Monday, October 09, 2023
More Greenie authoritarianism
Climate change activists are calling for airlines to introduce flight quotas, with travellers to instead commute long distances using ground transport.
Dr Helen Hutchinson, social scientist and spokesperson for environmental group Flight Free Australia, believes flying should be scrapped entirely until it's 'safe' or emission-free.
'It's an individual action – it's the worst thing you can do,' Dr Hutchinson told 3AW's Tom Elliott on Thursday.
'A lot of that's due to the fact we've prioritised air [travel]. A lot of other countries have actually put an equal amount of money into ground transport - such as really good buses, really good trains - and we could've done the same in Australia.'
'When you look at what's happening in Australia now, most of our long-distance trains have been privatised,' she continued.
Elliott then questioned the activist on time constraints, explaining he gets a 'week off at this time of year' in which he spent six days in Queensland with his family.
'Now, if we'd driven it's a two-day drive there and a two-day drive back which only leaves two days to enjoy it. It's just not possible,' he argued.
'Well, there's places in the world now where they're asking employers to give people time to get to the destination. And you can go [to Queensland] by train,' Dr Hutchinson said.
The host then cuts Dr Hutchinson off, remarking that it still takes two days to get to Queensland by train to which the activist simply responds: 'Yep, I've just done it.'
'What I'm suggesting is maybe you can ask for an extra four days which you can travel there and travel back,' she added.
Modern day Australia couldn't exist without flying, Elliott responded.
'The Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane air corridor is one of the busiest in the world, and people want to be able to commute and fly between the cities,' he said.
'A lot of modern business and so forth works because of that. You're saying merely we just shouldn't do that?'
Dr Hutchinson said their phone call was an example of how long-distance communication is available in other forms, with a lot of businesses turning to video calling platforms off the back of the pandemic.
'It's not difficult to change your behaviours if you just look at the other options, and what we're encouraging people to do is to just look at the other options,' she continued.
'I went to university in the UK, and every couple of years I like to go visit old friends there - am I allowed to do that or is that not allowed?' Elliott then asked.
'I'm not making a choice for you, as for the people who have joined Flight Free Australia made that choice not to fly until it's safe to do so,' the activist said.
'One of the big problems with emissions is the aviation fuel, and aviation is one of the very few industries where we don't have an alternate means of energy.'
Elliott then asked whether Flight Free Australia would prefer if long-distance travel reverted back to using ships regardless of the drawn-out travel times.
The activist did not respond, before quietly asking 'does it sound good to you?'
'Well, not really. I don't have the time,' he laughed.
'I don't have the time to be travelling two weeks on a ship to get there. I don't think the world is like that anymore.'
'I think what we have to look at is the alternative,' Dr Hutchinson said.
'We're actually living in a climate emergency right now, and every small amount of emissions we can possibly save we really have to do. It's not a question of what we might like to do, it's a question of what we have to do.'
Commerical flights have long since been a point of contention for climate change activists, with Jean-Marc Jancovici proposing a universal quota should be imposed on air travel earlier this year.
The French engineer and climate activist said people should be limited to four long haul flights in their lifetime in order to mitigate climate change.
The call to restrict flying comes as environmentalists were slammed this week after suggesting dogs should go vegan.
Research by the University of Winchester found cats and dogs consume about 9 per cent of all land animals killed for food – about 7 billion animals annually – as well as billions of fish and aquatic animals, The Guardian reported.
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China's growing use of coal including the LONGEST coal transporting railway - which carries 200 MILLION tons of fossil fuel 1,141 MILES annually
China continues to move hundreds of millions of tons of coal across its railway system each year, drawing ire from Western pundits as other countries are forcing citizens to 'go green' and reduce their carbon footprint.
Scottish journalist Andrew Neil recently ripped Western governments in the wake of China's projects, such as the Menghua Railway, which is the longest-coal transporting train in the world.
The 1,141-mile railway moves 200million tons of coal each year as fossil fuel use - and traditional greenhouse gas emissions - continue to skyrocket in the communist nation.
While China continues to see its demand for coal g leaders in countries such as the US and UK continue to impose restrictions on its citizens and push going green to reach 'net zero' emissions across the globe.
The Menghua Railway was built as part of China's 12th five-year plan (a series of social and economic development initiatives issued by the county's communist government to take place over a period of five years). It went into operation in late 2019.
The erection of the railway shattered several world records and has helped facilitate the transport of coal from Inner Mongolia to China's southern provinces.
The railway is the country's longest coal transporting line, and joins a large handful of Chinese coal train lines that move the fossil fuel across the country.
China burns more coal every year than the rest of the world combined, and coal accounts for more than half of the total train cargo shipped across the country annually.
While America and Europe back away from coal, China's usage has only gone up. The country has more than 1,000 coal plants despite a vow from Chinese President Xi Jinping that his country will reach net-zero emissions by 2060.
China emits somewhere around 27 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, and a third of the globe's total greenhouse gases. As Western nations struggle to implement green initiatives that may or may not impact the environment in a significant way, China has made no such effort to curb its emissions.
The Menghua Railway is just one example of a way in which China continues to use fossil fuels to power its country. Any such railroad in Europe or the US would surely attract significant backlash from activists and some politicians.
This week, Neil responded to a video from the Chinese newspaper People's Daily promoting the 1,141-mile railway that was built to transport hundreds of millions of tons of coal from north to south China each year.
He wrote to his 1.2million Twitter followers: 'But you should still swap your boiler for a heat pump to save the planet.' A facetious reference to the UK government's bans on gas boilers.
Neil's comments are a reflection of a widening brand of frustration that Westerners, whose governments are moving to impose lifestyle restrictions in the name of climate change, share.
China is in a strong global position and its power is only on the rise, while its alliances and intentions are uniformly concerning for America and Europe.
Some fear that imposing green initiatives will handicap the ability of Europe and America's citizenry and governments to produce goods, while China is rolling on full-steam ahead with production powered by fossil fuels.
Furthermore, green initiatives generally come with steep price tags, an example of which is the Biden Administration's concentration on Electric Vehicles, which most Americans cannot afford.
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A new Greenie racket
Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.
At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises.
Documents show that the SEC relied on input from the for-profit company to draft the proposed rule. Some critics argue that the estimates from Persefoni low-balled the price tags unrealistically for such accounting to make them more politically palatable.
Persefoni, billing itself as “The Platform for Carbon Accounting – Built For Climate Disclosure,” and similar outfits are emerging as their own service industry as they stand to profit from the new rule, since most companies do not have the staff or expertise to calculate their carbon footprints.
While environmentalists have hailed the rule as an important step in forcing companies to grapple with their impact on the climate by exposing it to the public, critics argue that it goes far beyond the SEC’s core mission of protecting investors. In voting against a draft of the proposal, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Trump appointee, said it “forces investors to view companies through the eyes of a vocal set of stakeholders” – as opposed to traditional shareholders – “for whom a company’s climate reputation is of equal or greater importance than a company’s financial performance.”
The SEC and Persefoni each declined to comment for this article.
Persefoni appears to have had great influence over the proposed rule. Public records from the SEC show the commission held six meetings with representatives from Persefoni and Ceres – a prominent investor advocacy group that supports such climate disclosure – from September 2021 to June 2022.
Lee, a Democrat who joined the SEC as a staff attorney in 2005, was appointed by President Trump as one of the SEC’s five commissioners in 2019 – filling a Democratic vacancy on the commission, which was structured to be nonpartisan. President Biden named her as acting chair in 2021, and she took charge of the public comment period for the proposed rule.
Lee stepped down on March 15, 2022, just six days before the commission unveiled its proposed climate rule. In May 2023, she joined Persefoni as a member of the firm’s “sustainability advisory board.”
At Persefoni, she reunited with Kristina Wyatt, who joined the company’s board in March 2022. Previously, Wyatt had served the SEC as senior counsel for climate and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). In this capacity, she worked directly on developing the proposed rule. Wyatt was also listed as the direct contact when the commission circulated a request for information from the public regarding climate-change disclosures.
In December 2022, Persefoni hired another SEC alum, Emily Pierce, to serve as associate general counsel and vice president of global regulatory climate disclosure.
By all accounts, the SEC leaned heavily on Persefoni’s cost-benefit analysis of the pending rule, which essentially establishes a parallel disclosure regime for the SEC – all in the name of mitigating climate change.
The SEC proposal has many parts, but the most controversial and cumbersome involves the requirement that larger companies must provide soup-to-nuts calculations of their carbon emissions, including those from thousands of their suppliers operating across hundreds of countries.
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The time-bomb in your EV
Lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles are both their biggest plus and most dangerous threat – to owners and the environment.
ABC AM interviewed Catriona Lowe, deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, last Thursday to discuss the fire risk of battery charging. She was speaking after an electric scooter exploded in a fireball at a backpacker hostel in Sydney last Wednesday.
Lowe called for a government consumer awareness campaign about the dangers of lithium-ion batteries that now power everything from phones to vacuum cleaners, power tools and cars.
A few weeks earlier, on September 12, five cars were destroyed at Sydney’s Mascot Airport after a battery detached from a luxury EV ignited.
This column discussed media reporting of EVs on February 6 and on November 15, 2021, but did not mention the difficulty of extinguishing EV fires because of what firefighters call the thermal runway. Global figures make clear EV fires are rare.
But they are an issue. The specialist US motoring website hagerty.com has explained in detail why many country US race tracks are refusing to let EVs or hybrids compete. It says there are only two ways to deal with lithium-ion battery fires: “Douse a fire with water to cool it down: a lot of water, between 3000 gallons (11,356 litres) and 30,000 gallons depending on the incident. Cooling takes 100 times more water than a gasoline fire.” The other method is to let the fire burn out and then submerge the entire smouldering wreck in water.
EV batteries can be compromised in even small vehicle accidents and that is when they become dangerous. This is now feeding into soaring insurance premiums in the UK, where the Guardian and the Express newspapers have reported EV insurance premiums are set to rise by up to 1000 per cent.
The Guardian on September 30 reported on a young man who bought a Tesla Model Y. When his policy renewal fell due his insurer refused to reinsure the car. When he finally found a company that would his annual premium had risen from £1200 ($A2290) to £5000 in one year.
The Guardian mentioned the increased cost of repairing EVs but did not get to the heart of the issue.
The battery is about half the cost of a new EV and batteries that sit under the car floor are easily damaged in quite minor accidents. Repairers say fixing batteries is extremely difficult and insurers are tending to write off even quite new cars if there is even slight damage to the battery.
This was the problem with the Sydney Airport fire. The car’s battery had been damaged, and damaged batteries are more likely to catch fire.
A March 21 Reuters report written from London and Detroit says: “For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or even assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles … And now those battery packs are piling up in scrap yards in some countries …”
The report says the UK has no battery recycling facilities so batteries from damaged cars have to be removed and stored separately in fireproof containers.
Thatcham Research, the UK car insurance industry’s central safety research group, said EVs were 25.5 per cent more expensive to repair than normal cars and repairs took 14 per cent longer.
It identified the most significant challenge for the industry as “insurance claims originating from high-voltage battery damage”. It said batteries “represent a substantial percentage of the original vehicle value” and “negatively impact the economic model of vehicle repair … due to their cost as a percentage of the car’s market value.”
Why do motoring journalists not mention any of this? Surely buyers need to know if their new car insurance premiums are about to soar.
One senior industry figure this column spoke to said the real problem with fires in EVs was a lack of data.
He cited the potential dangers of EVs charging in parking facilities under residential buildings and the possibility fires could spread dangerous chemicals through building airconditioning systems.
A spokesman for the Insurance Council of Australia said it was too early to know what effects EV repair costs would have on premiums here but did suggest the cost of importing parts, scarcity of EV service centres and problems with battery repair and disposal would be an issue.
Taking up the challenge, Fire and Rescue NSW in July launched a two-year project called Safety of Alternative Renewable Energy Technologies looking at lithium-ion fires, end-of-life battery hazards and EV fires in structures such as parking garages.
The website EVFireSafe.com, set up by the federal government, is a good place to start if you want to understand why lithium-ion fires are difficult to control.
Yet the fire risk of batteries to owners pales when compared with the risk the manufacture, transportation, storage and disposal of used batteries poses to the global environment.
Detailed studies on carbon abatement show many EVs in the Western world charged on power grids still largely dominated by fossil fuel electricity production may take up to five years of driving to repay their manufacturing carbon deficit compared with internal combustion engine cars.
That falls to one year on grids powered by renewables or nuclear power.
This initial carbon deficit in the manufacturing stage is about 40 per cent of total vehicle life cycle emissions, according to McKinsey, and “can be attributed to the extraction and refining of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are needed for batteries, as well as the energy-intensive nature of battery manufacture”.
Here’s the rub for planet Earth. Most EVs exported around the world, including Teslas, are made in China, and China also dominates lithium-ion battery manufacture, even for cars assembled elsewhere.
Yet China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2 and its emissions are rising faster than emissions are falling in the West.
That is, Western countries are destroying their domestic motor vehicle manufacturing industries to hand over that comparative advantage, and the corresponding jobs, to China. Yet China is lifting emissions of greenhouse gasses that EV use is designed to reduce.
There are signs consumers are wising up in the US where EV sales have fallen sharply this year, price discounting led by Tesla and Ford has spread, and more than 100,000 new EVs sit in new-car lots. Demand is still strong here.
Few journalists will write it, but it is hard to justify putting up with EV range anxiety and the extra trouble finding charging stations while still paying the large premium over conventional car prices. This is simple technology that won’t do the planet much good, at least until electricity across the world is made without emissions. And the mining of many of the rare earths needed to make batteries is dangerous in some poor countries, both for the people working in mines and for the environment.
EVs, with instant torque and a low centre of gravity, are fun to drive. Not much can go wrong with them, maintenance is generally cheap and they make sense for city driving when constant stopping helps battery recharge.
Just don’t do anything to damage your battery.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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