How do you convince the public…

They closed the motorway (or at least one side of it) to allow POTUS to make that drive. God knows what they did when he went back again. Apparently one of the reasons the road outside the office was so busy was that they closed the Erskine Bridge, forcing all the cars to go through the already overloaded Clyde Tunnel. I was told it was because the Rainbow Warrior was going up the Clyde but that has to be nonsense because it could sail under the bridge without anyone noticing so there must be some other security reason.

I am glad this lot don't come to town often!

I wrote this on that there Twitter:

So the #COP26  messages are: it’s one minute to midnight; we’ve all burned carbons to tell you it’s one minute to midnight; we won’t be changing our own lifestyle that much.

So folks: the Earth will be making herself uninhabitable for humans soon so do whatever you like.

And this is it: the Queen started paying tax to set an example of leaders being affected the same as the plebs, Charles for all his other faults has done many things that are environmentally friendly over the years (used to rail freight his Aston and it’s now running bio-fuel for a car-forum perspective), Greta sailed in a boat etc. but the morons that make the rules demonstrate no personal attributes that align with the way they want their taxpayers to live their lives. Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg etc don’t count: they run their lives and businesses according to the rules set before them, including the example set. I’ll do the things that don’t require me to savagely change my life but no chance of massive instant changes from most of the population because they won’t be able to afford it and will point at the lifestyle of others to justify their reluctance to change.

I reckon India has got it right: 2070 is long enough to plan more changes based on the west aiming at 2050. Their 2070 aim will be missed more closely than our unachievable date.

There you go again, with your joined up thinking and common sense! Shame the world leaders simply cannot manage it.

Mixing this thread with the cultural one for a moment whenever I've watched the news recently all round the world there are conflicts going on in the name of religion (a handy excuse I suspect) creating masses of, frankly, unnecessary pollution.

I read a bit about the emissions from a private jet yesterday and can only assume that something like a Eurofighter (as an example, other aircraft types are available from the usual places) is much worse and that's before you add in the in-flight refueller that'll accompany it as well.

So why am I stressing about what comes out of my cars exhaust pipe?

Is there a passenger duty to cut on rail fairs or are they already subsidised by tax payers regardless of whether they use them?
Travelling by train is expensive because running a rail network is hugely expensive. It’d be better to make flying more cost effective so that innovation can do its wonderful thing and make it the cleaner way to travel in addition to the speed, and efficiency benefits.

There’s no logic in the climate debate, it’s just virtue signalling on a global scale. What difference to global temperatures will cutting air passenger duty have? I’d guess 0% to the nearest whole number.
Are trains really greener than planes? A train, if not Diesel will be electric so fuelled largely by gas. Running on tracks made from steel that’ll has to be imported because we don’t want to open a coal mine in Cumbria that’ll provide coking coal, therefore increasing greenhouse emissions further.
I’d prefer to build the aviation industry, grow it to the extent that innovation is commercially viable and have a better future rather than one of ever increasing restrictions.

At the end of the day the aim is for a net zero carbon contribution. This means that there will still be carbon emissions but there will be other things done to mitigate their impact. Up until very recently, the Scottish Government wanted the duty on domestic flights cut because of flights to the islands etc which are pretty essential. However they backed off that one when they thought it might not be politically prudent to be seen to do anything anti-green, especially when they wanted the greens as allies in the Scottish Parliament.

The train network in the UK is unfit for purpose a large percentage of the time and the whole thing needs to be looked at to find out why. The trains in Europe are faster, cleaner, newer and cheaper although they are subsidised. I'd like to know if they do things differently and if our rail network could be improved if we did the same.

Given the sentiment in Europe that we have to be punished, I think Rishi was right in what he did with air transport duty because we have to make the UK work really well, efficiently and profitably so that any damage the EU want to inflict is kept to a minimum. I am hearing stories of mountains of regulation and hurdles being placed in front of UK nationals who want/need to work in Europe for a while. People like roadies, sound and light engineers who normally tour with a band are finding it extremely hard to get the right to work and it appears (so I am told) that the europeans want the bands to use local engineers etc to do the work and not to bring people from the UK. Belgium apparently has 3 autonomous regions and full paperwork is required for each region to be able to work there and move around freely. There must be lots of similar tales which include my problem in getting golf balls from a German company who would only sell them if I paid German VAT, which, according to the rules, I don't need to pay.
 

I was. Their Pro Plus ball is really good but it costs about the same incl German VAT as I can get Titleist Pro V1s excluding VAT. As a corporate gift, the Titleist carries a good bit more weight so at the same price I will go with the Titleist all day long!

Trying to follow a map whilst holding the umbrella above your head could be an interesting, if not dangerous, experience!

I misread the description of the umbrella to start with, and thought "why would anyone want an umbrella with an old man of Dundee on the inside?"

You pose an interesting question regarding whether trains are greener than planes. I would guess it depends on the route but some quick googling suggests that per passenger the CO2 emissions from trains are 10% that of planes on short haul routes such as London-Paris or Bristol to Newcastle. You do of course have to take into account how electricity is produced and if its by burning gas the green credentials of electric trains are not helped but you can at least change how you generate that power moving to wind or solar for example whereas planes are pretty much stuck to being reliant on kerosene. I think suggesting we take into account how the steel for the tracks was made is a bit disingenuous because you don't make new tracks for each journey in the same way a flight doesn't take off from a brand new airport each time and if we have to look at the infrastructure around each form of transport do we then need to consider the energy consumption of an airport vs a train station? I think that whatever measure you take, if you want to travel across our country producing as little CO2 as possible then short of getting on your bike, the train is the obvious choice. But it's not the fastest and no way the cheapest. I flew to Glasgow last week and was in the city for 9:30 on a flight that cost £60. I didn't even consider the train because it can't do that. For a start its over £100 more expensive and to be in Scotland at that time in the morning would require using the sleeper train.

John makes the point rightly so about our network being unfit for purpose. We do have too many unelectrified routes and the HS2 line being built now should have been built back in the 70s to go with the HST which was capable of 140mph+ but never went past 125 in service. The current reliance on the East and West Coast lines for intercity trains is massively restricting our ability to put freight on the line and squeezing capacity for local services. We should be looking to improve this if we want to achieve net zero.

I'm not trying to say I wouldn't like to see more planes, I'm a bit of a plane spotter myself and have always been fascinated by them. If they can be made more green through the use of sustainable fuels then great. But that won't be cheap and it won't be coming that soon. From an economic standpoint we should want domestic air travel to increase so we can grow our economy. But this thread started by asking how you engage the public on environmental issues and you don't do that by giving tax breaks to air travel.

^
The problem is that the government does not have the money to fund them properly, one of the reasons that they were sold off in the first place (notably the water industry).
If you worked in the industry, you may be aware that they used to put forward budget requests for maintaining infrastructure etc, but each year the government would review the figures and dictate that they would have to do the work for less. As for investing in huge new infrastructure projects...... far easier to sell everything off and then the new owners would have to take out loans at commercial rates with the customers picking up the bill, not government.

Especially since the map is from the late 1800s/early 1900s when there were still a lot of docks that have subsequently been filled in and the road network around the waterfront has significantly changed!

Close Brothers gave me two for free - the struts are all carbon fibre so I assume they weren't cheap!