I have read every single word in the FoE Climate Action Plan. It is extremely good. Except for three things: for "mass transit", your support for trams and failure to support the vital Fare-Free Public Transport for all and not just for me and my ilk! I suspect mass transit means Metro trams that are the second most expensive and, therefore destructive, mode to construct after HS2, as evidenced here:
In my opinion, there needs to be a mass staying at home and not mass movement of people! We need to lockdown for Covid and lockdown for Climate for many years to come, to keep as much or our remaining finite fossil fuels in the ground, as we can. Scrub mass transit, please!
I am very strongly against your "accommodating joint running with the Metro where required". Joint running is very expensive and difficult, is spoiling and is a complete waste of a mainline railway that should be dedicated 100% to commuter, regional and freight trains, only. Never trams! The main work for WBHE does not begin until later this year. They are still designing it, would you believe! What has already been wasted on preparatory works, plus the less than £200 m to finish the 120 Kms mainline railway would still be a fraction of the £449.5 m, plus cost overruns of the foolish WBHE scheme that destroys the UK's very last mothballed and, virtually ready built, 120 Kms Black Country Railway.
You wrote, "taking measures to reduce the need to travel". This needs to be made clearer by saying, "... reduce the need to travel by car." Although, because of Covid, perhaps, never being completely eradicated and, definitely for ecological reasons anyway, we need to travel less even by bus, train, tram. And, certainly never by HS2 or plane!
In the 2020 BBC film, 'Extinction: The Facts', Attenborough said,
"Scientists have even linked our destructive relationship with nature to the emergence of Covid-19."
For me, Covid is part of the Climate, Ecological, Nature emergency. Covid is yet another sign of humans messing things up. All the time we react and react far too late, rather than preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. As happened with Covid, we are very complacently in denial until, finally, it comes and hits us in the face. By then it's all too late, of course!
Anyway, I look forward to meeting with you and others over Zoom and being put on the spot.
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