The Big Ask Climate Debate comments_2328 April 2008
It is not acceptable to say that we can do nothing because China may eclipse our efforts. It is obvious that if everyone took that attitude about everything, then nothing would ever get done! If it is worth our great nation making a stand about something, then we should not wait for others to step forward first.
One way to cut carbon emissions is to prevent the seemingly unstoppable expansion of air travel and growth in airports. Without a concerted effort to cut the damaging environmental impact of air travel, the present situation is unsustainable as it is, without it being encouraged to grow further. We must pay a realistic price for travelling by plane and we must make efforts to develop new 21st century technologies that are kinder to the planet. These can then be rewarded through taxation and Government grants encouraging businesses to change their current practices.
Mike Hickman
Dear Mr Blair What are you going to do about the rising CO2 emmissions from transport. I work in the public sector trying to promote sustainable transport. I find it shocking that the cash strapped public sector (I work in the NHS)subsidises non essential car users car parking. I also know of a council that offers subsidised lease cars to managers as a perk, they dont even have to do the mileage to qualify. Such pratices should be outlawed immediately. Why is subsidised car parking not classed as a taxable benefit and why are subsidies on public transport taxable (Question for Gordon perhaps?)
Mary Brooks
Frustrated? Yes! All these plans Blair mentions are in the future...we must, we should etc. Meanwhile we carry on day after day pumping out greenhouse gases. This is an urgent issue and should be dealt with as such, NOW. We are resting our hopes on the notion that 60% cut by 2050 will make everything okay - this is speculative. In any case global warming and its consequences are being experienced right now.
What is really stopping the government from agreeing to annual targets? Their arguments are so flimsy and whining and Tony Juniper has answered them satisfactorily - there is really nothing to lose by agreeing 3% annually. The first 3% could easily be achieved through a public awareness campaign or any one of a number of quick-win measures.
Deborah Joffe
Dear Tonies and MAD MATT, MAN CREATED Global warming is just hysterical scare-mongering. The UK was much warmer for 2/300 years in the middle ages, The Romans grew Grapes/made wine here in the north of the UK during the first half of the first milenium, the VIKINGS farmed in GREEN LAND,(currently covered in ice sheets). Most of the eco protagonists are not even technically/scientifically aware enough to tell the difference between centigrade, celsius and Farhenhite. France's so called carbon footprint is 60% of the UK's simply because 70% of their Electricity is generated by Nuclear power stations. Apart from the Chernobyl accident,(due to ignorance and gross incompetance), no one has been killed by nuclear power stations. Current nuclear designs are even safer than older designs and produce minimal nuclear waste which could be dealt with given political will . Nuclear power is expensive but much less painful than no power. Dozens of new Nuclear power stations are being built/in planning all over the world. If we don't get going soon in buliding our own we will end up "powerless" in 10/20 years, with our oil/gas supplies controlled by the likes of Russia, The Mad Mullahs and pipelines through France. China is opening one new coal powered powerstaion every 10 days, the USA has 20 in planning stages. Currently there is an uncontrolled forest fire in Borneo outputting more CO2 than the UK. The UK emits 2% percent of Global CO2. World wide Aviation emits 2% of total CO2, thus UK aviation produces 0.04%. that is totally irrelevent! Indeed if the UK sank the worlds atmosphere would not even notice. By all means insulate all house and buildings properly, develope bio-fuels develope electric cars (and charge them with Nuclear eclectricity), use nuclear power to produce Hydrogen to power cars and aircraft but in Short GET A LIFE, Don C (PS Windmills are a total waste of time except on inaccesible islands, I call the The Don Quijote solution)
Don Craig
200 years later, historians still argue about the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
Britain started it Tony, make a name for yourself, quell this riot.
Colin Heasman
AS an American volunteer for the Awakening the Dreamer, changing the Dream Symposium (Pachamama.org), I applaud everything you are doing, Tony Blair, and I want more.
As long as consumers pay mega corporations to go to China to produce their goods, China will continue to build and may be a future major polluter.
I am committed to changing the American dream from one of over consumption to one of happiness and satisfaction, buying locally, re-using and not using. Personally, I have done a lot and have a long way to go.
Continue to look for EVERYTHING that can be done to make the shifts needed to save our planet.
I see what you mean, Tony Blair, about yearly targets causing ineffective short term improvements and what you, tony Juniper, mean about the need for yearly targets. I bet the tow of you could figure a way to have the usefulness of targets AND not react to them in a knee-jerk way.
Thanks you for the dialogue
Christina Chambreau
I would like to know what is stopping the government from getting a new fleet of zero emission hydrogen fuel cell buses for London, which have already been sucessfully tried in some parts of USA and other countries? Why is it that Ken Livingstone wants every new bus from 2012 to run on hybrid motors that will generate only 40% less carbon dioxide than the current diesel powered buses, when zero emission technology exists and has been available for sometime? Aren't we talking about taking urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? And please don't say that zero emissions buses are more expensive, which I know they are, but as budgets go, I am sure it is nothing compaired with the billions being spent on the Afghan and Iraq wars...
Carmen Miranda
Road transport is one of the areas that must be tackled quickly and effectively as part of our drive to reduce emissions.
In 1997, John Prescott said:
I will have failed in this if in five years there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I want you to hold me to it.
Tony Blair - will you hold Mr Prescott to this promise? I doubt very much that the second part has been achieved. Furthermore, current government policy is worsening the situation by encouraging car usage through road expansion.
For a comprehensive and thought-provoking analysis of transport issues, see George Monbiot's recent book - Heat. Chapter 8 puts forward a credible solution to congestion and an aid to emissions reductions based on the use of motorway coaches. The solution's author, Alan Storkey, calculated that with the M25 full of cars travelling at 60 mph and holding an average of 1.6 people each , then ONLY 19,000 people in total are being transported. If instead all the cars were coaches, then the road would be transporting 260,000 people.
Robert Palgrave
Gentlemen,
Ground transportation is a major emitter of carbon dioxide. We have to get thermal engines out of transport as soon as possible, and shift to electrical propulsion wherever it is viable. This is not a technical ask, it is a political one, for the technology exists now to start the ball rolling in a modest way so that it can be continued as the technology further improves. The longer the delay the more rapid the change will have to be and the higher the cost. Nevertheless there are grounds for believing a more rapid switch than a slow one will cost less, up to a point, because electric vehicles will be cost effective when made in large quantities, and the sooner this happens the better.
I have studied the financial implications of running such a fleet of vehicles and it can be made very attractive. In the past EVs have been sold as competitors to chemically fuelled vehicles, which they are not, and have consequently been market failures. By capitalisiing on the electric vehicles' ability to store and transport energy as well as passengers, this disadvantage is overcome and the entire programme to introduce such vehicles can be largely self funding. I commend it most strongly to the British Govt.
Tony Maine
The radical honesty on CLMATE CRISIS needs include the causes, effects & costs of pollution sickening our health & bioregions, shocking weather in climate cycles.
Also the total costs of petro synthetics in farming, plastics, drugs, solvents, paints, bags, glue, chemo foods, & asphalt adding to global heating. Our MASSIVE deforesting waste of lumber, packaging & paper from hyper logging & burring our wilderness destroying habitats & causing more global heating, drouts & flooding.
WAR - the most ignored cause of climate crisis is our military, weapons & war effects, & costs in wasting resources, defensive living & heating up from jets, battles, ships & rockets & 100s of other secret waste & ways they hide because it threatens human health & is illegal by moral, natural & civil rights.
Michael Sunanda
In addition to individual consumers switching off unnecessary lights, appliances etc, surely there should be a huge drive to reduce some of the outrageous light displays from business and retail premises. This is especially prevalent in american style outlets with multi coloured lights to the sheer waste of white bright lights in carparks which are really over the top, too many and intrusive.
A more sensible approach is needed to strike a balance between security measures and complete wastage. This should be achieveable under the new legislation for light pollution which came into effect in April this year, although as yet, local governments or central government do not appear to be taking an overview of this increasing menace.
Susan Eppel
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