Scotland: Green housing schemes have nowhere to park your car
New housing schemes and business parks across Scotland will be designed with little or no car parking space under plans to accelerate the transition to public transport.
The proposal to “disincentivise unsustainable travel” through planning rules is part of a new strategy to help Scotland reach net-zero emissions by 2045.
Among the recommendations, likely to become law by July 2022, are moves to improve transit links in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, to reduce congestion and a reliance on cars.
Tom Arthur, the planning minister, suggested this week that there will sometimes be “uncomfortable choices"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/green-housing-schemes-have-nowhere-to-park-your-car-mlrtcvc5r
*********************************************Electric cars are not a magic bullet for air pollution
Brake and tire wear from road transport vehicles is responsible for more fine particle emissions than exhaust fumes
The benefits of switching to electric vehicles to clean up our toxic air has been given much airtime, both at Cop26 and by the UK government in recent weeks (‘What if we just gave up cars?’: Cop26 leaders urged to dream big, 10 November). However, evidence shows that electric cars still emit PM2.5 particles, the most worrying form of air pollution for humans.
Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Rex/Shutterstock© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Rex/Shutterstock
The threat posed by air pollution cannot be overstated – the air we breathe can have a catastrophic effect on our health, right from the moment we are born. More than a third of maternity units in England are in air pollution hotspots that fail to meet the World Health Organization’s 2005 air quality guidelines. This means that every two minutes, a baby is born into areas surrounded by toxic levels of air pollution. Children are then likely to grow up, learn and play in these areas of lethal pollution. If we’re going to stop babies being born into toxic air, more electric cars won’t cut it. We need fewer vehicles on our roads altogether, not just cleaner ones.
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Who says burning wood is good?
All over the Southeast—that there are at least 20 mills from Virginia to Texas chopping wood into tiny pellets, and that millions of tons of the stuff are already being shipped each year from at least 10 different ports in the region.
It’s as if a giant funnel were draining Southeastern woods into European furnaces, one cigarette filter-sized pellet at a time—all in the name of fighting climate change. And it’s all based on a fundamental error, many scientists say.
When the European Union set up its pioneering carbon emissions trading scheme in 2005, it defined wood as a zero-emissions fuel, Sarah Gibbens reports. At first, that seemed to make sense: If a new tree grows to replace the one that was burned, it will absorb carbon from the air to offset the emissions from the burning.
“The whole wood pellet industry is basically being driven by this,” Princeton researcher Tim Searchinger told Gibbens. Coal-fired power plants in the U.K. and elsewhere have been switching to wood pellets, thereby reducing their emissions fees—but not their actual emissions.
The problem, Searchinger and many other scientists say, is that while trees do indeed absorb carbon, they do so only in the long run—they take decades longer to grow than they do to burn. But in the long run the glaciers will have melted; we don’t have decades to wait to cut emissions. And right now, most evidence suggests, burning whole trees puts more carbon in the air than coal, because wood is less efficient. (Pictured at top, young pines in Virginia; below left, the pellets; below right, logs at a North Carolina pellet factory.)
At the COP26 environmental summit that ended last weekend in Glasgow, more than 130 countries signed a pledge to end deforestation by 2030. But the issue of burning trees for energy wasn’t on the agenda.
The loophole that defines wood as a zero-emissions fuel emerged from an earlier COP meeting, Searchinger told Gibbens. In the last session in Glasgow, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans talked about how Europe had gotten rich off the coal-fired Industrial Revolution. “Coal has no future” now, he said. He didn’t mention that European countries had switched to coal back in the 18th century only after cutting down and burning most of their own forests. From that perspective, importing pellets from North America, in order to switch from coal back to wood, seems like a historic step backward.
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Anti-coal protesters in Australiane region face 25 years in prison
A group of climate activists have been blocking coal trains in the Hunter Region from entering the Port of Newcastle for more than a week, resulting in NSW Police establishing Strike Force Tuohy.
On Tuesday, Police Commissioner Mick Fuller issued a statement, saying the ongoing protests were placing public safety at risk and endangering the lives of those who use the rail network. “They will not be tolerated,” he said.
“I have sought further legal advice and am warning anyone who intends on behaving in the manner we’ve seen over the past week that they could be charged with offences ... which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.”
Mr Fuller said this was in addition to the various trespass and rail disruption offences numerous protesters have been charged with since Friday, November 5.
The statement from Mr Fuller comes after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce claimed protesters had disrupted $60 million worth of coal exports in the past week.
“If they’ve got other ways that the nation can earn money right now, then we’re all ears,” Mr Joyce said from the Singleton train station on Monday.
“In the meantime, we've got to make a buck. “For each one of these (trains) that goes through, that’s about $1 million in export dollars.
“It’s about $100,000 in royalties, so what you’ve got here is payments for your NDIS … payments for pensions and unemployment benefit.”
Mr Joyce said protesters believed their views were “more important than the law”. “They are a different breed,” he said. “(They) believe they can shut things down, a legal industry that underpins their standard of living.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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