It won't happen. We're not in the EU. ;-)
Yet!
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It won't happen. We're not in the EU. ;-)
Yet!
Looking forward to it (again). :-)
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whose goals are to stop all air transportation, car ownership, the overwhelming majority of meat eating by humans
I have not read such a load of laughable nonsense for years.
Lets think what that would do
- All the airlines would be grounded leaving entire fleets of expensive hardware doing nothing yet still having to be paid for. The airlines would fail, the banks would fail, governments would fail and we would be back to the dark ages.
- Pretty much the same as above for car ownership.
- As a species we have been eating meat for many thousands of years. There are alternative ways of producing protein but it could not happen overnight.
Its not going to happen.
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whose goals are to stop all air transportation, car ownership, the overwhelming majority of meat eating by humans
I have not read such a load of laughable nonsense for years.
Lets think what that would do
- All the airlines would be grounded leaving entire fleets of expensive hardware doing nothing yet still having to be paid for. The airlines would fail, the banks would fail, governments would fail and we would be back to the dark ages.
- Pretty much the same as above for car ownership.
- As a species we have been eating meat for many thousands of years. There are alternative ways of producing protein but it could not happen overnight.
Its not going to happen.
As a species we've been around for the best part of 1,000,000 years. We've managed without motor cars and aircraft for all but about 120 of 1,000,000 years!
Edited by Sofa Spud on 21/09/2023 at 10:30
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>>We've managed without motor cars and aircraft for all but about 120 of 1,000,000 years!
for say 1 million years a few thousand, here, 10K there etc etc managed to live as hunter gatherers, progressing to basic farming.
How on earth are 70 million in the UK going to live without access to our new basic necessities we increasingly rely on for say 200 years.
I am afraid a cottage in the middle of nowhere, 2 cows, some sheep and a small plot of land to grow oats, wheat, veg etc etc would not be viable these days.
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I am afraid a cottage in the middle of nowhere, 2 cows, some sheep and a small plot of land to grow oats, wheat, veg etc etc would not be viable these days.
You wouldn't get planning permission, would you? The idea is popular among some in the USA but they usually set up in the wilds and deter outside interference with an a***nal of small arms etc.
So no, not feasible here, :-(
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With medieval farming (no tractors or artificial fertilisers) the UK could at best feed 15Million. The other 50 million will have to starve. (or more likely riot and overthrow the Government!:-)
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With medieval farming (no tractors or artificial fertilisers) the UK could at best feed 15Million. The other 50 million will have to starve. (or more likely riot and overthrow the Government!:-)
All very well talking of what we used to do, but they grew up living that way, I have doubts many would survive the way they used to and most would probably die younger than they do now
opinions are, or seem to be, we are advancing technically too rapidly, regardless of global warming, which back then they wouldn`t even know what that meant let alone do something about it, which is going to be impossible anyway, but we should adjust to it and get on with our lives instead of people keep telling us what we should and shouldn`t do, as much as people like doing so....
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It is estimated that mankind requires ~2 planets to provide for our consumption and absorb waste. This is estimated to increase to ~3 by 2050 due to population growth and as those countries currently lagging western consumption levels seek to catch up.
This is fundamentally unsustainable. It will only end in one of two ways:
- evolving a society which intelligently limits consumption, uses green energy, recycles waste etc.
- catastrophically - it may be extreme climate impacts, or widespread conflict over water and resources, or some combination of the two
Those over 50-60 in prosperous developed countries can probably live the remainder of their lives relatively unaffected by all this, despite a catastrophic prognosis. Children and grandchildren will curse their memory.
An intelligent response is creation of a sustainable future. Technology advances aside, car ownership, air travel, excess consumption, will be a casualty. Investment in home insulation, green energy, environmental efficiencies will take their place.
Not an attractive proposition for those who were born post war and enjoyed the opportunity for unbridled profligacy and excess in the 1960-1980s limited only by the size of the bank account. Nonetheless - a sad new reality!!
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As a species we've been around for the best part of 1,000,000 years.
Homo sapiens has only been around for a couple of hundred thousand years or so, and only started talking to each other about 50,000 years ago.
We've managed without motor cars and aircraft for all but about 120 of 1,000,000 years!
As anyone who has travelled in the African and Asian hinterlands will know, millions still do.
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Any car owner who votes Labour or Green, need their heads tested. You are voting yourself out of your car.
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Any car owner who votes Labour or Green, need their heads tested. You are voting yourself out of your car.
Perhaps, but the car is a very large contributor to the series of social problems we keep discussing - plus the underlying problem of a population too big for the space it occupies. All the attempts to alleviate things - diesel instead of petrol, electric instead of fossil fuel - are aimed at carrying on adding to the problem !
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I am not convinced there are too many cars. The problem is we don't build enough roads, and when we do, they don't have enough lanes. Governments of all colours appear obsessed with making motoring as inconvenient as possible. Blocking roads in neighbourhoods, halving road capacity by adding a bus lane, charging an entrance fee to major cities, charging people to park on the high street, the list goes on. We speak so often of the economic benefits of allowing people to get from A to B quicker. Does it ever dawn on these people that when the public are given the choice free from artificial hindrance, most will choose the car, and maybe if you have to keep articifially propping up the alternative, it's not very good alternative?
The most successful country on the planet is car-focused, says it all.
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I am not convinced there are too many cars. The problem is we don't build enough roads, and when we do, they don't have enough lanes..
There may be too many cars for the road-space that we have, but the construction of a fair number of motorways and bypasses has not solved that problem, as you suggest. They may solve a local difficulty, but usually create a new one further down the road. Most road travel is between conurbations which mostly are unable to absorb the number of cars visiting. That's the main reason why shoppers prefer to visit peripheral retail parks instead of city centres.
Most constraints on cars now are for health reasons as much as for relieving congestion.
Edited by Andrew-T on 25/09/2023 at 23:25
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"Any car owner who votes Labour or Green, need their heads tested. You are voting yourself out of your car."
Agree 100%. Sadly, was was pointed out to me on here earlier, even the 5 year extension to petrol and diesel cars is pretty hopeless, just delaying the pain marginally and even then the manufacturers will be under huge pressure to sell electric only, so are the Conservatives a great deal better? I suspect if this was put to the Conservative party membership, we would not bother with net-zero, but it won't be put to them like other parties do, so the Conservative Central HQ will continue making stupid policies.
It is the problem with such broad-church political parties, they have so many policies to try to get every kind of voter, that a net-zero policy slips through the net. The great thing about referendums (so long as they are followed, at least until the next one) is it gives a real opportunity for the electorate to make its views known on a specific topic.
Edited by Metropolis. on 25/09/2023 at 21:33
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We've managed without motor cars and aircraft for all but about 120 of 1,000,000 years!
As anyone who has travelled in the African and Asian hinterlands will know, millions still do.
And they frequently have no running water, sewage systems, live under corrugated steel roofs, survive on a few $$ a day. It is an observation, not a credible reason for personal car ownership.
Personal transport is at the beginning of the end. It makes no economic or environmental sense to have expensive individual vehicles, each weighing in excess of a 1000kg+, transporting a payload of 60-200kg, which sits idle for 20+ hours a day.
The future requires intelligent solutions - or the past will come to haunt not guide us.
Look forward 20 years and speculate - eg: individual car ownership rapidly declining, on demand autonomous pods via an app, progressive localisation of essential facilities (health, schools), greater alignment of work and home locations reducing futile commutes
This will not happen suddenly but progressively, and affect larger cities first where the benefits will be more evident. I can think of no positive scenario in which ICE ownership increases with direct negative impacts on congestion and pollution.
A simplistic example - online grocery shopping - a single van doing (say) 50 deliveries a day removes up to 50 private vehicle journeys from the roads.
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Modern day doomsayers have been predicting environmental disasters since the 1960s and continue to do so. Pollution, population, hole in the ozone layer, to name but a few. In the early 1970s, climate experts said we were heading towards another Ice Age and half the world was going to starve because of the shorter growing season. Shaking in my shoes (Not).
Edited by martin.mc on 23/09/2023 at 17:21
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The hole in the ozone layer was real and solved by human action (banning some refrigerants),
World famine was real - India could not feed itself. The Green Revolution solved that issue.
To suggest either were imagined is to rewrite reality.
Man made problems require man made solutions.
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Man made problems require man made solutions.
That doesn't mean those solutions are readily available - or acceptable, for political reasons !
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