even after subsidies. However that is only one part of the story for retrofits. If you're property is more than 20 or 30 years old you could easily find yourself paying as much again for insulation. Meaning that after subsidies your out of pocket costs could be between 3 and 5 times as much as a new gas boiler. Unlike solar panels it isn't something which will save you money until the government stops the broken system of tying electricity prices to gas.
I'm sure that there are a few head in the sand types who want a gas boiler because that's what they've had since they were a kid.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"If you're property is more than 20 or 30 years old you could easily find yourself paying as much again for insulation."
Same as driving a car, choice of property is a lifestyle choice, and the same as drivers, home owners will provide a list of raesons why they can't change. Why should others suffer for our poor choices (old houses, poluuting cars)?
All of this results in what I said above, everyone (drivers and home owners) waiting for someone else to fix their lifestyle choice problems, hopefully at no cost to them
Posted 1 year ago # -
Baldcyclist, are you seriously proposing to knock down all the houses that are over 30 years old? I don't think that's actually the most environmentally friendly thing to do - think of all the rubble produced, and all the energy required to build new homes. Much better to improve the buildings we have got, as much as we can.
Posted 1 year ago # -
There’s no hope really -
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Drivers craving something more refined than the usual drive-through may rejoice. But spare a thought for those stuck in gridlock dreaming of a flame-grilled burger, only to be offered chicory soup.
The posh bakery chain Gail’s is setting its sights on roadside dining, putting its feelers out for 10 sites in south-east England where it can serve expensive bagels and brioches through car windows.
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No Gov seems likely to stop this sort of thing.
Posted 1 year ago # -
For the sake a full disclosure I will confess that we have just installed a new gas boiler. We are quite far down the save the planet by sacrificing the lifestyle scale so I would suggest that if it doesn't work for us then there is quite a large chunk of society who it would not work for.
I'm sure others would have come to other conclusions but here is out story. We recently moved into a property with a boiler from the late 20th century. A new boiler of this type gets about 80% efficiency but realistically this was probably running at 70% or lower efficiency, and struggled to heat the house in December. The house has poorly insulated cavity walls, uninsulated space below floorboards downstairs and one bedroom above the garage with original 1970's insulation in the roof.
We seriously considered an ASHP, but neither quote we got for this was less than 3 times the price of a new boiler and hot water system. It's running costs (from the grid) would also be 25% more than the gas boiler.
There is then the cost of installing insulation. We probably need to remove the existing cavity wall insulation and replace. We then need to lift the floors as the void underneath is too small to install from below. Finally we need to insulate the room above the garage. Only the last of these jobs seems to be a mainstream job which is easy to obtain quotes and workers to do.
As much as we would like to have done all the insulation and installed a heat pump it didn't work out financially viable for us and instead we upgraded to a 95%+ efficiency gas boiler reducing our gas consumption by around 30%. A choice similar to buying a smaller more efficient car rather than an SUV.
We will soon be installing solar panels and are working on improving the insulation so that we can reduce our consumption further and revisit the heat pump options again in the future.
You are right that we could just have sold the house again and bought somewhere more efficient. However the likely result of that is someone else living here who cares less and just burns more gas to warm the house rather than improving it. Personally I think it's better to leave the more efficient properties for them to live in.
As fimm alludes to houses aren't like cars. If people stop buying high consumption cars at the current prices then they will no longer be manufactured. But if people stop buying inefficient houses then the prices drop and they will still sell (part of the reason for the new build premium).
Posted 1 year ago # -
"Baldcyclist, are you seriously proposing to knock down all the houses that are over 30 years old?"
No.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@acsimpson No need to justify your choices. Our boiler broke over winter, and in the end we could fix it, but we imediately started to look at how much it would cost to change it like for like.
The point I was making was in the same way motorists don't think it is viable for them to make other transport choices, whether using the bus or train, or can't afford an electric car.
As predicitbly demonstrated by the responses to a controversial comment that home owners should just fork out and pay (in the same way *we* flippantly suggest drivers should) the cost to have their homes made energy efficient, or purchase new energy efficient ones, people who are impacted predictibly say, that's stupid we can;t do that, too expensive.
Poeple are people, and as a result humanity will end due to climate change... :)
Posted 1 year ago # -
But those aren't comparable even a little bit. Selling your car is just like selling any other object, selling a home is a complex legal process. Selling your car simply means no longer having your car, selling your home means literally moving and potentially quite far; beyond the inconvenience some people depend on their local social networks. Selling your car means you have to depend on an already-extant public transport network that won't actually cost you any more to use than running a car would(when considering typical necessary/local journeys, there are of course edge-cases or one-offs where owning a car would be cheaper), as has been pointed out replacing an existing GCH system with a heat pump and associated insulation upgrades involves a significant increase in costs not just as a one-off but on an ongoing basis.
There are very, very few people who can't do without a car, and so criticising people for choosing to continue using one is entirely fair. Pretty much nobody can do without heating for their home, and large numbers simply can't afford to make the upgrades themselves so the idea they deserve equivalent disapproval is simple nonsense. As is the idea that living in an inefficient home is a "lifestyle choice" - tell me, where are all these wonderful efficient homes that people are choosing not to live in? Because we've already established the hows and whys of the existing housing stock's inefficiency and the volume housebuilders are the only game in town for most people buying new, who're still building C-rated structures in most cases and even "eco" houses(sold at significant premium) just barely scrape an A in most cases with their token solar panels. God forbid you wanted to buy a passivehaus, that's only happening if you can afford to self-build(assuming you can even find a viable plot of land), and Enerphit refits are even more expensive than the basic heat pump & insulation job that's already beyond most people's means.
The reason the existing housing stock is crap is policy, the reason new housing being built is crap is policy, and the only thing that will fix the problem is, you guessed it, policy. *Collective* action, not browbeating people with false equivalences.
Posted 1 year ago # -
,,,people who are impacted predictibly say, that's stupid we can;t do that, too expensive.
For a good many people that's actually true, subsidies and grants notwithstanding. I do realise that there's potentially also a degree of laziness/inertia involved, but if you don't have the capital available and you can't get it from the government, what are you supposed to do?
Even for folks who are the margin of being able to find the money, right now with prices of everything else including largely non-discretionary stuff like food going up left, right and centre, it's hardly surprising that there is reluctance in some households to commit to sizable capital outlays when their future revenue budgets are subject to so much uncertainty.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Again, I'm not suggesting people should sell their homes.
That said, a heat pump, some solar panels, and insulation would cost about 1/2 the cost of a new car, and folks seem able to finance that commitment over 5 years. Even better with govt loans you'd get it aumt 0%
I don't think it's about cost for home owners (home owners like car owners are rich), especially if you are already using public transport
Posted 1 year ago # -
Yes to much of the above - it’s complicated…
In addition, even for ‘people like us’ (those who actually think/care about some of this), there are still no obvious ‘solutions’.
Ignore costs (just for the sake of this discussion) there are all the considerations of what’s currently available and what might be available/more cost effective in a few years.
At the moment, it seems heat pumps can only adequately heat well insulated houses and are often more expensive to run than expected. Future costs of electricity are unknowable…
Solar panels are fine if you own a bit of roof that faces vaguely south. Better if generous tariffs return.
‘Ethics’ of gas boilers may or may not depend on ‘green’ hydrogen.
Meanwhile, exclude all draughts and make your roof space (if you own one) has at least a foot of high class insulation - well fitted.
Etc.
Posted 1 year ago # -
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EU countries delay vote on landmark law to end sales of CO2-emitting cars
Germany questions support for rules that would effectively make it impossible to sell combustion engine cars from 2035
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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He said: “In 2004 there was a particularly bad frost and we had the same issue then. And it will continue to get worse due to climate change. These periods of freak events that used to be not very often, because of climate change are going to happen more and more often. These problems won’t be resolved until we look at what I outlined in my food strategy – we need to fix the problems of climate change, and health, and the way the food markets in the UK are structured leave us vulnerable to this, so we’d better sort it out.”
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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Cabinet ministers have been warned by senior civil servants that they face court action because of their catastrophic failure to develop policies for tackling climate change, according to secret documents obtained by the Observer.
The leaked briefings from senior mandarins – marked “official sensitive” and dated 20 February this year – make clear the government as a whole is way behind in spelling out how it will reach its net zero targets and comply with legal duties to save the planet.
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The documents show Coffey’s department is by far the worst offender in failing to develop green policy, lagging a staggering 24% behind its official target, while the transport department has a gap “that is considerably over 5%”.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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The British government committed to achieving net zero by the middle of the century but all that has followed is inaction
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.
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Posted 1 year ago #
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