Public funds for public good and lowest possible GHG emissions

Hello Paul

Thanks for this excellent newsletter and for all your hard work.

ROUGH RULE OF THUMB:

£1 in price = 1 lb in weight of GHG

I am still insisting that green jobs do NOT come from extensions to High Scam 2, Metro trams or, Sprint buses simply because these are luxury, wealth-flaunting, highly extravagant and thus high GHG emitting projects.

They mean destroying yet more urban railway lines for light rail (LR) or very light rail (VLR) trams to go on them.  We end up with heavy rail (HR), LR and VLR to make for more changes between the different modes and a slower public transport journey.

They are a distraction from concentrating on the urgent need to free up road space and to save GHG by extending Fare-Free Public Transport to you youngsters and to bring in road pricing for car commuters.

The money could be used for strictly enforced bus lanes on every nearside lane with traffic light priority: green for approaching buses and red for cars in the outside lane, to discourage car commuting and to free up road space.

All the high falutin, flash projects mean there is less money for the more basic, urgent projects to update our buildings to solar power and to high energy efficiency standards.

Am I right, Paul or have I got things hopelessly wrong?

Zelensky is supposed to be a comedian

Dear Jonathon and Alastair

Would you like to comment, please with your own opinion?  This is my pathetic, wishy-washy, plant and cheese-eating surrender monkey stance for no killing, even of invaded, occupying, foreign armed forces in my country.  Do put me right.

Zelensky is supposed to be a comedian, not a great military conqueror of Russia with armaments supplied by the American-led West.  As a result, humanity is accelerating downhill even faster to ecocide and catastrophe.

My action as President would not have had my armed forces fighting an impossible to win with violence one of two super-powers.  The only realistic option left for me, if I was Zelensky, is for none of my citizens to be slaughtered but to use non-violence, non-collaboration with the invader, occupier and, flight if living under Russian control is so impossible.  One death is not worth violent resistance but only non-violent resistance and non collaboration, including humour, satire and protest if I thought I could get away with it under President Putrid!

Such is our almost 100% reliance on finite fossil fuels, we have to reckon that every pound cost of armaments sent to Ukraine to beat Russia is a pound weight of GHG emissions warming the world and denying the poor and future generations their wealth and even their food as grain, oil and gas shortages hike prices.

Best wishes

NET ZERO DELUSION

Please slam net zero and support gross zero (I'm now over 95% off grid for all electricity, even in cloudy mid-winter and we both can do without gas heating until 6 pm every day.)

(NET ZERO = we don't emit more greenhouse gases than we can soak up)

that is a sham, a delusion.  It is quite impossible to achieve when only peat, soil, plants, trees can soak up carbon dioxide which is one of many greenhouse gases.  Technological 'solutions' take finite resources and finite fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases, too.  We are seeing a net loss of the world's forests and the ten biggest emit more CO2 than they absorb, I read recently.  Alarming!

Slam HS2, Metro and Sprint extravagant, luxury, wealth flaunting, delusions of grandeur, vanity of vanities of GHG emissions!

DUPLICATED? Spend like there is no tomorrow and there will be no tomorrow

Spend like there is no tomorrow and there will be no tomorrow

The more we spend, even if it's green or renewable projects, the more greenhouse gases get emitted and the deeper the crisis.  We are well and truly snookered.  But we can't give up.  We have to do what we can, individually and in our working lives, to postpone extinction instead of accelerating it as we are doing with a host of unhelpful spending projects.

Spending hundreds of millions of gg (or GHG) on nuclear power and HS2, which take many years to build is the height of folly.  We don't know how many years it takes for a nuclear power station to pay back in low gg electricity what gg it has emitted in its construction (an example of not very helpful net zero that everyone raves about).

HS2 never even gives us anything useful like power.  It simply is an undeserved bonus for the rich with a First Class seat guaranteed only for those who could take the plane, anyway between the Big Four Important Cities.  And it stops at two of their airports, too!  So what is the point of it when it races us to extinction?

What next after COP 26?

 What next for me is this:

To continue to target the decision-makers at 16 Summer Lane to help them to understand that only by cutting spending on luxuries like HS2, Metro and Sprint can greenhouse gases be cut. For every pound we spend, fossil fuels are implicated, such is our addiction.

So only spend to expel more GHG, by going for projects like insulating and putting PV panels on every EWS facing roof; bribing motorists out of their cars by Fare-Free Public Transport; and by Universal Basic Income scheme so that we don't have to find ecologically ruinous jobs just to keep them in food, shelter and clothing.

Cut GHG by treading lightly, spending the very minimum possible.

16 small modular nuclear reactors to nicely accelerate greenhouse gas emissions, instead of investing in PVs and batteries for every building in the land.

Cut spending, like the big transport projects, that fail to curb GHG emissions in quick, sensible ways.

Keep spending of everything to the very minimum because spending always involves GHG emissions, such is our addiction to finite fossil fuels.

More spending = more GHG emissions.  Therefore, spend to cut those emissions, wherever possible.

JUST BUILD MORE HOMES LIKE MINE - not nuclear power stations

The thing is very high in greenhouse gas emissions during construction - like High Scam 2 and Metro trams - but very low when generating over the lifetime of the station (25 years?).  When does the one cancel out the other?  But then there must be some greenhouse gases emitted in decommissioning over the years.

The whole thing is counterproductive.  And threatened by sea-level rise.  And, totally unnecessary, as well if we only could go for PV on every suitable roof, every other renewables, energy efficiency and were much less greedy and extravagant in our unsustainable lifestyles.

Unfortunately, more greenhouse gases (GHG) are emitted in construction than they can possibly save, eventually in having low carbon electricity from the thing.

No one knows how many years of generation must take place before the greenhouse gases in construction are eventually cancelled out.

Instead, every building a mini-power station, like my home!  Thanks to PV solar panels and storage batteries.