CLIMATE, COP, CHRIST (WWJD?) - just stop wasting oil!

Dear friends

I was at a wonderful Care for the Family meeting at Life Central last night.  I, personally, thought the auditorium was overheated in the light of the multiple crises and, as we continue to rejoice in fairy tale, eternal, economic growth and, joyfully live infinitely on a finite planet and live unnaturally on a natural planet.  In addition, one external door was jammed open on the carpet when we entered, was difficult to close and was still open when we left three hours later!

This is wasting oil and means we are still not stabilising our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which are still rising.  UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres gave us a Code Red for humanity warning in August 2021 and now, on Monday, telling us we are all (8 billion of us on 15 November and up from 3 billion in 1950!) that:-

“Our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” Guterres said. “It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century. It is unacceptable, outrageous and self-defeating to put it on the back burner.”

The very least we can do is to turn down the heating, to wear more and to travel less using up fewer exhausting oil reserves (electric cars and bikes are also dependent on oil/gas).  I can easily do this.  Why can't others?

Saturday, 5 November 2022

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please

How on earth can we address the multiple crises facing the nation, let alone climate catastrophe, if we can't even stop replacing or duplicating perfectly good buses and trains with trams and, with buses that think they are trams?

Hundreds of millions of pounds in price and in weight of GHG emissions are still being spent on Metro extensions and on Sprint, "the bus that thinks it's a tram".

Up to as many as 1,000 trees/shrubs are planned to be felled along the south side of Hagley Road, Birmingham to duplicate the many buses with super expensive, flash, over indulgent, wealth flaunting Metro trams and, perhaps, Sprint too (a 2010s, £12m scheme for Hagley Road is still not cancelled).  Metro, definitely, has the second most expensive construction costs, of all transport modes, after the well over £200 m/Km for High Scam 2 that is the very greediest, yet totally unnecessary.

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please.  REPLY to condemn or support!

for Climate Change/Environment Scrutiny Committee on 20 June 2022

BLEAK OUTLOOK AS WE IGNORE THE WARNINGS:

"Code Red for Humanity" from Antonio Guterres, Sec Gen, UN on 9 August 2021

"... the collapse of civilisations, the extinction of much of the natural world and time is running out ..." warnings from Sir David Attenborough

"You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all and the Earth itself to nobody." Rousseau, ‘Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’, 1754

I heard about climate change in about 1980 when I saw a BBC TV 'Tomorrow's World' programme. The main greenhouse gases are CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and water vapour.

Finite fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas and all give off greenhouse gases that enhance the natural greenhouse effect. The natural greenhouse effect makes life on earth possible. Unfortunately, the burning up in 300 years of our one-off geological inheritance that took 300 m years to form is enhancing that natural greenhouse effect to raise temperatures to make life uninhabitable on earth. This is called human-induced climate change. Hence, we have to urgently and drastically cut all GHG by quickly reducing our use of fossil fuels and, ideally, leaving them in the ground.

We can get out of using oil and gas by spending less, like:

1. Using a self-powered bike or a bus to come to council meetings.
2. Switching off lights when you leave a room - especially in the Council House.
3. Turning down the temperature of the room you sit in and wearing more clothing, instead.
4. Buying less of absolutely everything and making everything last a lot longer.
5. Insulating your council offices and your own homes to the maximum possible.
6. Put in secondary glazing or double/triple glazing.
7. Use your car as little as possible and try walking and cycling and public transport.
8. Immediately, tell your officers to scrap Metro tram extensions that have spoilt and even destroyed railway lines and infrastructure in the Black Country and Brum. And, Five Ways underpass.
9. Put the commuter and regional trains back on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" that has not yet been turned into the over £500 million, 10 Kms Dudley Tram.
10. Bring in FFPT to reward everyone who uses bus, trains and trams, with traffic priority for buses on the inside lane and a stiff financial charges for every vehicle on main roads, within the Outer Ring Road, in the rush hours that are not registered as being essential vehicle users.
11. Move your council offices to more energy efficient buildings like those at the Waterfront and use the railway line!
12. There is still time to cancel the climate-busting concrete and steel, double-track railway/tram viaduct to smother the carbon-absorbing grass, soil and trees/shrubs on Dudley's No 1 premier canal embankment at Merry Hill.

timweller1@gmail.com     0791 380 4363

Rich nations talk but never deliver (except war). TYPICAL!

Not Paris in 2015, as I said this afternoon but, even worse, Copenhagen in 2009!   Tim

"Twelve years ago, at a United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, rich nations made a significant pledge. They promised to channel US$100 billion a year to less wealthy nations by 2020, to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature.

That promise was broken. Figures for 2020 are not yet in, and those who negotiated the pledge don’t agree on accounting methods, but a report last year for the UN1 concluded that “the only realistic scenarios” showed the $100-billion target was out of reach. “We are not there yet,” conceded UN secretary-general António Guterres."

FROM:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3