Gross Zero NOT Net Zero

I think net zero is a complete COP OUT 26 times.  A letter in the Guardian put it correctly as, "The targets encourage a ‘burn now, pay later’ approach, writes Leslie Sklair, while Mark Walford says it is a form of colonialism to rob young people of their future to keep ourselves comfortable"

What about going for gross zero emissions, as much as possible and, starting NOW!  As my wife and I are trying to do.  Minimise finite fossil fuels where we can.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/net-zero-goals-may-be-hindering-the-climate-fight

A poisoned chalice

It must come down to individual, voluntary and glad restraint from our fossil fuel-rich lifestyles that are so unsustainable and greedy. And so short-lived, shortsighted, in fact, when you look at the geological time scale.

We've exploited finite fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow and now find that they were a poisoned chalice; a forbidden fruit from which we should never have drunk so long and so deeply.

Tweet to Tyne and Wear Metro 40th anniversary

This year, in the W Mids, marks the 40th anniversary of our experts changing one mainline railway into a tramway & the Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline into a 6.7 Kms tramway on two short sections in Dudley, Sandwell boroughs. Both lines are built for TRAINS!

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.

I AM WELLER AND TRULY WRONG - I'm very glad to say!

Dear Mr Weller

I write regarding your email to Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) received on 5 November 2021, concerning bus services to Five Ways and Broad Street. 

I would like to reassure you that the majority of buses which currently run via Sheepcote Street will return to Broad Street and use the Five Ways underpass, which is being prepared for use by public transport only, to access or come from Hagley Road.

It is intended that buses and Metro trams services will complement each other along Broad Street and with short dwell times at trams stops located in the roadway, buses will see minimal impact in awaiting a tram having to load and unload its passengers. 

I hope my response provides some clarity and I thank you for contacting TfWM.

Yours sincerely

Adrian Hawkins SMICS

Customer Relations Executive 

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.

Greta Thunberg

 

Greta Thunberg

@GretaThunberg

·

Nov 4

#COP26 has been named the must excluding COP ever. This is no longer a climate conference. This is a Global North greenwash festival. A two week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.

MISINFORMATION given to pensioner by TfWM

Dear Mike and friends

I would like to bring members up to date on last month's resolution.  There is some (small, admittedly) good news over railways turned into tramways and roads.  More importantly, is the mischievous misinformation that TfWM/WMCA are putting it about that some buses will return to Broad Street even though the tram stop platforms are built out into the middle of the road to meet the railway tracks.

I made an official complaint, as a member of Halesowen Pensioners, whose Secretary was told that buses would return.  I would like my fellow LU members' support, please over the very serious matter of misleading information to members of the public.  Quite apart, from the corrupt expenditure of £75 m for 2 Kms of immoral, wealth flaunting, Metro.  It hat has now given a further reason for car commuters NOT to transfer to bus/train/tram commuting.  This makes it even more urgent that we campaign for FFPT, please to try and bribe car commuters to leave their cars at home, if they really cannot work from home.

SUGGESTION!

Please email customerservices@tfwm.org.uk  and  customerservices@wmca.org.uk  and  customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com

to ask if buses will be able to use Five Ways underpass and Broad Street, once again, instead of the rush hour choked, minor roads diversion into the city centre and Colmore Row.

At Saturday's rally, I spoke to Cllr Julien Pritchard (Green Party) who told me that he would have preferred HS2 to be built south from Scotland towards London.  I told him that, only six years ago there was opened the re-built, 50 Kms railway from Edinburgh towards England.  But that cost was only £7m/Km, as opposed to ten times that cost per kilometre for trams on Broad Street that has now well and truly messed up public transport! 

This, with the destruction of the Black Country Railway, and much else, is why I maintain what has happened over the last 70 years in the Black Country and Brum is the UK's biggest and longest-running scandal in the history of UK transport/finance.

OWEN PATERSON

I have just heard an outspoken and excellent interview with Chris Bryant MP on Radio 4 'Today' programme at 0810 hrs, today.  Do listen to it before our discussion on Saturday.

IMPENDING FAMINE - "world's worst humanitarian crisis"

"9 m Afghans are knocking on famine's door."  Please listen to John Simpson on the same 'Today' programme at about 0840 hrs, just now.  I am willing to give a substantial amount if HMG, plus DEC, UNICEF, MSF will get their act together to support the UN World Food Programme in getting aid to Afghanistan.

WHAT NEXT?

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 a Universal Basic Income scheme so that we don't have to find ecologically ruinous jobs just to keep everyone in food, shelter and clothing.

Abandon the 8 tax havens for the super-rich to help them cut their addiction to greed, selfishness and accelerating climate catastrophe.

Insulate Britain road blocks is yet another aggravation for ...

Insulate Britain roadblocks are yet another aggravation for the poor, hard-pressed motorist who already has to put up with quite enough roadblocks from accidents, congestion, trams taking over road space, too many cars on the road, not enough motorways and other roads being built, fuel shortages at the pumps, quite apart from rising fuel prices.  Now this.  We are stopped to be simply told to insulate our houses.  What a liberty.  My house is nothing to do with these rabid glue stickers.  It is outrageous.

Tongue in cheek!

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?

Metro ​has contributed to the wrecking of public transport with seven railway lines now destroyed and eleven bus routes permanently giving all public transport users a longer, slower and worse journey for those many buses that use Five Ways from Brum, Dudley and Sandwell.  The buses are relegated, forever, to a longer, slower and worse rush hour jammed diversion.  Even self-powered bikes are banned from most of Broad Street and all of Five Ways underpass!

The railway industry is the only set up to destroy/obliterate one-third of its infrastructure, to then build HS2 and, electric "bus on rails" Metro on its railway lines!  Truly bizarre!

from John Davison

Tim, There is not a simple answer to your question.

What has been happening in recent years of muddled thinking, marketing, and attitude alteration in our comfortable country in a world in crisis, is that many mistakes have been made in transport.

The anti HS2 bandwagon is an easy one to clamber aboard, but it is an opposition sleeper train with strange bedfellows. The StopHS2 website is brilliant, the campaigning impressive. A great example today that bentonite (basically clay) commonly used in construction, is painted in the National press as a deadly contaminant. It is a contaminant and we do not want it in aquifers or in watercourses, but sense of proportion folks.

So these other things - very light rail, ultra light rail, light rail etc. Does not really have to be so separate. The lorry driver switches from a motorway to a trunk road to a principal road etc etc - one injection of fuel covers it all. The same should be the case with a passenger - boards a bus in Lutterworth and on the same ticket reaches Wellington.

The price per mile of transport infrastructure is alarming. Read James Meek 01 04 04 The Guardian and its about seven times what is was supposed to cost. The 'it' is The West Coast Main Line modernisation'

Finally acknowledging Climate Change is allowed. Where is Modal Shift in current transport planning ? I would recommend the ice.org website, the Institution of Civil Engineers website and the film by their President Rachael Skinner on Climate Change

I agree with you that a lot more discussion is needed.

Best

JD

to George Riches

Thanks so much, George.  Yes it does, indeed.  But HS2 is way over £100 BILLION in cost and similar in weight of deadly greenhouse gases.  When opened, it is unlikely that we will see an appreciable reduction in plane travel as flyers shift to HS2.  Some reduction, certainly, I hope.  HS2 simply encourages more long-distance travel when we all have to cut back, massively.  I've cut my car mileage by 50% on my 2019 mileage, keep to 60 to 65 mph on 70 mph roads and get well over 70 mpg.  And I still feel guilty - rightly so.  Linda and I are cycling to Brum city centre tomorrow on 6 miles of blessed, traffic-free, cycle-walkway out of 8 miles.

Why concrete, brick and tarmac yet more of nature to give a very small minority the choice of either plane or train?  They should not be flying at all and should not be using HS2.  Don't we all have to minimise ALL travel, ALL spending, ALL energy use and even renewables to leave more resources for future generations?  I feel I am stealing from my 2 children and 2 grandchildren every time I even turn on the cold tap, let alone the hot!  I am truly sorry for the mess I have made for them.  But, I'm not yet going to live, just yet, like a complete hermit - just a complete idiot!    Tim

ON THE PETITION DEBATE, last night:

Wonderful Chris Packham could not have spoken a truer word. It makes all our problems worse, intensifies the climate emergency and shouts the lie that it will reduce overcrowding, increasing capacity when it rockets past every intercity station, duplicating plane travel. That is the lie.

https://www.facebook.com/ChrisGPackham/videos/4075923782529709/

It cannot help in lessening the destruction of nature when it is such a heavy-footed and greenhouse gases intensive way of making all our problems worse and speeding us to THE END. HIGH SPEED TO FOUR TERMINUSES.  Humans are on track to terminate themselves faster!!

One sentence summary of bizarre behaviour

The railway industry is the only set up to destroy/obliterate one-third to one-half of its infrastructure, to then build HS2 and, electric "bus on rails" Metro on its railway lines!  Truly bizarre!

Why we must cut fossil fuel use - FAST

Progress has been slow in removing fossil fuels from our energy mix. But scientists have repeated the same message since the Paris Agreement was signed: human beings are destroying the planet and the impacts are clear. The most recent warning came this month when the UN’s group of top climate scientists said it was “code red for humanity” and that our damaging impact on the environment was unmistakable.

One of the things which has changed in recent years is the speed and regularity of extreme weather. This has astonished many scientists as it has ordinary people who have suffered the consequences of record-high flooding in Germany, extreme drought in Madagascar, or unbearable heat in Canada. The climate crisis isn’t something we need to fix for future generations; it is already affecting children, parents, and grandparents, and will continue to do so.

from  https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/blog/2021/08/25/what-is-cop26-and-why-should-you-care/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fitb2c-GT-September21

to Andy Miller, Sandwell MBC

Dear Andy

Please could you put a notice advising that the diversion for NCR 5 is via Forge Mill Lake car park, further north up Park Lane?  It is closed opposite the road to the Swan Pool car park but there is no notice and map for where we are meant to go.

WBHE trams from your borough are keeping passenger/freight trains off the Derby-Dudley-Devon mainline railway from being finished. Is this correct? And, the Metro Westside extension means that 11 different bus routes from the W side of Brum, Dudley and Sandwell take a longer, rush hour jammed diversion to divert NW of Broad Street. We end up with a slower, much delayed public transport journey into Brum. Please explain, Andy.

It would still be good to meet up via Zoom/Teams, please for you to explain why a second railway line is being used for trams instead of trains and, part will remain out of use for more decades, please. Or, are you not allowed to influence thinking by your colleagues at 16 Summer Lane, Andy?

What are your plans for Holly Lane, Smethwick and, an all-weather, puddle-resistant, hard surface for ALL your towpaths to encourage self-powered cycling and gross zero emissions, please? Has your council declared a climate emergency?

Many thanks.  It would be very nice to meet up - for only the second time!

Tim

TRAMS ARE BLOCKING TRAINS, DIVERTING BUSES OR, CHANGING and WAITING AT TRAM STOP

Dear Baroness Vere

Please could you investigate how Midland Metro trams are keeping passenger/freight trains off the Derby-Dudley-Devon mainline railway from being finished? And, mean that 11 different bus routes from W side of Brum, Dudley and Sandwell now take a longer, rush hour jammed diversion to worsen public transport. THANKS! Tim Weller

Elizabeth Glinka Show v Andrew Marr Show

I have now watched both of last Sunday's programmes.  I love your style and presentation and you are really good.  To be supergood, please watch Andrew Marr and Greta Thunberg and be as serious as Andrew and as challenging as that wonderful heroine, Greta Thunberg who tells it as it is.  She was on Marr last Sunday morning.  Please watch, Elizabeth.  And listen to Ed Milliband, too: "Halve global emissions this decade" but too easy to say!

St Greta is interviewed for the last 16 minutes of the one-hour show.  Andrew is on the ball and Greta is refreshingly honest, candid and smiles much more than earnest Marr who never smiles at all!  She looks as though she has just rolled out of bed after a Sunday morning lie in!!

Your own two guests came across as complacent and acquiescing in climate calamity - and on the eve of COP(out) 26, too!  Especially, compared with Marr, Milliband and Thunberg.

My own appropriate and radical but, perfectly practical actions to build a safer more comfortable world for you youngsters is here:

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

BONUS treat:

 HS2 and Metro are scams because ...

Chancellor's Autumn Statement - word 'climate' appears nowhere!

To connect our towns and cities, we’re investing £21bn on roads and £46bn on railways.

Our Integrated Rail Plan will be published soon, dramatically improving journey times between our towns and cities.

And funding for buses, cycling and walking totalling more than £5bn.

The Prime Minister promised an infrastructure revolution – this Budget delivers an infrastructure revolution. 

Our ambitious Net Zero strategy is also an innovation strategy, investing £30bn to create the new, green industries of the future.

We’ve just issued our second Green Bond, making us the third-largest issuer of sovereign green bonds anywhere in the world.

London last week was named the best place in the world for green finance.

And on Monday, the new UK Infrastructure Bank announced its first ever investment:

£107m to support offshore wind in Teesside.

And to build on this work, one week today I’ll be hosting global finance ministers and businesses at COP26.

Air Passenger Duty

Let me turn now to Air Passenger Duty.

Right now, people pay more for return flights within and between the four nations of the United Kingdom than they do when flying home from abroad.

We used to have a return-leg exemption for domestic flights but were required to remove it in 2001.

But today I can announce that flights between airports in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will…

…from April 2023, be subject to a new lower rate of Air Passenger Duty.

This will help cut the cost of living, with 9 million passengers seeing their duty cut by half.

It will bring people together across the UK.

And because they tend to have a greater proportion of domestic passengers…

…it is a boost to regional airports like Aberdeen, Belfast, Inverness and Southampton.

Airports are major regional employers – so to help them get through the winter…

…I’m also extending our support for English airports for a further six months.

We’re also making changes to reduce carbon emissions from aviation.

Most emissions come from international rather than domestic aviation.

So I’m introducing, from April 2023, a new ultra long haul band in Air Passenger Duty…

…covering flights of over 5,500 miles, with an economy rate of £91.

Less than 5% of passengers will pay more; but those who fly furthest will pay the most.

After 12 consecutive years of frozen rates, the average car driver will now save a total of £1,900.

DEMOCRACY BRINGS: Rotten Rule from Right Wing Conservative and Labour Councils and Governments

1. Fully support the UK's 8 tax havens for the super-rich to maintain their greed and selfishness.
2. For 40 years, this year, have unanimously supported the reinstatement of their earlier obliteration of the tram network by putting it on the railway network that they also destroyed with the trams and, with the bizarre conviction, that cars, vans, lorries, homes, offices and shops must run down the railway lines but never ever trains.
3. Since 2009 have fully supported the move for frequent flyers to have the option of flying through the air on land, as well as the air, by the gift of High Scam 2 that only stops at the Four Big Cities and two of their airports.  Some High Scam trains may also stop at Crewe, Toton, Chesterfield and Sheffield.
4. Fully supported their friends who, in the 90s and 00s, fought against allowing Dudley Muslims from upgrading their Central Mosque from an externally shabby Grade 2 listed primary school building into a purpose-built mosque that would also have been available for the rest of the non-Muslim community.
5. This is now the fifth decade of every MP and every councillor of every party, except the one-term Green Party councillor, who have all wanted and fully supported NOT the reinstatement of Dudley Castle Hill railway station to finish the already built, 120  Kms (74 miles) principal, mainline Black Country Railway but, wait for it, a piddling little tram stop, of all things!!
6. Yet, many want city status for Dudley borough.  A city for the largest town in the UK without a railway station!
7. Following the very bad example of Wyre Forest DC in wasting resources and adding to the runaway greenhouse effect, Dudley MBC is also moving their 1980s (?) and popular leisure centre all of one kilometre from the edge of town to the centre of town!
8. These right-wing politicians and planners think this is the best way to regenerate Dudley town centre - with tram stops and a brand new leisure centre - rather than highly energy efficient, small to moderate-sized homes that are very cheap to heat, have PV solar and allow the countryside to be used for farming to feed us all.
9. Trams to have more Dudley shoppers shopping at Merry Hill instead of in their own shops.
10. One billion pounds of greenhouse gases is being built, not to insulate every building in the borough but to bring glitzy, glamorous, over-indulgent, super-flash, wealth flaunting everything else.  Super immature, super-dopey and misguided.
11. No cycle-walkway on even one side of Duncan Edwards Way.  Only a tramway next to the important, wasted railway line!
12. The 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway remains just that!