Dear Derrick and copied to Top VIP Rail Officer at Tram HQ, 16 Summer Lane, Brum. We all have to write to Customer Services to influence their policies and practice.
It was good to meet you yesterday and to hear of your involvement in politics.
You made me think about the importance of wealth creation and of levelling up the great disparity between north and south of the UK. For me, levelling up means levelling down for the wealthy to level up the poor. In other words, socialism or the Kingdom of God or, exactly what Jesus Christ taught and lived out in the four Gospels.
I’m concerned about economic growth or economic greed as I call it. It means we grab ever more of ever less as the planet’s resources dwindle, especially oil and gas. We live foolishly and carelessly convinced that oil and gas are an everlasting supply that can never run out. For the first time ever, I heard, on Radio 4 earlier this year, that Keir Starmer was warning that gas reserves are limited. Yet, we are dangerously living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet to hasten disaster. Sir David Attenborough in December 2018 at COP 24, warned “of the collapse of civilisations, the extinction of much of the natural world and time is running out.”
Even the most enthusiastic economic growth/greed advocate is not calling for more motorways to drive growth/greed. We understand that our land area cannot take anymore motorways. More modest and highly energy efficient housing and land to grow food to feed us all must have priority over more motorways and high speed railway lines. Even HS1 has been cut back twice, despite the government’s desperation for growth/greed! Hence, the urgency of halting the further destruction of railway lines closed very properly by Beeching in the 60s and 70s and not turning them into roads, buildings and tramways.
Far more important and useful than HS2 is the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby principal mainline railway “of national strategic significance”. It is both a north-south and an east-west railway because it runs from SW to NE, as you'll see in this map in Railfuture's leaflet. ROUTE: London, Oxford, Worcester, Black Country, Derby to relieve congestion on M5/M6:
MORE HERE, if you wish to read further:
There are the external costs of liquidating our assets and drinking deep from the chalice of rich finite fossil fuels that the climate scientists are telling us is a poisonous chalice.
Our forebears lived for thousands of years simply but sustainably. We in the rich North of the planet are living very richly and comfortably but unsustainably and very briefly in the geological time scale of things.
Financial costs of our activities do not accurately reflect the impact of our unsustainable and very energy rich lifestyles on the planet's life support systems, as Mrs Thatcher rightfully reminded us in 1988. She said "We have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself."
The blessed Margaret said that we must live within our means, our limits and our boundaries. How right she was but, such a pity she didn't put any of it into practise!
We never factor in any cost for the impact of our human activity on the planet's ecosystems. Never factor in the cost from the sheer numbers of us on the planet. Or, even on burning up a one off geological inheritance that took 350 million years to form, in about 350 years - 1750 to 2100. In other words, we get everything on the cheap without the slightest thought for how future generations are going to get on. Live now, pay later economics!
Our money, all our riches and all the wealth in the world, even our ever so smart technology can't change the weather from day to day or the climate from one season to another. Can't stop wildfires and floods or volcanoes erupting or sea levels rising as the Arctic melts and the glaciers disappear. We humans are so clever we invent and build WMD that can wipe us all out many times over and take every other life form with us, too!
So clever we can send our machines to far flung planets in our solar system but find it impossible for us all to migrate to another planet once we've well and truly mucked up this one.
We can even calculate how our sister or twin planet has an atmosphere so concentrated in CO2 that some scientists say is from a runaway greenhouse effect, as we are probably doing to earth.
Foote and Tyndall in the 1850s showed how CO2 heats up more than air. However, we know better and we simply cross our fingers and hope for the best with all our rapid conversion of fossil fuels into CO2 to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere - and not for the better..
What is the matter with us extremely intelligent humans?!
From the 5 April to 22 August 2022 with Octopus, our total gas and electricity worked out at only 75p/day for the two of us. We just live frugally, simply but still very comfortably. And we both think we lack for nothing!
Best wishes Tim
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