[News] Climate change: Tax frequent fliers and get rid of SUVs, + California on fire.

[Seasidesage]

These damn working classes, flying, lowering the tone. Tarquin and Griselda want to be able to fly to Tuscany in peace don't you know...

 

[Milano]

Read just about any Ben Elton novel for the answers. He’s a visionary. Stark and Gridlock must be 30 years old by now and frighteningly accurate.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

cars have been getting bigger and heavier for decades now . . . . very American sadly . . . . the fact engines have got more efficient is merely a pathetic excuse to mask it. Passat kerb weight 1400-1600 kg - . . . . volvo XC90 . . .2100 +

But my SUV is a XC60 [not 90] which lists the kerb weight at 1800Kg and the estate version of the passat at 1735kg - so only 65kg heavier.

My point is that I think it's wrong to tar all SUVs with the same brush - yes the XC90 4x4 is a gas-guzzling tank but my XC60 2-wheel drive is no more environmentally unfriendly than most estate cars with a similar engine.
So calling ALL SUVs "frivolous" needs to be challenged ...

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Why not use electric boilers? Also you just listed how to use hydrogen ones: replace the infrastructure and give people new ones. Oh? That will cost money won't it. Well, we have made a huge mess and it will cost a ton to fix it as we left it until the last minute. If we acted when we first knew of the problem it would have been ok. Of we acted by doing the small steps to list at the bottom when we first knew it would be ok. But we didn't so it will cost a lot! It is that simple. Either we pay to fix it or it will get worse.

Also, your "solutions" do very little now. Tax does not stop emissions. It miiiight change habits a bit, but we are past a slow habit change.

The idea that we switch to electric boilers is a valid one .... except at the moment electricity is often made using fossil fuels and the boilers aren't as efficient. Equally how are you going to make house owners pay to replace perfectly operational gas boilers ? And my concern about hydrogen boilers is nothing to do with the cost of the actual infrastructure - it's to do with the practicality of actually putting it in. It took Nynex / NTL / Virgin nearly two decades to fibre connect Brighton and Hove - and even now there are areas to be finished. EVERY road would need to be dug up to put in a purely hydrogen pipe network. Not to mention every household having to have their driveway / garden dug up and holes knocked through their walls. Many house owners with block paving would refuse to have the work done. Many households couldn't afford to pay for the work ( I can't afford to have new pipework laid across my property for example ). The utility companies just don't have the engineers to do that quickly either. It's all well and good you saying well we should just do it ( and pay for it ) but you need to be practical. I assume you have a gas boiler ? If the government turned round tomorrow and told you that you needed to replace it within the next 12 months at a cost of around £2k could ( or indeed would ) you do it ?

 

[highflyer]

EasyJet is carbon neutral.

Errr...wot?

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Errr...wot?

What HT means is that Easyjet do 'things' ( like plant trees ) in an attempt to offset the emissions they pump out. Obviously it doesn't actually stop them pumping carbon out on his behalf and the easiest way to prevent the emissions and stop any damage would be for them, and their customers, not to fly in the first place. It gives HT some weird warm feeling that he thinks he's carbon neutral. He's yet to explain how he heats his house or powers his iPad.

 

[zefarelly]

But Paris isn't a tourist destination with a hospital unlike Brighton:-

PAris is also quite flat by comparisson

 

[virtual22]

Sorry, that is based on the assumption that everyone has the right to fly - and therefore pollute the planet. If you want to fly, or buy an expensive house, or earn lots of money you can, but you'll pay a heavy tax for doing so. I'm suggesting that air travel shouldn't be a right at all. So if you do fly, the minimum you should do is pay enough to offset any environmental damage. Flying is not a right - no one has the right to pollute the planet to that degree. Whereas public right of way to footpaths for example is a right in this country, and of course that should be equally accessible to anyone. That's the difference.

Maybe my selling quotas or something is not the right solution but you are still persuing this idea that the wealthier can travel all they like, and they will, and the poorer cannot. Those that can afford the tax, a heavy one in your example, still get to pollute, go where they want when they want because they can afford to.

Secondly, people can't just earn lots of money like you say. Sadly in our country our most essential workers, the ones which the country would fall apart without, probably in less than a week, don't earn enough or as much as they should. Maybe a quota based on what people contribute to society. I don't know, I just don't want anything like this based on earnings, income or wealth.

 

[portlock seagull]

Neither can most men!

cars have been getting bigger and heavier for decades now . . . . very American sadly . . . . the fact engines have got more efficient is merely a pathetic excuse to mask it. Passat kerb weight 1400-1600 kg - . . . . volvo XC90 . . .2100 +

go back to the late 50's and there were loads of micro cars around . . . . now we should be zipping round in small largely aluminium/plastic lightweight cars with 1L or less highly efficient petrol engines doing up to 100 mpg belching out virtually breathable gas. Diesel should be largely phased out and eliminated from towns and cities. . . fat cars ( and drivers) are a massive problem.

Car obesity as I call it is a HUGE (see what I did there?) problem. Mainly because (especially women) can’t judge the distance on narrow (by narrow I mean perfectly adequate before people needed ‘buses’ to drive to corner shop in) streets, and so stop, blocking the road until the oncoming vehicle passes, when easily both get through. Drives me nuts say behind in my ‘normal’ car. Or when street parking, they take up an extra foot into the road, making the above scenario frequent causing more and more congestion. And they need these ‘vans’ to get their French Bulldog from A to B too...Sake!! Then there’s when they half park up on a pavement and quite breathtakingly stupidly/f eck wittily manage to block BOTH road & path (but believe they’ve made a compromising concession...despite the double yellows which was the obviously clue they also failed to heed! Death is too good for these types!!!)

 

[Boys 9d]

Is the replacement of gas supply and use by hydrogen such a difficult thing to do? In my lifetime I remember natural gas being substituted for manufactured town gas. The project as I remember, was phased so that existing pipeworks were utilised. The cost to the consumer of modifying or replacing appliances was met by the suppliers (ie. the regional gas boards prior to privatisation.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Is the replacement of gas supply and use by hydrogen such a difficult thing to do? In my lifetime I remember natural gas being substituted for manufactured town gas. The project as I remember, was phased so that existing pipeworks were utilised. The cost to the consumer of modifying or replacing appliances was met by the suppliers (ie. the regional gas boards prior to privatisation.

There's probably many more boilers now and don't forget the whole industry is now lots of private companies.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

car obesity as i call it is a huge (see what i did there?) problem. Mainly because (especially women) can’t judge the distance on narrow (by narrow i mean perfectly adequate before people needed ‘buses’ to drive to corner shop in) streets, and so stop, blocking the road until the oncoming vehicle passes, when easily both get through. Drives me nuts say behind in my ‘normal’ car. Or when street parking, they take up an extra foot into the road, making the above scenario frequent causing more and more congestion. And they need these ‘vans’ to get their french bulldog from a to b too...sake!! Then there’s when they half park up on a pavement and quite breathtakingly stupidly/f eck wittily manage to block both road & path (but believe they’ve made a compromising concession...despite the double yellows which was the obviously clue they also failed to heed! Death is too good for these types!!!)

size-ist !!

 

[beorhthelm]

Is the replacement of gas supply and use by hydrogen such a difficult thing to do? In my lifetime I remember natural gas being substituted for manufactured town gas. The project as I remember, was phased so that existing pipeworks were utilised. The cost to the consumer of modifying or replacing appliances was met by the suppliers (ie. the regional gas boards prior to privatisation.

the trouble is, afaik, then there were local gas supplies and now its regional. phase approach works one town or district at a time, not across entire regions at a time.

 

[midnight_rendezvous]

And yet according to a major study the single biggest thing an individual can do is reduce their consumption of meat...

Change needs to come from governments and world powers otherwise individual efforts are but a drop in the ocean, not that individuals should shirk their individual responsibility of course.

 

[wellquickwoody]

every year the same, california and se oz ablaze. both removing vast volumes of water from the land, coincidence?

a bit more won't make any difference

About as much of a coincidence that they both have millions of eucalyptus/gum trees. The California gold rush saw Aussies travelling to the west coast, and they took their trees with them.

 

[Stat Brother]

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[rogersix]

About as much of a coincidence that they both have millions of eucalyptus/gum trees. The California gold rush saw Aussies travelling to the west coast, and they took their trees with them.

eh?

do you know what the water table is?

 

[wellquickwoody]

eh?

do you know what the water table is?

Yes, thank you. Just pointing out that there is more than one common factor to the fires in those two geographical areas.

Do you know what a tree is?

 

[rogersix]

Yes, thank you. Just pointing out that there is more than one common factor to the fires in those two geographical areas.

Do you know what a tree is?

i've found your level

 

[Stat Brother]

Apparently Brighton needs a 15 year action plan to add a cycle lane all the way to a roundabout.

Helsinki - Hold my herring


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