Off Topic The Environmental & Pollution Thread

There will be massive protests to try and stop it.

 

There has been massive protests. They have disrupted it. And while the grotesque price was being debated, we stupidly thought they would listen. But greed has won out yet again. The gravy train rolls on. Outrageous. I'm so annoyed. I hope some eco terrorists start coming out the woodwork, at least make the criminals profiting from this worry a bit about targeted.

 

Hang on a minute......... I seem to remember that the government said “any tree cut down for development has to be replaced by two!” Or did I dream that?

 

Ancient woodland Beddly that's key. Cutting down swathes of such habitats isn't easily replaced by a cut one plant two policy. Do your own research on government policy. You need to check action taken not just the talk, which is cheap! E.G. if it 's affordable "starter" homes it's zero. See https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50296672 and https://www.showhouse.co.uk/news/fact-check-conservative-partys-housing-pledges/

 

Planting trees does nothing. Its an empty gesture.
Its like a serial killer saying once he's finished his spree, he'll become a doctor.

 

You really couldn't make it up. If it wasn't so tragic it would be funny .....


https://mk0scramqyabb60nbao.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Gove-COP26-1.mp4

 

Bit hard to watch the ringpiece expect to be taken seriously what the **** is Cummings doing allowing that? Rope and hanging come to mind.

 

Joe Brindle, 17 has started a campaign group, Teach The Future and will be lobbying politicians to take forward 'The Climate Emergency Education Bill' to make teaching on climate change an integral part of education. Good for him and it's brilliant that the younger generation are now working together to put pressure on the Government to do something positive.

I reckon this young man deserves a pat on the back for taking such an initiative and hopefully the dead heads in parliament will start to listen.

The article in The Guardian shows that things are starting to happen .....

https://www.theguardian.com/educati...ft-climate-bill-anxiety-lack-guidance-schools

 

Sorry I don’t see it as an empty gesture.........it will help the environment in the future. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to progress. Are you saying you will not use these trains should a need arise.? It is unfortunate I grant you but in my view it is the future of travel. They protested about motor ways but I bet each and everyone that protested use them! Not too many of you on here will remember what travel was like at times without them. I agree that better routes at times was available but you wouldn’t be without them now. Just as a reminder none of the main opposition parties seemed to be against the high speed trains, or certainly the Labour Party were strongly for them. Or motor ways come to think about it all though no doubt some of the routes may have been arguable. Just remember in the future high speed trains will be more eco friendly in the long term as time progresses.

 

Excellent work from the lad. Practically all of this has come from one girl. I'm quite proud of members of this younger generation. They might have been born at the right time and have been at just the right age and time, but by goodness they've taken advantage of it all.
Even now, they are misunderstood, misquoted, mocked by Presidents and people in authority. Greta Thunberg, thanks to her unwavering direction [and a touch of autism, which she says is her superpower] is getting the message out there and her influence grows.
But here's an example of the FUD in action. Even yesterday evening, I was speaking with a person on Discord who told me that she was a liar because she'd been photographed on a German train, which she said had been crowded and which was relatively empty, as reported by the media. He'd taken it at face value. He didn't think that the paparazzi were crowded in the one carriage with Thunberg and that she had tried to get some space alone, and ended up sitting in a corner being photographed. And also, that this had somehow overturned every last little bit of positive influence she has made since she started her campaign. I suggested to him that he must live by the highest of behavioural standards, because his favourites, ie, Farage and Johnson were well above all this protest stuff. He took that at face value too and didn't see the irony at all.
That's the kind of **** we're up against. And it has a loud voice without trying too hard.

 

.it will help the environment in the future.
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It takes ten years for there to be any carbon sucking attributes. Ancient forests are irreplaceable.

Are you saying you will not use these trains should a need arise.
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HS2 will be like concord train. Unaffordable to normal folk like us. We desperately need £20bn chucking at the rail infrastructure, so people can have seats, and a service that works. This over priced nature destroying monstrosity doesn't even help connect the north!

 

That conflicts with the people I have spoken to up in the north.........without exception they were all for it. I take the point about the trees I really do. How ever they too will become huge and help the environment more than those today because there is more of them.........Are you really saying you don’t want to see change? Will it not increase the number of trains? Some times we have to give a bit to get a lot.......

 

Crossrail North as it's called and local integrated services need massive investment. As called for by individuals and groups. Countrywide public transport for years under invested also crying out for improvement. All affordable as a drive to get people out of their cars. Oh and there's health service, social services the criminal justice system and education on their uppers. Where's the money coming from? Is there a tree in the number 11 garden?

 

isn’t that what they are getting?

 

I for one wouldn’t trust this technology...

 

Japan has built a fantastic rail network which serves the urban and rural population and it has to be the most used system in the world. Most of it is electric and in the main it operates flawlessly. Only when Japan had a railway system that supplied the needs of the population did they explore the construction of a high speed train system (Shinkansen). This was started in 1959 and opened on October 1964 and has since expanded across most of Japan. The Shinkansen system is 100% electric, incredibly efficient and fairly expensive to travel on but it is still way better than flying from an environmental perspective.

The great thing about the Japanese rail system is that it is so brilliantly integrated so it serves even the most remote regions. The Kami-Shirataki station in Hokkaido has been kept open so one young girl can still get to school. She is the only passenger who now uses this train station but they are keeping it open until she finishes her studies. That is service, and the way Japan values it’s rural communities.

If our government were serious about creating an integrated rail system to serve the whole population it would start with all electric local trains and then develop a fast electric train system to connect the major cities. HS2 is nothing more than a vanity project and the environmental damage it will do is going to be horrendous. It’s also likely to be so expensive that only the high earners will be able to afford to use it.

Take a look at how remote this is, but in Japan the government see it as worthwhile, and so do many travellers .....

 

This country rail services are abysmal, I live in Plymouth, there is one! line connecting the entire west country to the rest of the U.K, this being a line that will almost certainly flood at Dawlish on an annual basis. There are no lines at all in North Devon, Cornwall is no better.

I'll share what i have to go through if i want to visit family in Poole and I wish to take the train.

Train 1 Plymouth - Exeter St Davids 1 hour journey time
Train 2 Exeter St Davids - Westbury 1 Hour 5 minutes
Train 3 Westbury - Southampton Central 1 Hour
Train 4 Southampton Central - Poole 55 Minutes

Add in about 45 minutes waiting around for connections and you have a journey that has taken the best part of 5 hours. For 120 miles.

This why people take the car.

Fixing this lack of infrastructure is where the HS2 money could have been better used, if Govt. were serious about mass transit being an option they would do something about it, they're not because they're no votes to be won in the S.W.

Anyway, rant over.

 

Johnson's last vanity project cost £50m and wasn't even built. HS2 doesn't even begin to solve our rail problems, it just allows people to get to London faster from a few other metropolitan areas. That will have the added "benefits" of increasing housing prices elsewhere as areas become attractive to London commuters.
I live 1 mile from a mainline to London. I have to drive 12 miles to get to the nearest station from which I can access the route. If the Beeching cuts had been reversed, and then the high speed links planned, then we may have ended up with a viable alternative to private car use.
As it stands, HS2 looks like a massive white elephant that will suck all the money in that could have been used to improve rail links from the provinces, will take decades to complete and will have no benefits for most of the country.
As far as improving the prosperity of the North, I have failed to discover any sign of improved East/west travel, no link up to the North-East and will likely never show ANY cost benefits once the rampant cronyism that is Tory Government has spewed out billions in consultancy fees without achieving anything concrete.

Finally, I also fail to see how, with the march of AI and the increased opportunities for home working that will bring, it can possibly justify high speed travel to Urban areas when physical presence will be less useful for "work" to be done.

 

Have scrolled up this thread and not seen a petition on HS2, and Rorschach has said all I might have wanted to say:

http://chng.it/29YBKmXbhP

So here's one to sign to save the affected environment. Obviously, read before you sign or not.
If you wish to copy it to the Political thread, please do.

 

Couldn't agree more as I plan our next 3/4 away days on the train from the Hague. Last week of Feb 2018 saw us in Cologne for the carnival temperatures in the low 20s, I won't crack the wurst joke again, oh.